The meaning of “The Third Side of the Moon”
“Am I the shade or the shadow, well I can’t really tell”.
Picture sitting under a tree. When your shadow is under the tree’s shade, they blend together. In that moment, on that plane, your outlines are indistinguishable.
When you lose someone close to you, you aren’t really just yourself anymore. You are their impact on your story, on your mind—in a way, you become their reflected light. In turn, they become your memory of who they were. It’s like how the moon borrows its glow.
We see the moon as having two sides: light and dark. You and me. But what if there’s a third side, an impossible plane we only occupy together? An intangible, imperceptible reflection of us.
I think that blend of a shadow under the shade is who we become after loss.
My favorite lyric is “My heart pumped faster than could possibly be right / I read a magazine the day before, you only get so many thumps in your whole life.”
On its face, it’s a joke about an article saying your heart beats a finite amount of times in life, and this panicked state of grief reminds you of your own mortality while stealing some of those beats.
But it’s also about the impact of that moment when you found out. You only get so many impacts in your life that rearrange you: a thump. A knock at the door. A slap on the back. Your gut collapsing. These moments are sacred shatterings. And one day, your death will be that moment for someone else, and you will become borrowed light.
During the climax, I remembered the ones I’ve lost. I saw moments like “the back of the police car”, the handfuls of seconds that became the impressions of entire lifetimes. What will be theirs… of you?
Anyway, that’s my two cents. Gorgeous song.