This song reminds me to be humble and to recognize how fleeting our lives are in the grand scheme of things. If we can recognize that, it helps to appreciate the mystery and beauty all around us. I was really curious what the writer was writing about though, so I Googled it. It was written by Jeff Mangum, and recorded during his time with Neutral Milk Hotel. My heart broke when I read he wrote it and other songs about Anne Frank after his visceral reaction to reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. He had dreams about going back to save her:( Brutalness.

I was deeply moved when I read that book too, and still remember vividly when the affects of it began to take hold of me. I was on the number 15 MARTA bus riding home from 10th grade at Shamrock High School – from N. DeKalb to S. DeKalb (the nice part of town to the poor part) – and was reading that book, eating a Little Debbie’s Star Crunchie, when it hit me. Hard.

I looked around at the people chatting with one another, jamming with their headphones on, or heads hanging down half sleeping; and listened to the brakes of the bus hiss. I thought about the lives of all the people on the bus, the ones walking down the street, driving down the road, in the stores nearby and indeed the world over. In that moment I realized that everyone has gone through, is going through, or is going to go through their own specific suffering at some point.

This song goes out to Anne Frank, for teaching us to never lose sight of the light, no matter how dark it gets. We are at a point in the world where this is both harder than ever, and more important than ever.