Addison Road

Our second song comes from the oh-so-sensitive Seattle band Death Cab for Cutie. Aaah Death Cab, how I love thine EMOtive ways. For those of you not baptized into the cult, DCFC got started several years ago in Bellingham Washington, releasing a series of increasingly successful albums on the independent Barsuk label.

Then DCFC released their most accomplished album to date, Transatlanticism, in late 2003, just as a little show called The OC was raising up getting it’s tan on. I have never watched the show, but apparantly The OC features a character who is obsessed with the band and talks about them relentlessly.

Around the same time, lead singer Ben Gibbard did this little side gig with a programmer buddy in L.A., and they named themselves The Postal Service, since they never actually collaborated in the same room together, but emailed (or snailmailed) tracks back and forth in various phases of completion. Their album, Give Up, was a suprise hit, and you hear it everywhere, even if you don’t realize it. The song Such Great Heights, has become so ubiquitous in commercials and TV promotion that my bank account gets weepy just thinking about it.

Anyways… Death Cab is now a big band, and their latest album, Plans, was co-released by Atlantic Records, giving them worldwide distribution and promotion. The song in question comes from this latest album, and it really caught my ear. It’s not a single, and it’s not that popular of a song, but I will bet you dollars to pesos that it has annoyed some Christian, somewhere. So, I write this little essay for them.

We begin with a simple guitar pattern and Gibbard’s gentle tenor singing:

Love of mine some day you will die
But I’ll be close behind
I’ll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

Nice happy little ditty here, Ben. Way to go. I think I’ll go eat some razors to cheer up. Where are we going with this?

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Wow. This guy believes there’s no heaven or hell, or if there were, that they might be disqualified for both for one reason or another. He doesn’t know where they’re going, but only that he’s committed to go there with her. I find a beauty in this sentiment, even though I do believe in an afterlife that will be impacted by how I spend my time here. So often we as believers are quick to point out the flaws in secular humanism, but we’ve missed one critical strength of their worldview: they hold on tight to one another, because that’s all we have if there’s no God. How wonderful might it be were we to cling to one another so fiercly in God’s name?

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles brusied by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
“Son fear is the heart of love”
So I never went back

And it all comes clear.

I believe that perhaps the most destructive force in Christianity is our predestination doctrine. I firmly believe that, while God calls us to Himself, we are actively engaged in this great experiment called free will. We so often (either when explaining someone else’s inexplicable bad behavior or our complacency) just expect God to work some things out that, frankly, He wants us to deal with! I fear that there were souls throughout history who might have chosen Him had they actually experienced Jesus. Ben Gibbard did not experience Jesus, so he claims not The Name. I think that sucks.

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Here’s our chorus again, and in the light of verse 2, it’s worth reprinting. He’d rather follow his love into blackness then go back to that place of judgement and violence. I would too, most likely.

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It’s nothing to cry about
Cause we’ll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms

I don’t know whether to think this is lovely or hopelessly tragic. One side of me deeply resonates with the profoundly counter-cultural sentiment expressed here. Don’t try and hold on to things too tightly. Don’t worry so much. It will be ok, because we’re together… and if we’re asleep, we won’t know we’re together.

Another side of me thinks that the fatal flaw and ultimate downfall of secular humanism is that this kind of whatever-will-be-will-be attitude (however poetically rendered) will not enough to keep us all moving the right direction, towards peace instead of war, towards justice instead of exploitation, towards hope instead of despair. There must be something more… something towards which we must reach.

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Ben Gibbard’s perspective is so beautifully skewed that it made me want to curb my natural tendency to correct his doctrine, at least in my mind. His perspective is born out of experience, and his experiences are true to him. This is where we get into trouble as believers with our insistance on absolute truth, because this is Ben’s absolute truth.

“Well, He’s wrong, and I’m annoyed.”

Well.. ok. So he’s wrong, and you’re annoyed, deal with it. Now, are you going to shut your trap, (Chad), listen to his sweet song and learn about his perspective, or do you need to make sure he gets corrected before he drives home? Maybe you should try rapping his knuckles.

Perhaps she didn’t hit them hard enough.