172. Song No. 2,587: “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” The Postal Service
Give Up, 2003

I am a visitor here, I am not permanent…

Oh, look, more Ben Gibbard projects. I’d forgotten how much his music dominated my listening habits for years, but the past couple months have been a demonstrative reminder of how much I loved and eagerly devoured so much of what DCFC’s frontman has contributed to the indie-rock scene.

Still, I grappled with whether or not I wanted to include this song here. It may have been partly motivated by over-saturation concerns but it was largely, I think, because I’m already running out of ways to talk about why I don’t want to talk about some of the most emotionally charged music in my library.

Until my husband, whose musical taste is nothing at all like mine (our wildly inharmonious Duo playlist never fails to amuse me—though after nearly 15 years together, his recent foray into Spotify is how I learned he’s also a fan of Placebo), there were almost always a handful of mutually loved bands or albums that defined my relationships; The Postal Service’s lone studio album isn’t quite Clarity in that regard, but it’s close. And like the best album Jimmy Eat World ever blessed the world with, Give Up was a victim of the same relationship’s end, meaning it went from being a mainstay in my listening habits to essentially disowned in a matter of weeks. It is a deeply unfair banishment of those incredible, mutually loved albums that are so central to a relationship and then so acutely painful in the breakup.

There’s something so disorienting about actively not listening to an album for fear of reopening old wounds, then getting used to filling that space with other music, then almost entirely forgetting about songs that were once so emotionally resonant until they lose their hold on your heart, and then coming back to it all years later. Some of these lyrics are still so tangibly evocative of the past that those times almost feel within reach, and it is so weird for a song to remain so visceral but so divorced from the emotional poignancy it used to have.

“The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” an ode to the final death rattles of the end, sets the tone for an entire album that’s brimming over with retrospection inspired by things lost. And its nods to those painful mile makers denoting the fork in the road where two intertwined paths finally diverge—the last visits to an increasingly unfamiliar person in their new place, the alien newcomers who’ve entered your ex’s life right as you’re departing it and will get to know the person they’ll become in a way you never will, the inevitable forensics of a post-mortem deconstruction identifying all the fatal blows the relationship valiantly sustained but ultimately succumbed to—only become more familiar as life unceremoniously dumps more goodbyes of all kinds in your way.

Beyond relationships both platonic and romantic, though, there are deeply relatable moments of the human condition dotting the nearly five-minute (!!) landscape of this song. And that line about an overwhelming sense of impermanence is one that’s floated back to me at unexpected times in all kinds of contexts over the years: friendships, relationships, professionally, existentially.

Having just dropped off bestie at the train station a couple hours ago and getting all weepy about it even though I know damn well I’ll see her tomorrow, albeit while slowly processing the grief of losing the best Work Mom I’ve ever had (which still strikes me down with crying jags at the most unpredictable intervals), both goodbyes I’m not ready for and adjusting to whatever comes next made for some profoundly emotional journeys recently, driving home how we’re all visitors and temporary guests wherever we are, no matter how much we want to believe that even the most untenable things and unattainable wishes can become faithful, comfortable constants.