... So you threw the key away.

I listen to songs in a certain way. I think as my body and my moods and ideas change, so does my taste in music. I can listen to a song a hundred times and not really care for it, and then I'll listen to it one more time and see new meaning in it.

I'm not saying this is true for "Red Right Ankle." I've always loved that song. First it was for the melody, then it was for the guitar, then it was because I liked the way the words sounded, but they didn't really mean much to me because I had never really listened, if you know what I mean.

If I listen to a song like fifty times and still don't derive any real meaning from it, I tend to then look up the lyrics online, mull them over in my brain for a bit, look up how other people have interpreted them, et cetera. I usually just let that stew there for a while as I listen to the song about fifteen or twenty more times, and then I figure out my own interpretation. It's a process that I love and J has fallen prey to my ramblings about how I interpret certain songs on many a car ride.

"Red Right Ankle" was one I could never really place. I would go back and forth wondering what it was about, but I came to the conclusion a couple days ago, thanks to different circumstances than usual (Friendly Fire and all that). I've been a little distressed about it all, and if you've talked to me much lately, you pretty much know what's been going on in my life so I won't go into detail here (HOORAY FOR RUN-ON SENTENCES BECAUSE I CARE SO LITTLE RIGHT NOW!).

I read an interpretation about "Red Right Ankle" that said it was all about connections. I think this is very much what it means, but I think it goes beyond that. I think it is about the sameness in everything.

This is the story of your red right ankle,
and how it came to meet your leg,
and how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled,
and how the skin was softly shed,
and how it whispered “Oh, adhere to me,
for we are bound by symmetry.
Whatever differences our lives have been,
we together make a limb.”
This is the story of your red right ankle.

This is the story of your gypsy uncle
you never knew ‘cause he was dead,
and how his face was carved and rife with wrinkles
in the picture in your head.
And remember how you found the key
to his hide-out in the Pyrenees.
But you wanted to keep his secret safe,
so you threw the key away.
This is the story of your gypsy uncle.

This is the story of the boys who loved you,
who love you now and loved you then.
Some were sweet and some were cold and snuffed you.
Some just laid around in bed.
Some had crumbled you straight to your knees,
did it cruel, did it tenderly.
Some had crawled their way into your heart
to rend your ventricles apart.
This is the story of the boys who loved you.
This is the story of your red right ankle.

I think it is about connections on a fundamental level. It's about how muscle and bone became a functional part of a body and were connected that way, and it's about wanting to feel a connection to a lost uncle, and it's about how all these boys loved one girl. It makes sense, but I think instead of feeling connected to one another, they were all the same thing. The muscle and the bone are both the ankle. "Oh, adhere to me," said the ankle, bidding these things to be a part of it, and they were. And you find your uncle's key to his hide-out, but because your uncle is a part of you, you somehow feel the same closeness to his refuge that he himself felt, so you made sure no one ever found it. And all the boys who loved you...

Well, it turns out it was just one boy who did all that stuff, after all.

I am really comforted.

END.