09 / 24 / 09 - Everything looks perfect from far away

This blog is pointless. Don't read it.

I've had a Ben Gibbard song, "Such Great Heights," stuck in my head as of late. The song is actually an cover of Iron and Wine's acoustic cover of The Postal Service's original electronic rendition of the song, and which ever version you listen to I can't help but feel entranced and overwhelmed by the beauty in simplicity. I guess I've come to love musicians who share a mastery of such a stripped-down form of expression, acoustic guitar, and yet they can evoke such soulfulness in each fleeting melody and harmony with nothing but voice and string.

Anyway, it's the chorus that has really gotten to me, stuck thoroughly in my mind's ear. It goes:

"They will see us waving from such great heights / come down now, they'll say / Everything looks perfect from far away / come down now, but we'll stay..."

Now, the simplicity seems straightforward, and if you know Ben's writing it's all either very esoteric or otherwise quite clear and vivid. Naturally, one would think that the chorus says exactly what it should, and I suppose, in the context of the relatively uplifting song, it does: positive imagery of two co-eds on top of some grandiose natural or man-made monument, looking down upon people and realizing perfection in the bigger picture or the oneness in everything, comes to mind, at least for me. It's (subjectively) clear that, upon first listen, the lyric evokes a sense of positive complacency, almost as if the two have reached their peak and could not possibly get any lower, either physically or psychologically. Reaching a higher plane in this case is a good thing.

But what if it's a trick? What if you could see it another way? Upon multiple listenings and self-reflection, is there another way to see it when you consider just the chorus? What if the two reached said plane, and were instead observant of how disappointing it was to deal with things in detail? What if the two are people of power who look over those below them, screaming at the powerful to come down and join their plight, only to have the two deny them for luxury of being complacent with their heights?

It could be a statement about people, about how, though we strive for perfection or wants things in our lives (and our lives themselves, for that matter) to be perfect, we don't want to "come down" from our heights because, once up there, we cannot see clearly enough the dirt and grime, the rust of our very core. This rust, of course, is the fact that things we wanted and hoped for didn't quite turn out how we wanted it to, so we strive to rid of it or completely ignore it. Or is it that we are not altogether familiar with the minutiae of our lives, because we instead would rather live in ignorance and bliss? In this way the plane still represents complacency, but it is a bitter, pessimistic view of the heights, of our lives as we choose to know it. It is a proponent of the idea, or joke rather, that the only way to make God laugh is to make a plan. In this way, one should just live and turn a blind eye to our troubles.

I guess I'm asking, are we really so naive to think that our lives can be perfect? Difficulties are inevitable in the extreme, but is it really prudent, or even possible, to mold perfection out of fallible material?

Or, on the other hand, why do we justify being complacent with the things wrong in our lives or the unjust things that we encounter every day? Why must we see the problems in others but do nothing, either because we absolutely cannot or don't want to?

A stand must be taken.

I guess.

This blog is pointless. I hope you didn't read it.