#caelum talks iwfc

[caelum-in-trees]

permanence & i wanna feel calm: sister songs

this is not the first time i have described bears in trees's songs permanence, from the ep "i want to feel chaotic", and i wanna feel calm, from their newest album "how to build an ocean: instructions", as sister songs. it will likely not be the last, either.

so i wanna talk about it! permanence is, and has been, one of my favorite bit songs from nearly the moment i discovered the band. i love the sentiment within the song, pictured prominently in the lyric, "i want to feel chaotic / but calm enough to hold you in the morning." i think that's a very common sentiment among young adults: the desire of freedom, and self-exploration, and doing things that maybe aren't the best for you, but are fun anyways, but at the end of the day wanting some consistency, wanting to be reliable enough to hold and be held by someone else. another lyric is "i want permanence in the little things", hence the title of the song. it's a sweet sentiment, to cherish little moments and want them to last forever, or at least be remembered, and loved, for as long as possible. i would be lying if i said this sentiment has not made me cry before. bit are pretty good at making me sob, with their lyrics, in the best way.

now let's talk about the more recent i wanna feel calm, and how, exactly, it compares to permanence. one of the lyrics is, "seeking stillness in a rippling", essentially looking for still waters in a place where there are none. perhaps it is just me, but that sounds an awful lot like looking for calm in the chaotic. as well as that, another lyric literally is, "i wanna feel calm", but more of the mentions of calm are regarding the repetition of the line, "you keep me calm". this ties back to permanence, which is largely a song of love, and the calm the singer wishes to have for the unknown "you" the song is directed towards. i wanna feel calm is paralleling that in that the unknown "you" is granting the singer that calm they have been longing for, for so long, and it ties full circle, back to holding someone calmly in the morning. beyond the parallels of calmness tied to the "you", there is the desire for the permanence of the mundane. the verse, "i want to cherish every insignificance / lay in the light of your mundane / i want to hold onto every impermanence / each an eternity in their own way" parallels the sentiment found earlier in permanence. both songs express a love for the mundane, and a desire to make them last forever, and hold close to the littlest details. these two themes, as they are both prominent in the two songs, are the reason i feel that these two songs are sister songs. i just find that the connecting themes tie them together closely, in such a gorgeous way. perhaps this is intentional. perhaps it is not. either way? i cherish it, a whole lot. the little connections between the two songs make them both impossibly more important to me, and i hope you find the analysis interesting, if nothing else! take care, thanks for reading, and make sure to hydrate <3 stream bears in trees!