helpless as a chess piece

The Songs and their Themes:

To get the full impact of the style you have to hear the record, but I'll try to cover in some of the many intertwining themes as they make their way through the songs.

1. The Big Picture:
The album begins with a couple getting into a car, driving along as the music starts on their stereo, there's a bit of dreamy synth, and then Connor comes in with guitar, and the girl in the car provides some impromptu accompanyment. The most spare song on the album, Big Picture plays out with just Obersts yelping vocal and his lonely acoustic guitar. And it starts the album lyrically almost as if in warning "the picture's far to big to look at kid, your eyes won't open wide enough" the song seems largely an admonishment to those who question the meaning of their lives, almost as if by the rawness of the recording and the lack of accompaniment he's saying "beware, this will make you question your life, a life that's as lonely and desperate and ugly as me and my guitar, there's no sentimentality to guard you here". But once he's scared off the weak and the pure, he casually invites whoever remains to join him on his quest "I mean, it's cool if you keep quiet but I like singing ". He stresses the idea of singing as metaphor for expressing and learning from your story, your pain, an idea we'll see develop throughout the album. He hints at some event that has made him decide to go back to his home town, he talks about clarity and abandoning old axioms without expressly stating what they are. He points to religion with some disdain, "So go ahead and lose yourself in liquor and you can praise the clouded mind... but don't go blaming your knowledge on some fruit you ate ", and "So if it makes you happy then keep kneeling Mama, but I'm standing up", but then refers to a message he's sending, "in code". "across electric wire, it's a baited line, yeah the hook's in deep, boys, there's no more time So you can struggle in the water, be too stubborn to die Or you can just let go and be lifted to the sky" so is the disdain for religion a bait by which he hooks the kids into listening, or is he being sarcastic and saying that the fear of death (which he talks about earlier in the song) is the bait by which people are hooked into religion? The final line of the song ("and be lifted..") although possibly morbid sounding seems to re-encapsulate a basic Christian principle surrendering to God's will, dying unto self, but it seems such a caustic atmosphere that you discount it as sarcasm or utter craziness... but we'll see.

2. Method Acting:
Starts bluntly, and with accompanyment, as if this is the real start of the album, the lyrics start:" There's no beginning to the story, the bookshelf sinks into the sand, and a language learned and forgotten in turn, is studied once again" in several attempts at different imagery Oberst talks about some kind of eternal reality, or a "higher message" that he's trying to get to. I love the repeated imagery of "the story", singing (becoming part of or telling the story), and being lifted (themes captured in the verbose album title). "'Cause I don't know what tomorrow brings To light with such possibilities All I know is I feel better when I sing Burdens are lifted from me That's my voice rising" Oberst seems to be in love with his craft, he repeatedly refers to making music and the friends that make it with him, "So Michael please keep the tape rolling Boys keep strumming those guitars We need a record of our failures Yes we must document our love", making music is literal singing, but it connects Oberst to telling the story, it's therapeutic and transcendent for him, "I have sat too long in my silence I have grown too old in my pain To shed this skin Be born again Oh it starts with an ending" (and notice that last bit, referring again to a death, an ending, that starts his rebirth). And then the poetry of this lyric, the reference to the title "It's not a movie No private screening This method acting Well I call it living, yeah It's like a fountain A door has opened We have a problem With no solution but to love And to be loved." Oberst has begun to question his life, to sing and bear his pain, he's opened a door and the flood of a fountain and discovered "a problem with no solution, but to love and to be loved", the grand theme of the album which we shall discuss at length at the last track. We begin to see the consequence of questioning the meaning of life. "So I've made peace with the fallen leaves I see their same fate in my own body But I won't be frightened when I'm awoken from this dream And return to that which gave birth to me". He's pointing to death as the natural end of the bad dream that is his life. Soundin' kinda morbid at this point, but again, this is his milieu, the shock value of the the sarcastic worldview. The song ends with the repeated "and the story goes, it's going on and on and on and on..." As we shall see later, the story is endless and must be born, it is a problem with no solution.

