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Give Out
Sharon Van Etten
Tramp
2012

This song makes my eyes sting.

And it's like, I know why, but at the same time, I don't.  It feel a connection to it, but it also echoes my general sense of confusion, uneasiness...this song is a succession of somersaults and that dizzy can't-quite-sit-up feeling that floods through your body afterwards.

When I first listened to this song, or rather, really listened to it, I had to close my eyes; I had to lie down.  It kind of punched me in the stomach a little bit...or, to be really specific, it hit me higher up--in the throat...it's that "in my way, I say" that I relate to the most, I think.  Wanting to say things, but not really being able to unless it is indirectly. 

I love the poetry of this lyrics.  I love that I see the song unfolding in my mind in a series of snapshots, especially this verse:

"I'm biting my lip
as confidence is speaking to me
I loosen my grip from my palm
and put it on your knee"

When I was deciding whether or not I loved every single aspect of this song, I got stuck on "It might be I always give out" that is repeated at the end.  I misinterpreted it at first, and thought, well, I relate to parts of this song, but I don't want those words speaking for me.  Like, if I could edit out the end, it would be perfect.  But, the more I listened to it, the more I got it.  I was confusing "give out" with put out, I think.  I would get to the end of the song and think, well, great, so the speaker sluts it up (I think that is going to become a Stephism)...she struggles with this first-time-in-a-long-time relationship because she, well, has a history of bedding these fellas too quickly (i.e. she resorts to the aforementioned "slutting it up" tactic). 

BUT, when I really started to focus of the image that comes to mind when I think of "give out", the song changed for me completely.  I picture a collapse...like a house of cards--with layers and layers of precariously balanced playing cards being added all the time until, quite suddenly, the foundation can't support them anymore.  I love, "it's not that I give up, it might be I always give out"...maybe it isn't for lack of effort, or desire, or whatever, it's just that assembling and holding up that house of cards is difficult, tiring; a bit unbalanced and tenuous.