This song makes me think of a lot of different things.

It reminds me of the girl I was in love with who would quote lyrics from it at me and I wouldn’t get them, I’d miss the reference, because I wasn’t such a fan of this song at the time. It wasn’t until a year later, after she had never come and gone, that I understood that the proper response to “we’ll trade butterfly knives for adderall” was “and that’s not all, there will be snacks.”

It makes me daydream about how awesome the end of life as we know it would be. Crumpled financial institutions? Count me in, Fight Club. Let’s unicycle the empty and abandoned 5 freeway. Let’s run into a cute girl and fall in love during the apocalypse, scavenge for food together, and wonder how we’re going to have sex when the world’s supply of condoms passes the expiration date.

It reminds me of seeing Andrew Bird in concert and how utterly amazed I was by how beautiful his music is in a live setting. His whistling is utterly unbelievable, and when he performs he really performs, and songs like “Why” come alive with anxious, nervous motions and nuanced vocal delivery, turning already beautiful songs into a performance of emotional power.

It makes me realize that in the last few months I lost a few things that were dear to me, like hope and excitement for the future. Stagnation is the worst crime you can commit to yourself, and I feel like I’ve been stagnating. This song gives me the feeling of hope, that glimmering sensation that lurks beneath the surface, giving you butterflies in your stomach, that makes you look to the future not with resignation, but hope. Hope that things will be impossibly more awesome than they are now, and that all those little goals you set to yourself, well, you’ll achieve them, and perhaps at the celebration, there’ll be a dancing bear.

And, that’s not all, oh no, there will be snacks. There will. There will be snacks.