One more sun comes sliding down the sky
One more shadow leans against a wall
This is a song out of nowhere — not off a best-selling album by a best-selling band, but a rarities mix — it made it to the charts, to the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks number-one single position. It's not related to the opera of the same name. It's not overtly about anything, it's not eminently decipherable. The song was an outtake from August and Everything After. It never should have made it big.
I knew, at first listen, it was golden. I think it's about Albert Einstein (of course) and his uncertainty for his contributions to the a-bomb, for his own personal triumphs and failures. I think it's a careful meditation on the psyche of a man the band hardly knew — so, a fictionalized version, but one that is just as meaningful. The lyrics are clear — he has that capacity to do great or terrible things, and it's ripping him apart — he'll get help, but he'll never be together again.
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