right. we can either resign and accept that fate, or rise again and start anewJaeti wrote:I think "being the setting sun" would be resignation, failure. He's trying to shout down that potential resolution.mikejasond wrote:What do we think about the book-ended setting sun lyrics?
Scared of Fear:Setting Sun:I hear the voices calling, hear the voices calling
All around my head, all around my head
Hear the voices calling, oh, again they're calling
All around my head, have I lost my friend?
Is this what we've become? One last setting sun
I'll give, but I can't give up, I'll live, not long enough
To stop these voices calling, stop the voices calling
All around my head, as if you never leftIn the first song he seems upset about being one last setting sun, while in the last song he seems to beg for it.May your days be long till kingdom come
May our days be long before kingdom come
May our days be long until kingdom come
We can become one last setting sun
Am I the only one hanging on?
We could become one last setting sun
Or be the sun at the break of dawn
Let us not fade
Let us not fade
My interpretation, if you take the album as an album about a breakup, is in the first song, the breakup is still fresh (maybe ongoing). The narrator is upset about their significant other's self-destructive behavior, the tumultous relationship, he feels like they are just another fading romance (setting sun), and it upsets him. (In fact the first two songs seem to take place in this fiery and raw period, until Wreckage when the narrator fully realizes what he lost and becomes resigned, realizes what he lost, and no longer cares about the anger)
By the end, in Setting Sun, he frames the setting sun metaphor more positively, he would give anything to be together with the other. Even being one last setting sun now is desirable if it means they are together, and maybe he views the metaphor through a different lens, a more positive and romantic one. It's the two of them together, even if they're the last on earth. And maybe they are not a setting sun but a rising one. He refuses to give up "(I wait on the porch hoping someday, I'll be let in
They say in the end everything will be okay
If it's not okay, well then, it ain't the end") believing that if they are not together, then it isn't over yet.
You can choose to interpret it as romantic and hopeful, or you can see it as pathetically desperate and clinging onto somebody who has moved on from him. That is your choice how to see it, and if you sympathize with the narrator or not.
But I do think the first and last songs show a change in his opinion, probably the difference between a breakup that is happening now, and one that is in the past and suddenly none of the fighting seems important at all.
"let us not fade" tells us which one he prefers