3. False Advertising:
Opens slow with an orchestra backing up Oberst's lilting vocals, it makes for a nice contrast. "on a string I was held The way I move, can you tell My actions are orchestrated from above" This song seems to contradict some of the earlier statements of the need for honesty, he speaks of being completely out of control of his life, like a marionette, eventually taking this despondent deterministic viewpoint to a logical extreme, "For a soul, I don't have, Something true I have lacked And spent my whole life trying to make up for", but in the meantime he seems to be making fun of the preconceptions that people have of his style of "singing", people who call his sincerity into question, "Onto a stage, I was pushed With my sorrow well rehearsed So give me all your pity and your money now, all of it" but he cuts that idea down by taking it to that logical extreme, he'd have to be soulless to be able to do what he does and not mean it, but he may be vicariously poking at his own fear, "Well then I could tell you, The truth like I used to, And not be afraid of sounding fake", it becomes clear that as he previously stated, exploring his fear is a part of "singing" and necessary to grow and proceed toward that "higher message" which he's seeking. In the middle of the song he again plays with his love of the form with a faux breakdown at a cracked note in the orchestra in response to the lyric "now all anyone's listening for are the mistakes". The song begins to transcend his arguments when he declares, "And I know, what must change, fuck my face, fuck my name, They are brief and false advertisements", again pointing toward death -if not in rude terms- and again being very overtly dramatic. This again is the death which must come with "singing". He goes on to express the "lifting" that will come "But I found, in a song And in the people I love they will lift me up out of darkness". The song finishes with the communal aspect of "singing", coming out of the isolation of hidden pain, "And now my door It stands open, I'm inviting everyone in" and the song ends with the jovial "We're gonna laugh, we're gonna drink Until the morning comes That's what we're gonna do! Come on! Come on!". Now this song could be understood on the face of it to be a glorified "let's get drunk and make music to deal with our problems", but the song ends with a crowd cheering as if he was on stage, and you hear him walk off stage and slam a door shut, it's as if he was just singing for the crowd.

4. You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will:
This song is a pause of all other thematic developments, and the introduction of the first "love interest" in the album and the prologue to the first climactic conflict of the work. It's a well written song about love and lust, and therefore the only important argument or theme that I think it introduces is that of sex. He talks about how his love for this girl is analogous to the love of a book, and since he "finished the book" he put her back on the shelf. In his passion to have her return to him, he utters the manic cry "You will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You?" the punctuation of which confuses me. The song ends with the ultimatum, "Because if you don't (return)... I'll start drinking like the way I drank before. And I just wont have a future anymore." So he's now seemingly pinning his hope for salvation, or a future, on this girls return so he can sleep with her again. This sets us up for the conflict of the next two tracks, and they constitute the most powerful songs on the album.

I'm gone digress for a sec here. Consider for a moment, the life of St.Augustine, great father of the church, and great sinner. He struggled with "incontinence" for years, had a child out of wedlock, and only after conversion and discovering the truth of "loving and being loved in return" (a quote from Confessions which is why I think Oberst may have pulled this theme from Augustine), was he able to maintain his desired chastity. Sex is certainly a great gift and a powerful drive in man's life, and the purity and transcendent wonder of the end which it seeks -a communion of persons- is inherently not only quite possibly the greatest good that man can experience in this life (a communion which prefigures mans communion with God) but the extent to which it is good, is the extent to which it can be corrupted, and lead to great evil. Sex is powerful, and our culture has for years said that it is to be freely used by all in any circumstance and the consequences of this great lie have been deep and far reaching. If divorce effects nearly half of all marriages, it is through this painful process that people begin to see the wages of their sin. When sexual congress is employed outside of marriage, the basic principle of that communion, fidelity, is forfeited to convenience, and as such, love is forfeited to lust, and a mere mutual sado masochism is expressed... Oberst's parents are divorced (and on other works he expresses this directly with some distaste, but on this album I believe were just dealing with the consequences, he doesn't look to the causes).. On with the show.

