6.4.12 Adam vs. Haters, Have you requested NCOE?

LindaG23 How did we miss your birthday? It was not written this morning!! Thank you reihmer for noticing it!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY LindaG23!!!

A ‏@jam2885
Oh hey check out the email I just got pic.twitter.com/DG7mEqv1

Happy birthday LindaG23!! I have no birthday cake so here's a picture of my cat dressed in Christmas attire.

That is a picture waiting for a caption!

BTW - Happy Birthday Linda G23!

SCROLL ALERT: excessive blather on old topic...



I'm late, as usual, and sorry if the conversation has moved on, but I just wanted to join in thanking Nikki for her careful interpretation, which seems pretty spot on to me.

I don't know, of course, about Sauli vs Brad vs other unknown, and I suspect the song is really more about a generic combination of lovers. But I wanted to add a shade of difference to the reading of the lyrics that makes it gentler, and more applicable to Sauli (or a current, happy love affair).

People have commented that the vibe of the song suggests a steamy nighttime (beachy) rendevous. All the images in the song are cyclical ones--the constellations, the tides--this cycle is the rule of nature that Adam must play by. But the biggest, almost unspoken cycle that controls the song and its narrative is simply the night-day cycle. All relationships, good ones as well as bad ones, have a cyclical energy, which ebbs and swells. And since this song is all sexy-sexy ;D, the energy swells in it happen at night, of course. The parting pain--the thing that makes the lovers, like the constellations, fade a little dimmer--may just be the rising sun, as is stated in the final line of the verse "as blades of sunlight send night away." Hardly, by the way, the gloomiest note for a song about love to end on.

Sometimes lovers get all shady-sexy in the depths of night, and sometimes, in the light of the day, their passion dims a little. But listening to Adam talk about everything that he's particularly enjoyed about this last "normal" year and a half, I suspect he likes that laid-back, less glamorous daytime energy just as much. (By the way, how frickin well does this them fit with the Light/Dark concept of the album?!) One thing I really about the imagery in this song is that the Natural world that rules the song is not just a fierce wilderness. Sometimes the lion and the lamb lay down in it peacefully. Sometimes nature lulls with the gentle rhythm of the waves.

By the way, I just noticed this, but it's interesting to lay the lyrics of By The Rules side by side with those of Nirvana, especially as we are wondering if the former could be about Sauli, and know that the latter is. There's a lot of overlap in the images. Nirvana begins: "When the stars are too cold/ frozen over the glow/ on the edge of the night/ we can be their light" ...and continues in the second verse "Through the dark there's a way/ there's a love there's a place/ Where we don't have to hide/ we can dream all night./ So follow me through the sky/ And watch the oceans collide/ Just keep holding my hand/ as we're taking off/ I know where we'll land."

Sounds in a way like the calmer flip side to the ebb-and-flow love affair of BTR. Nirvana being, I guess, the place where a relationship goes when it rises above that tide-like natural cycle. But it could also just be that quiet space "on the edge of the night" where, after a night of passion, lovers faced with the cooler, faded light of the morning find warmth and calmer comfort in each others arms.

done!