Choklit Blog #26: "Chasing Shadows at Midnight" by Pillar

The song “Chasing Shadows at Midnight” by Pillar doesn’t seem that hard to figure out. It’s obviously about an old friend who betrayed the speaker and lied to him, right? Well that’s what I always thought, until I looked closer at the lyrics. (Actually, I think that’s what the original intention of the song was. I’ve never asked them, but whenever I get the chance to meet them, I’ll be sure to ask.)

The first verse of the song says “Next time I try / to cross your mind / Remind me to look both ways / so I don’t get hit by your lies” (1-4). It sounds like a somewhat clever stab at the person the song is about, which it is, but it also sort of conceals the fact that this song is (like “Death of Me”, the last song I wrote about) written to the speaker, from himself. The first part is easy to figure out... “Next time I try to cross your mind.” The only definition I have ever heard of crossing someone’s mind, is being thought of by that person. I don’t think he was literally talking about walking across some dude’s brain. But then again, I’ve never asked. In my opinion, that’s not what he’s saying. So “Next time you think of me, remind me to look both ways so I don’t get hit by your lies.” That doesn’t make much sense. I sat and stared at my computer screen for several minutes trying to come up with a way to reword that into English. Why would this apparent enemy remind the speaker not to get hit by his lies? And how would it really hurt the speaker if someone thought something bad about him? It wouldn’t... unless the person thinking ill of him, making some plan to harm him, or thinking incorrect things about him was... ready?... gasp... himself.

I need to interrupt myself for a minute here. I realize that this is basically the same exact thing I got out of “Death of Me.” I do not purposely only analyze songs about the good vs. evil battle in a person’s mind. There are just a lot of songs about that, and I didn’t even realize until I had already decided on this song that this was one of them. Anyway...

In those first few lines, the speaker is basically telling himself “Next time I think about myself, I need to stop lying to myself about myself before I do more damage than I’ve already done.” Then he tells himself, “You lacerate me with all of / these memories / And now I wear these scars out on my sleeve” (5-7). At one point, it was just an internal struggle between good and evil, but now it’s gone too far and people are starting to notice that he’s changing. But, as most people tend to do, he’s only remembering the good things he’s done and forgetting the bad, which is causing him to not want to change even though he knows he has to.

The chorus begins with “These broken hearts / are left with scars / because of your lies” (8-10). Now we can see that he has hurt other people and left them scarred because of his apparent current state of evil over good. He may be referring to the lies he told himself, or the lies he told other people. Most likely both. He continues with “And all this time / it feels like I’m / chasing shadows at midnight” (11-13). The concept of chasing shadows at midnight was a little lost on me at first. For several years, actually. I never thought about it very hard until the other day. I pictured someone outside at midnight running around after shadows. First off, it seems ridiculous. Why on earth would you chase a shadow? What are you gonna do, catch it? Eat it? Kill it? You can’t do anything to a shadow... unless you turn off all the lights. Oh, wait, there is no light at midnight! Unless you count the moon and stars... but are those really bright enough to cast many shadows? I’m pretty sure they’re not. (I’m not really sure where this story is set, but we’re gonna say there aren’t many streetlights around, because I really think streetlights would kind of ruin the concept a little.) So, chasing shadows at midnight is pointless and impossible. That’s what he feels like. Changing himself is pointless and impossible... if you remember what you read a minute ago about his memories being only of the good things he’s done in his current evil state, then it makes perfect sense. “I need to stop lying to myself. All I can remember are the good things I’ve done when somewhere deep down inside I know there’s something wrong. Everyone else can tell too. I’ve left so many people, including myself, scarred and broken hearted. Now I know I need to change, but it feels impossible and pointless because I keep on lying to myself.” If the band had just sung that, it wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting, but when you decipher it that’s what you get.

Now we come to verse two. “The days fade / and stars come out at night” (14-15). Days fade into night. Then stars come out. Wow, thanks so much for telling us. Are you implying that people who listen to your music aren’t smart enough to know that? It’s a hidden message... they’re trying to make America’s youth smarter. Thank goodness. It’s about time someone did it.

Not quite. It’s metaphorical... “the days fade” refers to the light in his life fading away slowly as evil and lies overtake him. It’s like John 3:19 says: “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” But then he says “stars come out at night.” Stars represent the little bit of light trying to stay in his life, fighting inside of him to take over, because as I mentioned earlier, he still knows right from wrong deep down inside. The next two lines say “And when the sun goes down, I know exactly what I’ll find” (16-17). He knows what will happen if he keeps going in the direction he’s headed. Obviously. I’m pretty sure that line didn’t need explaining, but I didn’t wanna just leave it out completely. That would be like removing it from the song, and I don’t think I have the authority to do that. So I’m not going to try. I don’t think it would work.

The verse ends with “Some things in this life / will never change / We both have apologies we need to exchange” (18-20). This part is a little confusing... and it’s is going to be hard to explain. I think. It sounds like he’s saying his two different sides (his good side and his evil side) need to apologize to each other. Why would his good side need to apologize to his evil side? Because even though it is a different side of himself, it is still part of him. It’s not necessarily that each side of himself needs to apologize to each other because they have done some kind of disservice to each other... well, actually, it is like that... because they’re the same person and he needs to apologize to himself. He couldn’t very well say “I’m only going to apologize to half of myself.” I mean I’m sure he could say that, but it would be stupid. He needs to apologize to himself for shutting out his good side (evil side apologizing to good side), and he needs to apologize to himself for falling for the lies from his evil human nature (good side apologizing to evil side).

I need to interrupt myself again. I realize that that probably makes very little or no sense. Sorry. It makes sense to me. I don’t know how else to explain it. Just think really hard about it. If you get to the point where it makes your head hurt and you still don’t get it, you probably aren’t going to and you may as well give up. Thinking about it more than that isn’t worth it. It’s probably not that important.

Only 8 lines left... they’re not that hard to figure out, but since I wrote about every other line in the song, I may as well keep going. “How could I let myself / fall into your lies / I only trusted you / with all of my life / Now I am stuck here / I’m trapped under ice / The only way out / is for me not to ask why” (21-28). Ok so he can’t believe he was so stupid, he obviously “trusted you with all of my life”, since he is himself, and he can’t change the past which would in turn change his current situation (“Now I’m am stuck here / I’m trapped under ice”). The only way to get past this is to move on and to not spend all his energy trying to figure out why he is in this situation, but to accept the fact that he is in this situation and needs to get out.

So if this song were written in plain, non-metaphorical, not-very-pretty English, I think it would go something like this: “I need to stop lying to myself before I do more damage than I’ve already done. I’ve been blocking out memories of the bad things I know I’ve done so I won’t feel the need to fix myself. Now everyone can tell that something is wrong with me. I’ve left so many people scarred because I’ve been lying to myself for so long and doing things I know were wrong. But all this time I’ve felt and still feel like it’s pointless and impossible to change myself. I know I’m on a bad path, but there’s still a little bit of good left in me. If I don’t grab onto it right now, things will only get worse. Things that have happened already can’t change, but it’s time to apologize to myself for all the lies. I can’t believe I let myself turn into this... I can’t believe I turned myself into this. Instead of trying to change the past and figure out why my life had to go this way, I need to just completely run away from the evil in my life.” This song almost seems to lose something when it’s explained in plain English. I’m sorry if I ruined this song for you. Go listen to it until you feel better. Goodbye.

Listen to "Chasing Shadows at Midnight": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wPieXR4Hw