You know how sometimes you’ll be listening to the radio and then a song will come on and you’ll just want the whole entire world to SHUT UP so you can listen to it without distraction and how all you want is to stay in that moment, with that song wrapped around your brain for forever and then, when the song ends, you just don’t feel quite as whole, or quite as safe and you contemplate turning around the driving home just so you can listen to it again and again and again?

The wake-up call to a rented room
Sounded like an alarm of impending doom
To warn us it’s only a matter of time

I have a lot of songs like that.

Sometimes I can tell you why I like a song, why it means so much to be. Sometimes I can pinpoint the exact memory it recalls, or the place I was when I heard it for the first time and realized it was chock full of awesome.

But sometimes I can’t. Not really.

And we watched the plumes paint the sky gray
But she laughed and danced through the field of graves
And there I knew it would be alright
That everything would be alright

This is one of those times.  I know that I love, LOVE Death Cab for Cutie all of a sudden. In fact, my Pandora station plays a Death Cab song 2 times out of 5. Which I love.

And I know that the talk of doom makes me like this song, regardless of how moody and angsty and goth that makes me sound.  I guess there’s just something about a song with the words “impending doom” in it that makes my heart flutter.

And the news reports on the radio
Said it was getting worse
As the ocean air fanned the flames
But I couldn’t think
Of anywhere I would of rather been
To watch it all burn away

I guess I’ve always liked fire too.  It’s kindness and warmth and it’s dangerous, totally destructive, I WILL ANNIHILATE YOU power. Maybe it’s the new beginnings that always float on the coat tails of fire’s destructive path that make me love it. Out of the ashes life springs anew? Maybe? Or that we’re all ashes anyway and to that we’ll return.

Whatever it is, I love it.

And the firemen worked in double shifts
With prayers for rain on their lips
And they knew it was only a matter of time

*Writing about 25 songs I love is #46 on my 101 in 1001 list. See the previous songs I’ve written about here.