vandalentines

The attention to detail here is amazing. I have no idea if it's intentional, but I love how every line here matches up with the song's mood and tone. The stanza about counting cars is long and drawn out, written out neatly, just like how the narrator remembers his childhood so clearly. However, the opening ti that stanza in the song is written below, "Please, remember me, happily", and is written in a very hard font, emphasizing the pain in remembering his childhood memories.  The final lines of the song are scratched out hastily, almost like a confession. "I was ashamed" is written the same way, so much so that it looks nearly backwards. Words written out large and bold, like "my misery", "who the hell can see forever", or "seldomly" emphasize the narrator's pain in speaking them. Every "Please, remember me", along with "Tell my other not to worry" and "Words I've lost and found", is written in all lowercase, showing the narrator's weakness and vulnerability in those words. "We've forgotten one another" overlaps with the word "misery", giving away the narrator's feelings. Not only that, but "How it lost me all I wanted" is directly above "Only now it seemed so silly", showing the narrator's regret over his actions. At the top, the line about the "parking lot" is written out hard-pressed and angrily, most likely through the narrator's frustration and regret over what happened there. Finally, the largest words in the piece are "fuck the man", a throwaway line that doesn't have much to do in the song. It's just another line of graffiti by Haven's gate. But that's the point, by writing out a meaningless, vulgar line larger than all the smaller, more emotional ones, the narrator distracts us from his feelings and regrets. He doesn't want us to know his confessions, but he needs to write them down, so he keeps us looking away from them. Ink blots stain the paper like tears, desecrating the memories. And then, in the corner, a figure stands painting a door, a way out of this prison. It's unclear who it is, maybe the narrator, maybe his lost love, maybe his mother, but they give the narrator a way out, the ability to move on. And they leave a paintbrush and a bucket, so that there might be a drawing of that frightened Trapeze Swinger.