5. Lover I don't Have to Love:
The title pretty much explains it all. The opening notes convey such a sickness... and the song has a beat that keeps it going till you feel it in your stomach. What is this? This is a song about pop culture idols, meaningless sex and illicit drugs, where's the happiness...well for happiness to come out of this would be a great lie and if anything is true about Connor Oberst, it's that he's honest, brutally and painfully honest. The song and the encounter starts out so casual " I said, "I like your shoes."You said, "Thanks can I follow you?" So it's up the stairs and out of view", and in no time, after wine is poured, "Your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out You didn't care to know who else may have been you before" and there's that sickening honesty, "I want a lover I don't have to love. I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck." The narrative continues to explain their abandon after they've visited "the kid with the chemicals" and the get stuck in their lust " Let's just keep touching; let's just keep, keep singing..." but there you have that "singing" metaphor again. As is set up by the previous song, he's trying to reach that "higher message" through a girl and some drugs but as we've already seen in the tone of the song, and the previous song, he's resorting to these things out of desperation, he knows they are lying to him. The song ends with the ultimate distortion of the good of sex, " You, You write such pretty words, But life's no storybook Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt Do you like to hurt? I do, I do, then hurt me.." so this sexual freedom has led to it's logical conclusion, that these people are hurting eachother in a vain attempt to love. The descending melody behind Oberst's repeated final invitation and the accompanying string section speak melodically and harmonically to doom, this is no love song. Also interesting in this final stanza is the comment "you write such pretty words, but life's no story book", I wonder if this is analogy, she write's pretty words, this is her "singing" their sexual encounter was described as "singing", but then he refutes those "pretty words" saying they don't make sense in the storybook, "the story", of life. He seems to be acknowledging the lie, the sin, but persisting in it, "then hurt me".

Then, the grand hinge of the album. As lover fades into oblivion, the chug chug of a muted, strumming, guitar and tick of a drummer are heard settling into a rhythm, and as the lover goes silent, the shadow of the pain and evil from the previous song, is dispelled by a -dare I say- happy, bouncing, rhythmic, light; accompanied by a playful piano.

6.Bowl of Oranges:
"The rain it started tapping, on the window near my bed, there was a loophole in my dreaming, so I got out of it, and to my surprise my eyes were wide and already opened, just my nightstand and my dresser, where those nightmares had just been." And it's as if it was all a dream! But that doesn't mean the lesson is forfeited. The narrative of bowl contrasts the lie of free sexuality as it robs its participants of the communion that is its goal, by illustrating the true freedom of pure love healthily expressed.

"So I dressed myself and left then out into the gray streets
But everything seemed different and completely new me
The sky, the trees, houses, buildings even my own body
And each person I encountered, I couldn't wait to meet"

Having awoken from this nightmare of a sexual experience, he's happy in his own body, because it has not been thrown away. (although we shall see that the it wasn't just a dream, the dream may be in remembering the sexual encounter).

"And I came upon a doctor
who appeared in quite poor health
I said, "there's nothing I can do for you, you can't do for yourself"
He said, "oh yes you can, just hold my hand, I think that that would help"
So i sat with him a while and i asked him how he felt
he said, "I think I'm cured, no infact I'm sure of it
thank you stranger... for your theraputic smile." "

This is poetic!

So that's how I learned the lesson
that everyone's alone
And your eyes must do some raining
if you're ever gonna grow
When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself,
it's best to compose a poem
An honest verse of longing
or a simple song of hope

That's why I'm singing, baby, don't worry
cause now i've got you back
And everytime you feel like crying
I'm gonna try to make you laugh
And if i can't, if it just hurts too bad,
then we'll wait for it to pass
And i will keep you company
through those days so long and black

We'll keep working on the problem
we know we'll never solve
Of love's uneven remainders
there lies fractions of a whole
But if the world could remain within a frame
like a painting on a wall
then i think we'd see the beauty then
And stand staring in awe
At our still lives posed
like a bowl of oranges
like a story told
by the fault lines and the soul

And so by happenstance, he didn't want to help at first, he experiences the antithesis of the selfish love from the previous song by participating in a simple, humanitarian, charitable act. This song is jam packed with all the themes and symbols that have been developed up to this point.

After he "learns the lesson" he notes that pain is a necessary step in growing, and that his singing, literally creating songs, is his way to explore his pain and grow. Then we come back to "the problem we can never solve". This is a very interesting theme and ties into the theme of "loving and being loved" because this problem we can never solve seems to be an understanding of human suffering, that can never be fully relieved, in this life. And this is combined to loving and being loved, because as a Catholic understanding of suffering will demonstrate, suffering, which can be truly propitiatory, salvific when combined to Christ's, is the greatest love we can show another person, suffering for them or "working on the problem we know we'll never solve".

