Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Snow Patrol: Set the Fire to the Third Bar

Watch this video from Snow Patrol (band that hails from Northern Ireland and Scotland) and think about Jamie and Claire, stuck in different centuries, without each other...especially when Claire was in Scotland in the 60s.  So close...but yet so unearthly far.  This video gives me chills.  You can see them in adjoining rooms...feeling each other but not being able to be together...and literally feel yourself drowning in all their yearning.

The lyrics are under the video.  Try not to cry...



I find the map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from here to where you'd be
It's only finger-lengths that I see

I touch the place
Where I'd find your face
My fingers in creases
Of distant dark places

I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I've found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science

Their words, mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices
Your words in my memory
Are like music to me

I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms

After I have traveled so far
We'd set the fire to the third bar
We'd share each other like an island
Until exhausted, close our eyelids

And dreaming, pick up from
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can't keep in

I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms

3 comments:

  1. O wow, you're right. That's heartwrenching, and brings Claire and Jamie to mind straight away. Thanks.

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  2. This is beautiful. I'm buying immediately!

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  3. This is one of my favorite snow patrol songs and I usually have it on full blast in my car I will now think about Jamie and Claire whenever I listen to it

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