Sunday, August 22, 2010

It Depends On How You See It

I was listening to the Snow Patrol song Chasing Cars.  There is a lyric in there: "Just know that these things will never change for us at all."  I still have no idea if this is supposed to be a beautiful thing or a depressing thing.

What are these things that will never change?  Is he saying that he loves the person no matter what?  Or is he saying that there are differences that will make a relationship impossible, no matter how badly they both want it?

I guess it depends on how you see it.  There just isn't enough context to know for sure.

In a similar situation, I know a woman who has a tattoo that reads, "Rain don't last forever."  I assume this is a positive tattoo.  Rain represents sadness and other unpleasant times.  This tattoo probably means that bad times eventually end, no matter how bad they may seem while occurring.  However, I have a nunmber of friends who thoroughly love the rain.  When drops start falling, they have an uncontrollable desire to run outside and gallivant while being poured on.  If the woman with the tattoo had this opinion, then the message could be that the good times are guaranteed to end, no matter how great they may be.

In our writing, we rely on a lot of unspoken, unwritten, but commonly understood things.  Rain is sad.  Sun is happy.  Breezes are calming.  Asians are good at math.  As writers, we sometimes have to choose playing to type (funerals in stories always occur in the rain), playing against type (like a princess having to save a prince locked in a tower), or consciously trying to ignore type (a knight in shining armor who doesn't have to rescue anybody).  But be careful with it.  Sometimes you have unforeseen consequences.

If you have somebody who says the rain don't last forever, is that a good thing or a bad thing?  It depends on how you see it (and how she sees it, too).

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