I wrote a poem in April of 2024,
about one of my favorite Elbow songs,
a kind of music ekphrastic, an ode, or,
a lyric explication disguised in verse,
an exploration of a piece of music
that moves me, mysteriously
and profoundly, to the point where,
even though I was not sure
what the song was about,
attempting to sing along nearly
every time brought me to tears.
Two nights ago I saw Elbow live
here in my town, perhaps one of
the best concerts I have ever attended.
I both longed and dreaded for them
to play this song, but ultimately,
they did, and unbeknownst to my
wife sitting in the seat next to me
and unbeknownst to the stranger
on the other side, I wept through
the entire performance.
But this time, thanks to Guy Garvey’s
introduction to the tune, which he joked
was longer than the song itself,
I understood the full meaning of the lyric:
A thought experiment in which
the singer imagines what it would have
been like if a best friend had met
the singer’s future wife, the lyric
predicts that the future wife would
fall in love with the best friend instead.
It turns out this best friend had never
met, nor would ever meet Guy Garvey’s
future bride. The friend passed away in
the first decade of the new century,
either before the singer met his bride-to-be,
or before the friend had a chance to meet her.
Somehow, the fleshed out story
only increased the song’s power for me,
and almost from the first note, before
he sang the first line, my glasses fogged up
and I could feel my entire body shaking.
To love someone this deeply, to have such
reverence for whatever was good or great
in their character or person, to know that
the happiness you have in your life would
somehow be more deserving in the life
of your friend if only that friend could
have been there to receive it–you would
have gladly given it up for them, all of
your blessings, freely, without question.
That is the heart of the matter.
I understood the song better than I knew.
The sense of it was made crystal clear
even without the explanatory details
by the magic of word and melody.
The mystery of it solved, but not diminished,
I’ll carry this one for the rest of my days.
michael jarmer 