Life is beautiful, and Connor stands back and admires it as if a bowl of oranges, like a "story told by the fault lines in the soil", human suffering is the story told, by the "fault lines" the stressed cracks in the painful singing, and persisting in making music keeps the ear to that pain. This great conflict, of the worth of pure love, the lie of misused sexuality and the truth of simple charity constitute a great conflict, but this is not the finale or resolution to the main conflict of the album. Oberst was trying to find redemption in the abuse of sex and drugs, and only tasted some good in loving, and being loved in return, in a simple and true love. As dramatic a battle as this was, it only points to the final conflict.

After the song fades out, theres an acoustic interlude on the end of Oranges. A poorly tuned piano plays a few disconnected notes over that same synthetic sounding hum that opened the album. In the same way the previous two songs are attached thematically and in the way Oranges starts over the end of Lover, the next track starts over this interlude after Oranges, linking the lessons of the the reality of suffering and love to the themes of salvation which become the focus of the next track and the rest of the album.

phew, this is getting long... next song

7.Don't Know When But a Day is Gonna Come:
This song goes back to a darker tone, starting with single quite guitar picking a haunting and simple melody, (based on a minor D chord (it's easy to play ;-) ). This song is long winded and brings up a bunch of questions and conflict, but it starts out stark and planely enough. "Is it true what I heard about the Son of God? Did he come to save? Did he come at all? And if I dried his feet, with my dirty hair, would he make me clean again?" No explination needed here, he's asking quesitons of salvation and the necissity of repentance. He goes on to speak in roughly Revelation like language about the end of the world, this escatilogical reality is setting his mind back to questioning his life, and now his death and eternal destiny. Now to intergect some drama into this, which is the obvious conclusion which transcends all the conflicts ofthe album, he talks about lust and war and parents that treat him like a child and then comes to something resembling a conlcusion, "And now I have read some books and have grown quite brave. If only I could just speak up I think I would say that there is no truth. There is only you and what you make the truth." Which seems a scary and serious error, nihilism or something, but he goes on to say "So I will just sing my song and I'll pass a hat. Then I'll leave your town and never look back. No, I don't look back because the road is clear and laid out ahead of me. I'll get home and meet my friends at our favorite bar. We'll get some lighter heads for our heavy hearts. And we will share a drink. Yeah we will share our fears and they will know how I love them." And when he comes to that word love, he goes off, "They will know how I love! They will know how I love them! I am nothing without their love!" and the orchestra kicks in as if to remind him of the lessons of the previous six songs, there is a truth, and it is found in loving and being loved. He reprises his escatilogical statement and the re-poses his salvation question with a sinister twist "Is it true what I heard about the Son of God? Did he die for us? Did he die at all? And if I sold my soul for a bag of gold, which one of us would be the foolish one?" and as if to rescue from his own intelectual error once again, the orchestra kicks in again as he bemoans his confusion, "Could you please start explaining? You know, I need some understanding. I could do good with some explaining. you know I want to understand!". This play back and forth of guitar and booming orchestra is a good summation of Oberst's style, both muscially and lyrically, calm and panic, depression and mania, in turns and fits, standing up and falling down.

8.Nothing Gets Crossed Out:
Where Oranges is happy and poetic, this song is terribly depressed and wonderfully sweet and poetic. It talks directly of the impotence of depression, the inability to act at all amidst the flood and confusion of doubt. "Well the future's got me worried Such awful thoughts My head's a carousel of pictures The spinning never stops I just want someone to walk in front And not follow the leader Like when I fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush Started carrying her books and doing lots of drugs I almost forgot who I was But I came to my senses" He's depressed but seems to still be longing for the ability to have faith in God, to have someone to lead him, interestingly he refers to a lust and a fall that made him forget who he was, and may be the same event, the night depicted in lover, we shall see that this fall is collected later and understood. "Yeah I know I should be brave But i'm just too afraid of all this change And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt I keep making these to-do lists but nothing gets crossed out Working on the record seems pointless now When the world ends who's gonna hear it?" His struggle seems to be wearing on him and he's sleeping his life away, despairing in all the uncertainty, again he's pointing to the end (of the world), and seems to have lost hope in "singing", in making a record, but he's brought back to hope as returns again to the theme of music, reminiscing on his friend Tim's (Tim Kasher of Cursive, a fellow omahanian and Saddle Creek artist) album and that sparks reminiscences of old times playing music with his friends. Reminded of "singing" the song chreshendos into a sweet longing for redemption.

