First step’s got me lying on the floor. By the Second step, I hear a knocking at the door. Three I put my life in your hands. By the fourth step, how much light is left? Five, six, seven I can see the DARK and the and HARM I’ve done I’ve left my mark. EIGHT. NINE. TEN. ILL TAKE IT BACK AGAIN. ELEVEN, TWELVE IM PUTTING FIRES OUT IN HELLLLLLLLL

the two different ways of losing a wedding ring. I like that. Somebody who heard the song asked me, “Did all those things actually happen to you?” And I wanted to be like, “Well, obviously not.” You either lose your wedding ring or you sell it. I wanted the listener to be off-guard. Is this real? Or is this just a song about what it feels like to go through this? I didn’t want people to know whether or not they could take it literally. Like you said, it’s subversion. I wanted to subvert the form of the narrative. You can’t trust the narrator. Those things excite me as a writer. I love it when you’re listening, and you’re right in the palm of someone’s hand, and then all of a sudden you’re given a reason not to trust them anymore.

there are a lot of pretty obvious allusions on the record to a marriage on the rocks. That was a pretty huge source of inspiration. While this was all going on, I really didn’t want to write, like, part two of Cursive’s Domestica. I didn’t want this to be this heart-wrenching record about breaking up. I mean, I love Cursive, but I knew I didn’t want to do that. It’s just such a thing, you know? The breakup record. I hardly ever hear a breakup song and think, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Most of the time I just think, “You sound like a self-absorbed douchebag.” Domestica is one of the few records that gets it. But this isn’t Domestica. This record is about devotion. It’s like being in a desert and writing about water. Even if it’s make-believe water, I’d rather have some of that around than just write about sand. A lot of the songs are about how incredible devotion is, how incredible all the things we care about are. It just became this huge theme for the record. It’s a huge love letter. It became so much easier to write once I realized that.