More songs by Big Thief
Description
On the road, where pine trees stretch into the sky like thin arrows, life suddenly becomes as soft as cotton candy in the rain. Nothing is going according to plan - the plane has flown away, time has stretched out, and in this gap between point A and point B, a rare luxury appears: being. No schedule, no mask, no anxious ‘musts.’ Just driving, catching radio static, smelling wet flowers, and realising that growing up is not a punishment, but a process of becoming someone softer, more honest, almost transparent.
Silver in your hair, old letters in your backpack, a teddy bear with a worn-out face - these are not signs of loss, but traces of living movement. The beauty here is not in filters or eternal youth, but in the freedom to dance barefoot when no one is watching and let the wind style your hair as it pleases. Let everything be a little strange, unpolished, incomprehensible - because that is where true, unashamed harmony lies.
Lyrics and translation
Original
Incomprehensible
Incomprehensible
Incomprehensible, let me be
Highway 17, cotton candy rain
Drivin' with my lover, we missed our plane
So we added on the hours to see the lupine flowers
Way out past the border, we blew through Thunder Bay
The pine trees are narrow, a billion broken arrows
The ravens and the crows, robins and the sparrows
All across Ontario, static on the stereo
Went swimmin' in the lake, Old Woman Bay
Travelin' with some stuff I left when I was a kid
Mr. Bear and the wooden box I hid
Full of broken gadgets that mean nothin' now
The only thing I'll keep are the letters and the photographs
In two days it's my birthday and I'll be 33
That doesn't really matter next to eternity
But I like a double number, and I like an odd one too
And everything I see from now on will be somethin' new
"I'm afraid of getting older," that's what I've learned to say
Society has given me the words to think that way
The message spirals, "Don't get saggy, don't get grey"
But the soft and lovely silvers are now fallin' on my shoulder
My mother and my grandma, my great-grandmother too
Wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew
And as silver as the rainbow scales that shimmer purple blue
How can beauty that is livin' be anything but true?
So let gravity be my sculptor, let the wind do my hair
Let me dance in front of people without a care
Let me be naked alone with nobody there
With mismatched socks and shoes and stuff stuffed in my underwear
Incomprehensible, let me be
Incomprehensible, let me be
Incomprehensible, let me be
English translation
Incomprehensible
Incomprehensible
Incomprehensible, let me be
Highway 17, cotton candy rain
Drivin' with my lover, we missed our plane
So we added on the hours to see the lupine flowers
Way out past the border, we blew through Thunder Bay
The pine trees are narrow, a billion broken arrows
The ravens and the crows, robins and the sparrows
All across Ontario, static on the stereo
Went swimmin' in the lake, Old Woman Bay
Travelin' with some stuff I left when I was a kid
Mr. Bear and the wooden box I hid
Full of broken gadgets that mean nothin' now
The only thing I'll keep are the letters and the photographs
In two days it's my birthday and I'll be 33
That doesn't really matter next to eternity
But I like a double number, and I like an odd one too
And everything I see from now on will be somethin' new
"I'm afraid of getting older," that's what I've learned to say
Society has given me the words to think that way
The message spirals, "Don't get saggy, don't get grey"
But the soft and lovely silvers are now fallin' on my shoulder
My mother and my grandma, my great-grandmother too
Wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew
And as silver as the rainbow scales that shimmer purple blue
How can beauty that is livin' be anything but true?
So let gravity be my sculptor, let the wind do my hair
Let me dance in front of people without a care
Let me be naked alone with nobody there
With mismatched socks and shoes and stuff stuffed in my underwear
Incomprehensible, let me be
Incomprehensible, let me be
Incomprehensible, let me be