Sending My Love From the Other Side
Things we should discuss:
Pete’s sexy metal Viking princess unitard, he’s waiting to be rescued by a barbarian, I can only presume he is a bride-prize for the hero who can save him
The Folie-ness of it all, the ship at sea but not doomed, not this time; instead it is a vessel of hope
The mythology-of-the-band frame narrative
How the title references back to Sending Postcards from a Plane Crash
Stardust stardust stardust and Pete’s fear of space objects
What do Field of Dreams and The Princess Bride have in common?
For those expressing concern about Joe’s absence both on Sunday and in this video—he writes in his recent book, None of This Rocks, about emergency back problems during the latter end of this pandemic, compromising his ability to walk for a brief post-surgical time, exacerbated by overworking. He writes about learning boundaries, learning to rest, and asking his band for accommodations for his health. It seems likeliest that he’s recovering from a back-related issue, rather than conscientiously abstaining from participating in this record as he describes doing with MANIA.
General ranting about lyrics:
DISCLAIMER: It’s not me, okay, it’s the text, it’s Pete being incapable of writing anything that doesn’t sound like it’s about forbidden queer love, I could not make this shit up, I truly could not
“Model house meltdown”
Reminds me of walking through the house in your shoes, I’m supposed to love you; reminds me of I’m just playing house, no idea what I’m doing now. It’s a very dark Tim Burton-y sentiment from an outwardly happy man living a domestic fairy tale.
“We were a hammer to the Statue of David, we were a painting you could never frame, and you were the sunshine of my lifetime.”
THE PAST-TENSENESS HERE
Right from the start, this sets us up for something universally perceived as perfect and beloved being destroyed. This could be a reputation, a cultural relic, a profound piece of history, a narrative, a love. We were a hammer that destroyed it, that perceived thing…
We were a painting too profane to be displayed in a museum, hidden and damned? Or we were larger than life, uncontent to be contained by a frame, always in motion, chimeric and twining, together apart, together apart, a tesselated image you can only see if you zoom out and unfocus your eyes.
You have all read my opinions about twenty years of Patrick = sunshine metaphors, which seem to be getting pretty FUCKING literal here at the end of days.
“Nowhere left for us to go but heaven, summer falling through our fingers again”
Among other things, this seems to be a VERY explicit reference to Heaven’s Gate.
I am feeling the hope of MANIA (you know my manic poly dream reading of that beautiful, purple beacon of hope) replaced by what the pandemic / apocalypse did to us all. So much for stardust, indeed.
Summer symbolizing touring, festival circuits, linking to the recent FOB instagram post that showed video from the Hella Mega Tour with the caption “take us back here.” The liminality and fleeting-ness of those spaces, those selves, that unmoored time of doing nothing, being everything. The way they want to be home when they’re on the road and the way they want to be on the road when they’re at home. Summer slipping through our fingers again, like the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass, gone past, gone past.
“What would you trade the pain for? I’m not sure”
Isn’t that a fucking question, my friends!!! The pain of longing, unsatisfied, love, unrequited or unconsummated, forbidden and forsaken? The pain of not-having, or of having-had? The pain it was to be together? Welcome to my glossary of suffering
And what would you trade it for? Is this a question of, what is it worth and I can’t imagine giving it up? Or is it a past-tense question—a way of saying, I traded that exquisite pain to get what I have now, and I’m not sure what it was for, I’m not sure if it was worth it.
“Every lover’s got a little dagger in their hand”
Tbh someone smarter than me will have more to say about this, I am sure. Tarot and betrayal and the way love has thorns and anything worth having always hurts, everyone you trust with love will hurt you and let you down at least a little bit, imperfections and prices paid. But it’s also a very classic, very catchy and poetically deep sounding chorus of the type FOB loves to use and do not always hold a deep reading.
“I saw you in a bright clear field, hurricane heat in my head.”
More field-of-dreams invocation and playfulness! If there is not a stadium show at that field, I am going to light something on fire, it is the only pilgrimage I care about from this day forward.
“Inscribed like stone and faded by the rain: Give up what you love before it does you in”
LITERALLY what can I even SAY about this and the past tense and the DECISION, the question popped by MANIA that was answered only by global cataclysm and forced separation, the way they began work on this album in early 2021 (per Joe’s book). I can only hear this in conversation with the tracks on that record.
“The kind of pain you feel to get good in the end”
I was all prepared to do some read about morality and queerness and what you give up for the people you love, until @carbonbased000 said, “I love the pain line and I want to give it a kinky read so badly but we both know it’s about tennis”, and you know what. She’s right.
To summarize: there’s a lot to say, there’s a lot to feel, I love this song immensely and I hope you do too. I hope to explode more thoughts soon and uhhh maybe write another fairy tale. TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK, EVERYONE!