Pencil Rain

World War No. 2

Thin layers of hovering smoke trail throughout the endless deep mud-filled trenches. Smells of burning cedar and soft lead permeate your nostrils as you stare in disbelief of the carnage laying before you. Friends and commanding officers alike laying in heaps, their ranks no longer a context for their existence as they life has left their bodies. There is no hierarchy amongst the dead.

SIREN BLARING.

Fastening your protective head gear, you look to the sky. Bright explosion can be seen from behind the thick dark clouds. A faint whistle is heard getting louder, closer. Competing with the warning siren. As if something sharp and pointed is cutting through the air as it makes its way, unrelenting toward you.

With a sharp piercing sound of splintering wood through armored metal, followed by a dull squish and a your body has fallen victim to raining terror of No. 2 soft lead sharpeners to a point. You join your friends in the pile. The Pencil Rain has begun again. . .

My early enlistment into the brigade.

I have written about many They Might Be Giants songs that use surreal imagery to depict deep themes of sullen human emotions. “Pencil Rain” could very well be another of those songs but in this case, I can’t help but imagine it as a literal war with the devastating and destructive power of giant pencils being launched through the sky at enemies. A literal rain of pencils and the aftermath it has wrought.

When I first got the Lincoln album as a teen, Pencil Rain wasn’t on my list of top picks. It was skipped often probably because I just didn’t have an emotional connection to it. Not the case for my best friend however.

A different way to experience a song.

I remember going over to his house one day and he had been holed up playing the newest Final Fantasy. He was always determined to play though from start to finished without doing anything else in between. I decided to come hang out and watch the gaming underway.

Before I even walk into his bedroom, I can hear Pencil Rain playing through door and into the stairway. He had been playing it - on repeat - the entire day as he played. He said that the military fanfare of it all was the perfect companion to his quest at hand. Maybe if I also got into Final Fantasy, I too would have started out enjoying Pencil Rain from the beginning. These days, I do enjoy it a lot. Imagining this literal interpretation of it while singing in a deep dramatic tone. It’s a fun song.

Pencil Rain is theatrical, booming, and inspiring in its own way. A veritable “Do Not Go Quietly Into That Good Night” of the album. It’s a favorite to hear while driving and thinking about an obstacle in my life that I’m about to or have recently overcome. A defiant masterpiece.

Do you have a literal interpretation of a song that you feel others may take a figurative or metaphorical message? Leave a comment, reply to the email or shoot me a DM. Let’s talk about it.