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(A) Coffee Stain
Sarah Harmer
You Were Here
2000

I debated posting this song because I wasn't sure if it was THE Sarah Harmer song that I wanted to share with you.  BUT, your three David Bowie posts reminded me that there aren't really any strict limitations to the songs we post...and that I'm not breaking any rules if I repeat an artist (like you said, if this is a for-life thing, the chances that artists will be repeated increases exponentially).

This was a really cool theme...cool in that I could have taken it in a million different directions.  I got kind of stuck on the fact that the "answer" could really be...anything.  I wanted to do more than pick something at random and, after a lot of internal debate, finally settled on "Coffee Stain".

This song is beautifully heartbreaking.  I love the simplicity of the arrangement and the way Sarah Harmer's voice is really clear and spotlighted here (there I go with my nasal voices again, haha).  The story is simple: the speaker realizes (or finally acknowledges) that her partner is seeing someone else.  I love the image of this woman in a dark kitchen, nursing a lukewarm mug of coffee while sitting at the crumb-covered table, waiting.  She is looking at a picture of her lover and finally admitting to herself that she doesn't really know him/her anymore.  She accepts that all of these little clues are in fact the answers she has been ignoring all along: "I knew by the time on the stove/That you were no longer mine alone." 

I like the ambiguity of the lyrics.  The speaker doesn't come across as utterly devastated that she has come to the realization that that moment most likely marks the end of her relationship.  She says, "Oh I love you, and I guess I still do"...I love that guess; that twinge of uncertainty or ambivalence. This is echoed again in "I guess we're all just out on loan/And everybody is only their own" (lovely) and  "Maybe I'm a fatalist/To let it all go at this/Like some balloon I'll probably miss/Lost in the treetop." 

The description of the picture, with the "coffee stain around your eye" kind of kills me.  I love imagery like that...the kind that permanently prints itself on your brain.  When I see a coffee ring on the kitchen counter or on a place mat at a restaurant, I always think of this song, that voice, that sad cello and quiet guitar.