I recently had a conversation with some friends about how glad I was that my children get to run around barefoot outside in the summers, their little feet massage by raw earth and pebbles. Think how often city-dwellers’ feet actually touch the earth, flesh to dirt. A city offers many things, but at the sacrifice of constant sounds, ever-present light, and lack of places to feel like you are alone while out in the open.
I watched the band Arcade Fire perform two songs on Saturday Night Live tonight. The second one, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), was the best performance I’ve seen on SNL in a while. The song had energy, originality and creativity. And I loved that it seemed to tell a story.
When the song was over, I grabbed my laptop to look up the name of the song and find the lyrics. I remembered the line, “Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains.” I found the song title and read the lyrics shortly after watching Regine Chassagne end the song dancing in her gold sequin dress while spinning long, multi-colored ribbon streamers. The video is playing now as I type this – the joy of a DVR. (The lyrics are posted at the end of this article.)
Is the singer longing for a place to escape from the never-ending lights of the suburbs?
One site where I found the lyrics had a comment thread about their meaning. Some people just wrote that they loved the song, but some of the comments were longer thoughts about what Chassagne was singing about. My own intial feeling when watching the live performance was that the singer is describing the bright city and a “real job” as a duty in many people’s lives, resulting in the monotony of every day work and no time for pursuing creative expression. “They heard me singing and they told me to stop,” Chassagne sings, “Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.”
Probably because I live in a small town, I view the greater city area of suburbs as ‘the city’. My sister lives in an unincorporated area of Aurora, a suburb of Denver, but to me, it’s all ’the city’. To me, my sister lives in Denver and the city is expanding all the time.
When I read the lyrics, I imagine the story of a girl who has grown up in the suburbs, surrounded by lights and never-ending strip malls that are dead in their lifeless repetition. When she sings, “There’s no end in sight, I need the darkness someone please cut the lights,” I picture someone wanting to get away from the city, away from the never ending sprawl of buildings, and away from the lights that never stop. How far must one go to get away from the sprawl? Where does the city end?
My sister’s place in Aurora isa five hour drive from Pagosa Springs, and I am always relieved to be heading home and have the city in my rear-view mirror. I take the 470 toll road south around the city and hit Interstate 70 west, then pass through sprawling suburbs that continue farther and farther each year. To actually leave ‘the city’ takes about an hour, but it is an additional hour to get to Copper Mountain where I turn off of the interstate and feel like I have really left the city’s reach. After a Denver visit, I look forward to being back in the little town of Pagosa Springs where it is dark at night and the strip malls stop as soon as you leave the town area that you can drive from end to end in 10 minutes.
Where is it okay to express yourself? Are there any open spaces left in the city where one can feel free to do as they please?
The verse in Sprawl II (included at end of article) where Chassagne sings about running away from police lights, leaves me with questions. Kissing on the swings in the park leads to getting chased out of the public space by law enforcement. “We run away, but we don’t know why, and like a mirror these city lights shine,” sings Chassagne. “They’re screaming at us, ‘we don’t need your kind.’” I take that to mean they don’t understand why what they are doing is wrong and feel that expressing themselves is not welcome in the suburbs where they live. But is the sentiment being mirrored from the boy and girl themselves feeling, perhaps falsely, that “their kind” is too different and not wanted, or is it the sentiment of law enforcement and society in general? What would happen if the two didn’t run away; would they be in trouble, or just need to talk to the officers and let them know they aren’t causing mischief? Where can they go to get away from the sprawl and feel that they are out of the city and the reach of lights?
In the live SNL performance, Chassagne begins the final part of the song with more purpose and enthusiasm than the same verse sang at the beginning. It is as if she now sees the city’s message of get a job, punch the clock and go shop at strip malls , but now she is aware of it and feels the confidence to express herself as she pleases. She shields her eyes again with her arms after saying the words, “I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.”
But will she, like me, seek the darkness of a small town to live and be herself, or stay in the suburbs of the city but not let the ever-present brightness stifle her creativity and who she wants to be. The song brings up other lyrics from songs such as U2′s ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ and Modest Mouse’s ‘Bankrupt on Selling’. As the music climaxes, Chassagne ends her words but the beat continues. She stands still for a moment, bent over slightly with arms shielding her eyes from the light. Suddenly she lunges towards the keyboard next to her, reaches for two rings with long colored ribbons attached and dances to the rest of the music with purpose and flair, the colorful ribbons defying the light and streaming around her waving arms and spinning body.
At the end of the song, in perfect rhythm with the beat, she forcefully drops the handles of ribbon, tossing them to the floor at either side of where she is standing, and looks victorious in her bout of self-expression.
It would be interesting to see an interview with Chassagne and hear her thoughts on what the song means to her. According to Wikipedia, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) and all of the other songs on the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs are written and composed by Sarah Neufeld, Richard Reed Parry, Jeremy Gara, Win Butler, Will Butler, Regine Chassagne & Tim Kingsbury.
I realize that someone who lives in a city or suburbs may have an entirely different perspective of the song so I’d love to hear your comments on what the lyrics mean to you and if you saw Chassagne’s performance on SNL on November 14. (Scroll below video for lyrics.)
[1/10/2011: YouTube video was removed and replace with NBC’s video. Sorry about the commercial, but it’s a small price to pay for the network sharing the video for free.)
Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
written and composed by Sarah Neufeld, Richard Reed Parry, Jeremy Gara, Win Butler, Will Butler, Regine Chassagne & Tim Kingsbury
They heard me singing and they told me to stop,
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock,
These days, my life, I feel it has no purpose,
But late at night the feelings swim to the surface.
Cause on the surface the city lights shine,
They’re calling at me, “come and find your kind.”
Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small,
That we can never get away from the sprawl,
Living in the sprawl,
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains,
And there’s no end in sight,
I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.
We rode our bikes to the nearest park,
Sat under the swings, we kissed in the dark,
We shield our eyes from the police lights,
We run away, but we don’t know why,
And like a mirror these city lights shine,
They’re screaming at us, “we don’t need your kind.”
Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small,
That we can never get away from the sprawl,
Living in the sprawl,
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains,
And there’s no end in sight,
I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.
They heard me singing and they told me to stop,
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.
Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small,
Can we ever get away from the sprawl?
Living in the sprawl,
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains,
And there’s no end in sight,
I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.
