Bixby's Geography

First attempt.

Song: "Bixby Canyon Bridge"

Artist: Death Cab For Cutie

Album: Narrow Stairs

Year: 2008

From: Bellingham, Washington

"Until I eventually arrived at the place where you soul had died.  

Barefoot in the shallow creek, I grabbed some stones from underneath, 

and waited for you to speak to me.  

And the silence it became so very clear that you had long ago disappeared. 

I cursed myself at being surprised that this didn't play like it did in my mind." 

What do I get from this?

I see Gibbard underneath the bridge, at a ridge or in the middle of a creek or standing on a dirt hills, like the ones bums sleep under sometimes, fighting against starvation and heat exhaustion.  Gibbard is surprised his imagination didn't fit the reality of the situation- with a loved one, with the scenery?  Right place, wrong time?  What happens if he keeps imagining wrong?  He doesn't like incorrect imagining (see last line quoted lyrics).  Was he there with someone else, or reaching out to someone that has let this world, like a spirit of ghost?  Is this dead person a personal lover, or someone rather famous?  

To me it looks like this person has been gone for quite some time.  Gibbard might find solace in the place underneath this iconic bridge.  Maybe he left on bad terms with this person, or maybe his grief cannot let this spirit go.  Clearly the silence fails to appease his mind.  He wants some sort of response, a sign in verbal form, or a nature sign, or a wave of abrupt emotion.   

Why Bixby Canyon?  

Bixby Canyon is a bridge Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac (to name a few) referenced in a lot of their stories- whether fragmented, hinted, hidden, or explosively obvious.  Part of the beatnik's beat.  A bridge connecting two lands with gorgeous scenery overlooking the pacific ocean. Was Gibbard somewhere near this bridge in California when this song was written?  Or did he go there, leave, and was then inspired to write this song?  Ginsberg wrote about the bridge in the fall, for his piece titled "Bixby Canyon".  He said, "...bouquet of old seaweed/ on a striped blanket, kelp tentacle spread/ round the prayer place."  Ginsberg references Neal Cassidy in the poem, referring to others writers of the beat generation.  Maybe he was there with Cassidy at one point, or Cassidy there by himself, wandering the ferns, picking the grass, or making sand castles.

Favorite climax:

2:39- BCB picks up like hurricane winds, becoming blurrier and blurrier by the second, taking a dream-like quality.  The buzzing undertone of selected instruments wind together creating a climatic mix- like different flavors of cotton candy being blended together.  This bridge, probably intended to echo the song's title, is the literal transition from Gibbard's mind to paper to record.  He says "dream" enough for us to get he may have been dreaming under the Bixby Canyon Bridge.  He may have been dreaming of the bridge.  He may have been dreaming of someone else on the bridge, or riding across it at one point on tour.  I see colors of the sunlight, moonlight, afternoon light, the Pacific's natural beauty.  Something pure, waves of colors and emotions.  A place fighting pollution and destruction, forcing dreams which can't ignore the location they spawned from.  A subconscious significance.  

Listen.

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