Day 2: Bride & Groom – The Airborne Toxic Event

If you’re honest with yourself, you’d say you’ve looked back at least once in your life and wondered what might have been. It’s a natural thing to do. Since life is made up of choices, we’re always going to wonder what would’ve happened if we had taken a different route.

And I’m talking choices here, not circumstances. We can wonder who we might have been if we had different parents, lived in a different time period or even in a different country. That’s all arbitrary and out of our control. I’m talking about when we make a decision, walking toward one thing while walking away from another.

It happens more than you might think. When I was deep in the throes of college searching six years ago, I thought I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I had narrowed it down to two schools, but I was pretty dead set on one. I got accepted (yay!) and a scholarship (yay!) and went forward with paying my deposit and preparing to move in. Come August of that year, I was all moved into my dream school. Except it ended up not being the dream school I thought it was. I had dreamt up an ideal, and in the middle of it I found myself homesick, anxious and lost.

I moved out less than a week later, and within days was moved into my “second choice” college. I still consider it one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (it’s far from my “second choice” college now. I wish I’d gone with it from the start.) But of course, my mind wanders sometimes. What would have happened if I had stayed at that school? Am I a failure because I didn’t see it through?

I’m not the only one who’s ever asked that question.

Day 2: Bride & Groom – The Airborne Toxic Event

“Bride & Groom” by The Airborne Toxic Event is a song about failure, according to lead singer Mike Jollett, because it’s about a couple who find themselves at a crossroads: one wants commitment, the other doesn’t. They’ve been living an idealistic fantasy while never diving deeper into their relationship.

It’s a really jaunty melody, almost sardonic in its execution.

This city is haunted by the ghosts of failure
I am one and you are one
We’ve spent this whole time on the run
From the lie that I told
That you closed your eyes and you chose to believe

They realize, in a painful moment, that they were never good for each other. At this point, it’s coming out sideways – there’s no mincing of words. He’s laying it down heavy on her for being naive and foolish enough to believe that he wanted commitment.

And yet, when she leaves, he’s still the one lashing out. He knows their relationship isn’t right, and he reacts in anger. The pre-chorus pumps things up, with Jollett scream-singing the dissonant lyrics:

When I broke my hand on your car
When you told me you were leaving
And I begged for your forgiveness
My busted fingers bleeding
My heavy heart repeating
Just stay here with me

It can be hard to walk away from something, be it a relationship, a job or any array of things, when we’ve invested so much in it, even when we know it’s not good for us. I’ve gone through breakups that I knew were necessary, but wished and wished to the point of hurting myself more that we could stay together. Thank God we didn’t. The man is in the throes of this desperation, but the woman takes a passive high road, it seems.

Then you took your clothes off instead
And you danced around my room
‘Don’t worry,’ you said
‘Cuz the end is coming soon
And we’ll meet again someday
And we’ll toast these stunning ruins
Of the bride I’ll never be and the groom.’

“You see?” she seems to say. “You see what could’ve been? I guess not. Someday we’ll look back on this and laugh.”

But he’s not laughing. Not yet. Homeboy’s got a few more issues to work out. He goes through a withdrawal period where thinking about her leads him to madness.

Now I picture you like snowflakes
Like desperate pouring rain
Like the beating of a drum
In the parade of the insane
You’re the whisper in my ear
When I wake and no one’s there
There’s just the echo of your name

Then of course, because he’s dramatic, he compares her to a siren, drawing him in with her naivete and then giving up when things aren’t good enough. He even admits that he had always been the one “so ready to leave.” But when the girl turns on him, he plays the victim and realizes that maybe he did want that commitment. Whatever he wanted, he fell for her, and fell for her hard.

And I crashed upon your rocks
When I heard your voice singing
And I begged for your love
With my busted ears ringing
My hopeful heart repeating
You are more than the promise of the sea

The song ends without resolution, other than the fact that she, the bride who will never be, left. The man will probably always wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t made so many mistakes and wanted to cut and run so quickly.

I’ll always wonder who I would have been if I’d made different choices. We all will. The best we can do is strive forward with the choices we’ve made.