"So when I'm lost in a crowd
I hope that you'll pick me out
How I long to be found
The grass grew high, I laid down
Now I wait for a hand
To lift me up, help me stand
I've been laying so low
Don't wanna lay here no more
Don't wanna lay here no more"

But despite this moment of hopefullness amidst despair, the conlcusion of the song rescinds into a decleration of determinism again.

"Everything that happens is supposed to be
And it's all predetermined can't change your destiny
Guess I'll just keep moving
Someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going"

9. Make War:
A pretty straightforward song about a love triangle, as told from the depressed, sarcastic viewpoint of Oberst, "our love is dead and without limit, lik ethe surfice of the moon". There are a couple repeated images of redemption, despair, lust, music. Overall a well written song but doesn't advance the themes too mutch. It does however, have Mike Mogis (producer extrondinaire, fantastic guitar player) on slide guitar, which melts me so I love this song. This song is one of the couple of "country twang" songs on the album, that inside of his depressed milliu and his ragged orchestra and strained vocal, makes for an interesting use of the country astetic.

10. Waste of Paint:
This song answers the question of that false detreminism that Oberst keeps skirting, and addresses directly all the religious questions he's been asking. In form it's again stark, as the first track, just acoustic guitar. Lyrically it's in the form of a montage of stories. The first about Oberst's innability to appreciate beauty, the second about a womens lost love and her indifferance, the third about Oberst's brother getting pulled over drunk driving -wasting his life of privledge, the fourth about the love of a couple that Oberst lives with that makes him jealous, and the the final two stories deal with Oberst's own experiences. In the first he's hangin' out "down by the train's depot No, I don't ride, I just sit and watch the people there" and in frustration, observing the people moving about the train station

"And their life's one track and can't they see it's pointless
But just then my knees give under me
My head feels weak and suddenly
It's clear to see it's not them but me
Who's lost my self-identity
And I hide behind these books I read
While scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
Some ideal ideology
That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
And everything I've made is trite and cheap
And a waste
Of paint, of tape, of time"

Now he admits that intellectual superiority that he tried to wield with his desperate comments of nihilism and determinism were just that, desperate lashings. It's interesting that he talks about falling to his knees, he's being humble, penitent. This leads to the final story, the end game in his relgious inquiries, he goes to church. And not just any church, a church dear to my own heart, Saint Cecilias Cathedral (he talks about the floodlights pointing up at the steeples, he was raised Catholic, in Omaha it's the only cathedral, the Cathedral's facade and spires are pictured on his box set he released in 03'), and with this end game he applies and seals one of the main themes, the metephor of singing.

"So I park my car down by the cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice is filling up with people
I hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
When the voices blend they sound like angels
I hope there's some room still in the middle
But when I lift my voice up now to reach them
The range is too high way up in heaven
So I hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent god
And I have no faith but it's all I want
To be loved, and believe
In my soul, in my soul!"

So it seems, that he attempted to "sing" at church, he wanted to find faith that would help him deal with his pain in the church, but couldn't. In a couple places in the album he talks about indescribable beauty and unatainable ideals, he tried to attain the ideals of the faith of the Church, but "the range is too high way upin heaven" so he gives it up. But in giving up singing, he's giving up all hope, in being loved, and in believing in his soul. This is a hard song to listen to, cause not only is he completely over the edge at this point, he doesn't care what the song sounds like any more, it's ugly as hell and he doesn't care. If this was the end of the album, I'd be worried for Oberst, but it's not.

