I’ve got a drawer full of your notes
And word games that we played on planes
And five pages at least of you practicing signing
Your first with my last name

The tangibility of these lyrics has been on my mind all day; it’s something I find especially powerful. Goodness knows, my eyes were welling the second I heard that verse. It’s not unlike that article that Patrick Carney’s ex-wife wrote, where she outlines their relationship in records and a futon. The sentiment we allow to latch on to the objects in our lives is so exceedingly more formidable than we give credit. When thinking about past relationships, this association can be even more potent. It’s why I won’t get rid of that sweatshirt, why I won’t lend out that book, why I won’t ride that bike.

Behind its door, there’s nothing to keep my fingers warm
And all I find are souvenirs from better times
Before the gleam of your taillights fading east
To find yourself a better life

Aligning lost love with objects is something characteristic of Ben Gibbard, and a large part of why he’s one of my favorite songwriters (also the fact that I’m actually a fourteen year old girl). “Title and Registration” is a pertinent example, referring to “souvenirs form better times,” “pictures I tried to forget,” and so on. And Gibbard addresses the idea in the song – these little definite parts of relationships we hold on to, because, without them, there’s no evidence that there was a relationship at all.

Laying eggs, or even birth at all
A shoes box full of photographs from before the fall

Both Dave Davison and Gibbard retrace their steps, like a scene from Annie Hall, revisiting the moments where their respective relationships were made and broken. Davison’s reference to “the fall” and Gibbard’s memory of “the gleam of your taillights fading east” refer to the end of the relationship, and therefore, the changing function of these tangible objects. Initially, we keep these material items to remember someone when you aren’t physically with them. Upon uncovering them later, you find that they are then fane proximity when you are not only physically removed from a person, but also emotionally. In both instances, photographs preserve this inaccessible love, or state of mind for which the protagonist longs. We allow these little pieces of paper to be the bulletproof, glass case around immaterial experiences and feelings that we can never relive.

Somewhere there’s an orange on the table
Somewhere there’s a robe on the floor
And our writing on the wall is under three coats of paint
In an apartment we don’t live in anymore

And then there’s the bonfire, the disposal of these objects that is supposed to cleanse us of this longing. Painting over the memories can make the heartache disappear. It seems pointless, and potentially damaging, to think about a relationship, as it can lead to questioning “where things went wrong,” or “what I should have done differently.” You ask yourself the question that plagues the minds of the jaded, the heartbroken, “Do they still think of me?” No, needn’t focus on it. You get to the point where the past is just distracting you from what’s going on around you.

The further from the edges, the further from the trim
The fewer the coats, the less you put in 

Is it the more you loved, the less you let yourself remember? Or is it just the less you let yourself see? Ultimately, even if we throw away our tangible memory preservations, the association still exists. Try as we might to undo parts of our lives, even when we enjoyed them at the time, that’s the nature of memory and love and loss. The healthy balance of burning physical traces of your exes with your sympathetic roommates and hoarding mementos of lost love in a “secret” box under your bed is difficult to achieve.

I want to say you belong here
I want to pretend that we both belong
But tell me how you that they would react
To your parrot colored song

There’s a blue dress I still have that I wore to Jordan’s brother’s wedding. I remember sitting on my bed after he told me he thought we should break up (the first of two times, mind you), and staring across the room, into my closet. The dress was hanging there, between a pair of jeans and my beloved Phil Collins t-shirt. My first thought was to take it out to the dumpster, along with his hoodie that was slung on my chair, the Stephen Colbert book he had bought me for my birthday, and a collection of photographs he had sent me the year before for Valentine’s Day. But I chose to call my mom instead. She reminded me how much time and money I had spent on finding the perfect dress to impress his family – not to mention how well it fit. I decided to keep it. I’ve worn it a handful of times over the past couple of years, since we officially called it quits. Now, I look at it, hanging in my closet, and instead of reminding me of what I lost, it reminds me what I learned from being with him. At the end, it’s best to hold on to those parts of broken relationships to remind you not of the person necessarily, but what they taught you, both before and after the proverbial gleam of taillights.

When you are old and gray
When you are old and gray
I hope that someone holds you
I hope that someone holds you
The way I would

(Source: Spotify)