8) There's no mountain top to yell it from
We haven't talked in a long while,
but I feel like nothing has changed.
Meet me under the maple tree and I'll do the same
trick I showed you three months ago
in my bathrobe in your front lawn.
I wanted nothing more;
there was nothing to want anymore.
It's kinda like Ms. Smith said:
"There's no land but the land,
there's no sea but the sea."
And if we can believe
then there's no need
to run around fighting
always holding old grudges
like holding my baby brother (and the sisters).
The distance between you and me
is an imaginary visual intelligence
without real meaning or relevance,
so what are the consequences?
You're walking home and your nose gets cold--
being not quite spring gets a little old.
Weather, why don't you warm up?
Weather, why don't you warm up?
Whether or not you warm up,
I'll be waiting at home with a cup of hot cocoa.
(my mom: "Mark?")
THERE'S NO MOUNTAIN TOP TO YELL IT FROM means that no matter what kind experience you have, no matter how beautiful and significant and terribly important it is, it is only for you. You can find yourself scrambling up the mountain to shout this truth to everyone only to realize when you're up there that there's just no point. This is both frustrating a relieving, and it was something I was wrestling with at the time. I was very much in love with a person then, and our love brought me to a place where I was beginning to see just how silly the whole modern experience of "normal, everyday life" was. At the same time, the "you" in this song is, as in all others, not just the particular person I'm directing the song to. I've always written music so I could first and foremost listen to it myself, so this "you" also me, but always the future me, the one who has finished writing the song, who forgets that life is a mystery and takes things for granted. In this way, the last verse is saying, "The 'I am' that is inside me is always waiting for me to come back from 'I am cold,' or 'I'm impatient,' or 'I am angry.'" I will always be waiting at home for myself, the hot cocoa will never get cold. My mom shouted up to me to ask me something during the recording and I left it in. It sometimes freaks me out when I'm listening to it and not paying attention because that is her "yelling at Mark to get up and go to school from the bottom of the stairs for 5 straight years" voice, hard-wired into my subconscious.
Instrumentation
Mark: Acoustic guitar, bowed acoustic guitar, vocals
Recorded in: GarageBand
Microphone(s): SM57
When: Winter early 2007
Where: Windowsill/bench in Mark's room at his Mom's house in Bay Village, Ohio
\\\\\
