Musical Musing, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark”, Death Cab For Cutie

I think I’ve said before that I’ll have songs get stuck with me, and I’m not entirely sure where I’m supposed to go with them, or what larger message they’re carrying to message, just that the melody and the lyric got a hook into me, and I know I’m supposed to do something with it. This was one of those songs. John recently discovered the band and has been incorporating it into our “car music” (the mix of MP3 cds he plays in the car while we’re driving, particularly for long trips, and we’ve taken 2 of those in the past month). Invariably, when I get a song that hooks me, I either dig out the laptop and write immediately (rare) or I email myself the name of the song, artist, and any thoughts I might have had on it in the moment, giving me time to sort of marinate on the idea and come back to it. This was the latter; I emailed this song and title to myself, but I had no notes about it – I just knew I needed to write about it.

I read the lyrics, and wondered what I was supposed to do. I’ve had more challenging subjects to cover (Bob Dylan’s “Goin’ to Acapulco” is about visiting a brothel) but this certainly ranks among them. After all, the dark in title of the song is not a generic night or place without light. No, the lyricist makes this dark a place that is outside of both heaven and hell. What or where this place might be isn’t made clear… is it non-existence? Limbo? There are no answers. It’s just “the dark”.

But… what if we just ignore that? After all, the condition for the lover following the beloved into the dark is the assumption that the beloved has been rejected from both heaven and hell… not the assumption that neither place exists. So it’s possible that they COULD go to heaven. No, the point of this song isn’t really where their souls end up… the point of this song is about the lover’s commitment to the beloved. And that… Oh, that, Beloved… that’s a very different story.

We’ve all heard the statistics. We’ve all heard about the disposable marriages, how divorce is on the rise. We’ve heard about marriages that last hours, and all the serial marriages in Hollywood, with stars marrying one person after another, faster than anyone can keep up with. It seems that the media are terribly fond of tracking the destruction of marriages and commitment… but what they’re ignoring is the other side of that statistic. If half of marriages are ending in divorce, what about the other half? What about the stars who have been married for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years? What about the men and women who meet one another and stay happily married to each other, faithfully committed to their vows for decades? Why do we ignore the faithful for the faithless?

You may argue that I’m not being realistic. That I’m too surrounded by “church people” to be unbiased. I think I’m surrounded by ordinary people. I think I’m talking about normal, healthy, well adjusted people who are more committed to making a marriage and their lives work than they are to being selfish and immature. I’m talking about my grandparents, who will celebrate their 52^nd anniversary in a few days. Or my adoptive parents, who just celebrated 40 years of marriage. Or John’s parents, who celebrated 38 years. Or John’s brother, who’s been married more than 16 years. Or my older sister, who’s been married something like 15 years, or my younger sister, who’s coming up on 11 years of marriage, or John and I, who will celebrate our 12^th anniversary in May. One of my uncles has been married 25 years, and the other has been married 18 years. My great aunts and uncles have been married to the same people as long as I’ve known them… they’ve met or surpassed my grandparents’ anniversaries by now.

My grandparents, as awesome as they are, aren’t some superheroes of marriage. They’re two people who made a decision to commit to one another, and have kept that promise. They’ve done the sleepless nights with the baby, 4 times (3 of their own, and me). They’ve raised or help raise 6 children into adulthood (their 3, me, and my two youngest sisters). They’re watching their 7 grandchildren mature into adults, and now make them great-grandparents (two great-granddaughters, one great-grandson) and eagerly await the arrival of more. They’re just normal people who have lived their lives together, keeping the promises they made to one another on they day they married each other.

Marriage isn’t easy. It’s not something that just happens overnight. There are struggles along the way. You think it’s just as easy as who does what, but even that is always in flux; if he doesn’t feel well, you can’t leave his half of things undone. If she’s busy with the children, he might need to step in and take over some of the things she’s always taken care of. You have to sacrifice your right to always be right and be willing to listen and compromise. Marriage isn’t a scorecard of who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s winning and who’s losing, and who’s got what percentage of what. It’s a partnership, two people coming together to create a gestalt, a richer whole than they ever were by themselves.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that you lose who you are in a marriage. You don’t. I’m still very much who I was before I was married; still love Star Trek and writing (hello!) and languages and cats, a mother at my heart. John is still who he has always been; still loves movies and electronics and dogs, a problem solver and rationalist first. I can even look at my grandparents and see my great-grandparents’ influence on each of them still; my grandmother is still very much the way I remember her mother being, the way her father is, and my grandfather is still very much the way I remember his mother (I don’t remember his father). That’s not a bad thing; they’ve kept who they were before while still combining to become a greater whole. That’s what a gestalt is. It means that the whole is greater than the sum of it’s individual parts.

At its heart, I think this song is talking about that kind of commitment, the sort that builds a marriage for a lifetime. The singer has been told what someone else’s view of love is; instead, the lover chooses another path. Together, the lover and beloved travel the world, seeing and experiencing life together, coming together to the end of life. It is at this point that we join them, as the lover promises that, no matter what is yet to come, the commitment that has been made stands. It’s the promise that though the vow says “until death parts us,” the lover won’t leave the beloved alone to face what comes next alone.

OK, so that’s a little macabre. But let’s face it; death is rather overwhelming, even if you know where you’re going to end up. You’re leaving the ones you love. If you’re lucky, they will be mature enough to “release” you… to tell you to let go. But it’s not easy to slip loose of the ties that have bound you to this life, and to have your lover promise to accompany you even into this impossible journey is a little bit of a sweet promise. And it’s that kind of commitment… to actually be there when the end comes, however it comes, that builds strong marriages that last decades.

I haven’t always had the healthiest role models to look at as I’ve built my life. But no matter what Hollywood says, no matter what statistics the experts come up with, I’m convinces of this: marriage is stronger than we give it credit for. I had amazing men and women to show me what marriage could be, what it should be, how ordinary men and women lived out the extraordinary commitment it takes to follow someone into the dark.