11. From a Balance Beam:
After the pain and nakedness of Waste the orchestra returns and Balance Beam soars. In waste of paint he talked about dispute of the properties of man, "animal or angel" and "balance beam" talks about a fall and angels laying with broken arms. He talks about his own fall, and if you follow the logic, if he thought man was angelic, if he was trying to live up to unnatainable ideals it makes sense that he's despondant for not being able to. He says, "So that's one less founded opinion One more cause for a dispute". He refers again to the end of the world in no uncertain terms, "Now I'm staring at my wrist Hoping that the timing is right When the planets will align There will be no planets to align Just the carcass of the sun And those little painted marbles Spinning senseless through an endless black sky". There seems to be an event that he's reffering to in the subtext here, and he made a mistake to trigger his "fall", "I made a small mistake, sometimes that's all it takes". Maybe the same event from the first song, and then he talks about "baptizing myself in change, and one by one I drowned all of the people I had been". But after this fall he's lifted up, redeemed again, "I was helpless as a chess piece as I was lifted up by someones hand, and delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in". But despite this salvation he feels trapped in himself. But knows that "his guard" will someday free him from the prison that is himself, and that "a day is gonna come Don't know when but it will come" when the sun will explode, the world will end and he will be freed from himself. And on that note, he declares that the story, the suffering of humanity, will only be relieved by the end of the world, (which because it is said to happen on a day we don't know seems to be referance to the kind of language Christ used when discussing death and also the second coming. "And then we won't have worry no more No, we won't ever worry again About how this song or story ends About how this song and story will end."

12.Laura Laurent:
There are points throughout the album where he speaks directly to the event of his life that are making up the larger narrative, "story" of this album. Laura seems to be important, she may represent the girl that is refered to throughout the album, and therefore, has a part to play in many of the conflicts. There are just a couple tidbits of theme developed. He mentions being in Chicago in passing. As we shall see in the last song, Chicago may be the setting of "the fall" and Laura may be the girl of Will You, Lover, and Make War, who has been on his mind throughout all these struggles. He talks about not taking care of Laura like he promised, and it's plain from the narrative they're no longer together (as in you will, and war). The theme of "singing" and suffering get's this devlopment, "you should never be embarressed by your trouble with living, cause it's the ones with the sorest throats, Laura, who've done the most singing. Everybody! lalalala" And with that final "everybody" he's trying to raise people up, get them to sing, suffer, share the burden of life, love eachother, and in response a ragged collection of voices join him in his "lalala". This segways quite nicely into the final opus.

13. Let's Not Shit Ourselves (to love and to be loved):
The track opens with Connor yelling, obstinate, "can I get a God damn timpany roll, to start this God damn song? Tonight! Here's a God damn song, for all you God damn people" this kid persists in profanity, and an apparent anger at God even after everything he talks about on this album. This song is another montage of stories, and they talk about several different stations in life, several different people, but he seems to be pointing to the subtextual event that started this whole quest, and at the end of the song, I believe he finally talks about the story, "the event" from his own life. The song starts with images of being depressed and drunk, and he sees a fall, a child's fall. Now he's talking about himself, in Waste, he talked about being younger than a child, and here he says "He falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree and lands in the grass and weeps for his dignity. Next time he will not aim so high. Yeah, next time, neither will I." and he opens the allusion by saying he will not aim so high, he is the fallen child. Then he talks about lonliness but seems to refute his own despair saying, "and a coroner kneels, beneath a great wooden crucifix, he knows there's worse things than being alone". Here he seems to be speaking directly to the idea he's brought up again and again of redemption, of penance, and the need for it, he refers to the coroner -a harbinger of death- whose knowledge of death, of lonliness, leads him to kneel, to repent, before the crucifix, before God. Then he talks about his isolation, isolation of fear, and isolation related to his art, related to singing, but he says that since he's not singing for praise, he doesn't care about the failure. Then he makes a bittersweet (for me) referance to calling home, to reach out of his isolation. Notice too the abandomnet of money.

"I have learned to retreat at the first sign of danger.
I mean, why wait around, if it's just to surrender?
Ambition, I have found, can only lead to failure.
I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.
I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well. And I would throw my whole billfold
if I thought it would help. With all these wishes I make,
I should by something real, at least a telephone call home."

Then he makes referance to school and learning, and how this learning has effected him.

My teachers, they built the retaining wall memory,
all those multiple choices I answered so quickly.
And I got my grades back and forgot just as easily, but as least I got an A.
So I don't have them to blame.

He says he has teachers to blame for something, but they gave him As, maybe just a sarcastic statement about education, but also possibly a personal statement. Remeber previously he talked about theories he picked up in books about life being pointless and your future being unchangible, and how he eventually rejected those thoughts of "higher learning".

