The piano that begins the song summons your attention, it does not command it, but it beckons it, and you comply simply because you know it will be worth it. And it is well worth it. But it is also painful. Every key that is hit, lingers for a bit, much like lead singer Taylor Goldsmith's voice when he tunes it to his instrument.
The song begins with a jumper on the Golden Gate Bridge. It does not tell a story of joyful redemptive safety. It does not tell what happens to him. It just relays the message that he tells the officer who asks him 'Just tell me what you're doing it for.' He responds:
'Oh it's a little bit of everything,
It's the mountains, it's the fog,
It's the news at six o'clock,
It's the death of my first dog,
It's the angels up above me,
It's the song that they don't sing,
It's a little bit of everything.'
Goldsmith lifts his voice when he says 'mountains' and 'fog' like he is looking out at both of them when he says it, willing his voice above them. He proceeds to sing of the angels, of a song that does not get sung, a song that perhaps has the potential to save this life if they only knew what to sing.
The story continues with the description of an older man who probably wears a half smile and has tired sad eyes. He has taken to eating to try to forget his pain, as if his memory runs adverse to his stomach. When the server asks what he wants he says:
'I want a little bit of everything,
The biscuits and the beans,
Whatever helps me to forget about
The things that brought me to my knees..."
Meanwhile, our heart is there with that older man, who has lost his son and his bright future. Who has lost purpose. Who takes temporary comfort in the ephemeral food, the ephemeral appetite being satiated. He can eat as much as he wants and people watch as much as he wants at the buffet, but he can't escape it, he is only stuffing away his pain into a compact area of his mind, one that has a foot in the conscious and the subconscious. He has to endure pain, he has to endure that hard road, and man, man is it hard.
The narrative continues.
It describes a soon-to-be bride, a period of time that is usually the most ecstatic part of a woman's life, one that is all anticipation, all sweet wine, and no sour grapes. Yet she appears weighted with heavy thoughts.
She responds to her concerned fiancee:
'I think that love is so much easier than you realize,
If you can give yourself to someone, than you should,
Cause it's a little bit of everything,
The way you joke,
The way you ache,
It is getting up before you,
So I can watch you as you wake...'
I picture her with thoughtful brown eyes, like she is staring at a picture in her mind, that we can't see. She then describes love in one of the most beautiful ways I have ever heard it described. I think that's what love is, all the little things, it is everything, the good and bad, the solid walls and the frail flaws, everything.
I'm not sure, but I think the three stories are one, I think they are interconnected, a story about how one person's untimely death ripples into others' lives and affects them far down that hard road. I think Taylor Goldsmith has some experience on that road. This song is infused with passion, passion that is channeled into an emotional story, a story that needs to be told. The drums give it life, like a heartbeat 'bom bombombom bom bombombom', and Goldsmith's voice, man that is a voice of a storyteller, one that knows his way around. It's one that remains quiet until it has something really important to say, and everybody listens, because everybody knows that that voice carries weight.
And what weight this song carries.
The final part is a detailed description of something we have journeyed through the whole song trying to define, but not knowing what exactly the word is. It says:
'All these psychics and these doctors,
They're all right and they're all wrong,
It's like trying to make out every word,
When they should simply hum along,
It's not some message written in the dark,
Or some truth that no one's seen,
It's a little bit of everything.'
If we want purpose, purpose is to be found where we are at, wherever that may be. We don't have to go to a distant place to find purpose, we don't have to study dense books to find purpose, no, we can find it here, we can find it there. I think there is always hope to be had in loss, there's always hope that our legs will grow stronger walking hard roads.
Thank you Dawes for creating a song that is one for the ages, and one that will surely accompany me through those ages.
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