The Shins: Young Pilgrims Meaning

Young Pilgrims Lyrics

A cold and wet November dawn
and there are no barking sparrows
just emptiness to dwell upon.

I fell into a winter slide
and ended up the kind of kid who goes down chutes too narrow
just eking out my measly pies.

But I learned fast how to keep...

1. anonymous

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   Sep 14th 2023 !⃝

   “Young Pilgrims” by James Mercer
   My interpretation (what I gather from his poetry)
   
   These lyrics dive, simultaneously, into multiple hotly debated and affecting subject matters: self-awareness, mortality and depression, next to religious belief and writings, and the inability of the narrator to solve the former by adopting the later. But also his pragmatic solutions to keep living through it.
   
   Mercer sets the stage my painting a bleak picture of “sliding” into Winter, metaphorically and literally representing the descent into cold atmosphere and mindset.
   He gives character development of a person who sardonically mixes animal traits of “barking sparrows” that might normally interrupt the silence that allows a mind to go to a place of existential dread.
   
   But he reveals strength, resolve and a sort of replacement for that empty, passive dread by holding his own “head up” high. Something he “learned fast” at an early stage in life perhaps when previously descending into similar deep, sometimes darker thoughts, when the parts of his psyche reveal themselves to contain a rebellious nature that could “grab the yolk from the pilot” and engage in self-destructive activity. Kind of saying ‘it doesn’t matter anyway’ and fly “the whole mess in to the sea”.
   
   The next verse sets the stage for traveling on a “slow train” and, again, the sardonic perspective of what might be beautiful landscape passing, or a sunset maybe, characterized as “gory art from way on high”
   Even in this environment he “sinks and swims all night” maybe falling into depressed thoughts or dreams.
   
   He watches the “ice melt on the glass” if ice cubes in a glass, traits of a modern ‘advanced’ world. “While the eloquent young pilgrims pass“ well-spoken or well-rehearsed young, religious people who represent faithful but maybe unchallenged and immature believers. Pilgrims is also possibly an intentional choice for its iconic significance in the history of North America. With a few words, he creates characters that may have unwittingly met their match. One a depressed, sardonic (if not thoughtful) individual and possibly previously unchallenged and sheltered religious youth.
   
   There’s not much about their interaction which paints possible picture of very short or limited one. But the pilgrims “leave behind a trail imploring us all not to fail” physical tracts, paper pamphlets, sometimes with a short story and scripture that are commonly handed out in attempt to “witness” and “convert” non-believers. The “failure” being spoken of would be not converting or not repenting. They’re hoping to convince the world to see it their way and not “fail” by using primers to religious text.
   
   Those are the same texts the narrator reveals he has familiarity with being “raised to gather courage from”. He communicates familiarity and the utilitarian use of their uplifting perspective. Even if “lofty” they are effective. For many many people, over many many years, they are such effective stories they can be considered “tried and true”.
   
   This is where the narrator admits his own suffering could be resolved if he could only take stock in the same stories and teachings. He wishes it for any listeners “if they’re able”. Because the newer (less “tried and true”) modern thought of agnostic or godless culture can “get the best of you”
   
   Then, in the bridge, we finally get a lift from his sardonic and fatalistic perspective to a message for the listener who might have similar struggle. The “epitaph”, or what he hopes to be remembered for, something to help anyone drawing inspiration from this perspective to “save your hide” and “fallen mind”
   
   “Fate isn’t what we’re up against. There’s no design, no flaws to find.”
   
   If nothing was intentional by a creator or “designer” and therefore there’s no failure to be had, nothing forcing us into a storyline, then all we’re left with is to exist and try to enjoy that existence while it lasts.
   
   He returns to the first refrain and his solution to keep his metaphorical airplane out of the sea. Hold your head up.

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