The World at Large - Modest Mouse

I have probably listened to "The World at Large" by Modest Mouse well over 300 times.  This song is a song that takes listening, I mean real listening.  It takes silencing everything and focusing.  The song talks about the journey of a drifter, a romantic, who knows not what he is looking for, but he sure knows that he's looking, he is ever-looking.  His journey is strewn with the stuff of life, the stuff of being, the stuff that makes you get up in the morning and the stuff that makes you cry out in pain, that stuff that urges you onward when you know you are slowly falling backward.  He sees autumn, he sees spring, he leaves after each, not finding what he is looking for in the short golden autumn days, or the solidarity of cold nights.  Not finding it in the long green days of spring either.  He feels like he is alone, like he is doomed in this purgatory earth, forever to wander, because that's all he knows, that's all his feet can do, they've only been trained to walk, they know not rest.  The piano is mourning, it is hard and yearning, it keeps it's notes throughout the journey, it keeps steadily moving on, steadily.  He talks about moths lending their shocked bodies to the summer breeze after futilely colliding with lights, he talks about being swept by this undertow, taking him unwillingly, much like the moth towards the light.  He's lost.  But in his search there still remains hope, even if it be so small as a moth, or as imperceptible as the breeze, it is still there, that's what keeps those feet moving.