Then Oberst takes a political stab, he says.

"I should stop pointing fingers;
reserve my judgment of all those public action figures, the cowboy president.
So loud behind the bullhorn so proud they can't admit when they have made a mistake.
While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen, he knows that he doesn't have to say it,
so it don't bother him. "Honesty" "Accuracy" are really just "Popular Opinion."
And the approval rating is high, so someone is going to die."

Decrying the state of the state, of our government, who haven't learned the lessons he has about compassion. Even though I'd give argument to the idea that politics has no place in music, at the same time, he's making music about religion and sex and drugs and there's no reason to limit the topics he can address. I think the statement he's making about the governments mistakes and dishonesty does play into the larger theme of the necessity of love, and people suffering for eachother to express that love.

Then the final paragraph of the lyric, the ending of the album, the event which I believe, is the impetus for the conflict of the entire album, is layed out for us.

Well, I awoke in relief. My sheets and tubes were all tangled weak from whiskey and pills,
in a Chicago hospital. My father was there, in a chair, by the window, staring so far away.
I tried talking, just whispered, "...so sorry...so selfish..." He stopped me and said,
"Child I love you regardless and there is nothing you could do that would ever change this.
I'm not angry. It happens. You just can't do it again."
So now I try to keep up, I have been exchanging my currency.
While a million objects pass through my periphery. So now I am rubbing my eyes because
they are starting to bother me. I have been staring too long at the screen.
But where was it when I first heard the sound of humility? It came to my ears in the goddamn
loveliest melody. How grateful I was them to be part of the mystery,
to love and be loved. Let's just hope that is enough.

Here we see the aftermath of the fall. Waking up in a hospital weakened from whiskey and pills. This aftermath seems to be the collection of all of Oberst's transgressions and falls, "under the weight of a schoolboy crush"(under drugs, lust and depression), "like a girl from a balance beam", "like an angel on the lawn","like a child from an apple tree"(from grace). He awakes and is remoresful, penitent, and is immediatly forgiven, by his father. "you just can't do it again", I think is one of the most intrueging lines in the whole album. If this father figure represents his father or our Eternal Father, either way, he shows us a misunderstanding that he has, that love is dependant upon perfection. Throughout the whole album he's talking about ideals that he can't live up to, and falling from grace when he can't live up to those ideas, and wanting to seek forgiveness, but it's as if he sees forgiveness as futile because he knows he'll fall again! But then hope, tepid and confused as it may be, wins the day. "but where was it when I first heard that sweet sound of humility", the sound of humilty, to bear your falls, all this ugliness, before God and recieve absolution is the most beautiful melody that could be "sung". And that redemption brings him hope, and into the mystery of suffering and love, "to love and to be loved, let's just hope that is enough". Indeed.

In closing, a bit from JPII's apostolic letter SALVIFICI DOLORIS on the Christian meaning of human suffering.

"But in order to perceive the true answer to the "why" af suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love, the ultimate source of the meaning of everything that exists. Love is also the richest source of the meaning of suffering, which always remains a mystery: we are conscious of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations. Christ causes us to enter into the mystery and to discover the "why" of suffering, as far as we are capable of grasping the sublimity of divine love."

I think Oberst is figuring that out on this album, that love, the richest source of meaning of suffering ties us into a mystery, (a mystery that although he doesn't say it, he points to it) can only be solved in Christ.

The transcendent nature of successfully executed art seems to be at the heart of it's ability to move. I fell in love with this album. The caustic air and style caught my ear, and it's message tugged at my soul. I don't think it's any coincidance that I heard this album when I was dealing with my own falls and depression and anxiety and confusion; and was led, through suffering, back to grace by repentance. But there's no way I understood any of that at the time, half of the connections I make, I realized as I was writing, but only now do I see that they are true.

So, even though these themes seem to work themselves out and reflect a very Catholic understanding of the meaning of love, suffering and life I don't know if Oberst necissarily understands that fact. His persistance in depresion, sex and drug themes on his newer songs (that I've heard, the albums aren't out yet) may be a signal that he doesn't "get" his own lyrics, but it may also be an O'Connor like persistance in theme to make a point, we'll just have to see. Pray.