On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load Here he tells us how he has avoided the excavation thus far, and why he is paralyzed with his grief: he has been trying to stay numb to it, literally through alcohol, or figuratively by disengaging from his too painful reality. He returns to the gambling metaphor: money symbolizes hope of recovery, of avoiding the loss, of coming out with something other than the worst possible outcome. His mind knows exactly what has happened and why, but he cannot reach an understanding for his heart. He finds it hard to find and excise his pain, because he knew he was losing her - again a suggesting of a lingering illness, and her slow slide away from him. This line seems to refer back to the excavation of the source of his grief, in an effort to finally reach peace or some understanding of his grief and loss. He just had to keep betting, both of them did, that the next bet would pay off. Perhaps he lost her to an illness like cancer, where they tried treatment after treatment, to no avail, and she just kept slipping away. I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a timeĪgain, he chokes and pauses on "two." He begins to build a metaphor of gambling and losing, over and over, at high stakes. It isn't just tears, but overwhelming waves of crying, like he will never stop.Īt the same time, he finds himself stuck and unable to move forward, which is why he is driven to excavate and dig out the source of his pain, so he might reach understanding and peace with it. Pouring rain suggests overwhelming sadness. He has suffered a loss that will mark the rest of his life as Before and After. This line suggests the cataclysmic nature of what he's suffered. He can't even bear to think of the homophone for "two" because it overwhelms him for a moment that he is now one, forever, having lost her. There is a long pause between "to" and "day" in the line, as if he is stumbling on the syllable "to." For me, this is the first suggestion that the song is about the death of his lover. Kumran is the place where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, so there is a suggestion of the holy about this "excavation" of himself, a search for the sacred and the divine, for meaning beyond just the events he's experienced. The line as a whole suggests that the song is an attempt for him to get to the heart of what he has lost and what meaning he has left. I basically took each line and translated it using the mind of said dad and the relatable and oh-so-singable song titles of the famous 80s rock band.Once again, a poetry major listens to a song. This translation was created through the lens of a ~50 year old American dad who can’t get past his ability to reference REO Speedwagon long enough to poetically express his undying love for his now ex-wife after a tough divorce. I decided to add a bit of allusion to the mix. I Kept the Fire Burnin, Kept On Loving YouĪll the while thinking… “That Ain’t Love,” even though it wasĪnd soused, as my old man would say, after finishing off a 6-pack of Bud Light Lime Translation – In the retrospective style of a middle-aged American dad with a new outlook on life after a tough divorce, who still has an undying love for his ex and also REO SpeedwagonĪs REO Speedwagon sang, “I can’t fight this feeling anymore”,įrom now on, I’m just going to Roll With the Changes He gives his love away hastily and in large quantities to the girl, faster than his sanity can keep up with, leaving him broken in his drunken- and helplessness. The Qumran excavation is paralleling the uncovering of the dead sea scrolls, which was a discovery that changed the entire course of Christianity, with the act of bringing to the surface his deep-seated romantic feelings for said lover and proceeding to contain them rather then let them ruin him. He realizes that he has to fix or live with what is depressing him (undying love for a former lover), so he goes with the latter. Vernon likes to use extended metaphors in his songs, and in this specific one he compares the concept of love to a game of poker – blind and gambled away. The song, in a nutshell, is about rebuilding himself after an emotionally tolling and ultimately terminated relationship. Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) can have lyrics that seem quite encrypted sometimes, which is why I decided to do a literal translation of an excerpt from his song, Re: Stacks. I declare an unpacking and setting free of that which holds me backĬontinuously I gamble love, and then some I keep throwing it down, two hundred at a time
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