(Author’s note: Thus begins a random series on the site. It is definitely not the usual thing that I write for the public, but it’s something that I’ve had on my mind for a while. Music is a huge part of my existence, and every once in a while I come across a song that not only emotionally affects me, but moves me to the point that I have to share with others. To this point, I’ve used my IG story for that sort of thing, but some songs just deserve more. I would suggest listening through first, and then reading…because this is going to be sort of deep.)

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I never thought that finding out that one of my favorite artists majored in semiotics in college would make me love them more, but there it is.

Semiotics, if you are unaware (and you probably are unaware because you have more of a life than I do), is the study of verbal and non-verbal signs. Words in and of themselves don’t have inherent meaning in most cases after all. When I write the word “dog”, those dark shapes on your screen don’t inherently relate to the fuzzy thing that’s tearing up your carpet in the next room. Over the course of language’s development, however, we use the word “dog” enough that in your head they might as well be the same thing. That in essence is semiotics…the study of how this happens and how these signs convey meaning in ways that we might not expect.

I’ve been a huge Duncan Sheik fan for as long as I’ve known there’s an entity named Duncan Sheik. Sadly, many only know Barely Breathing and assume that he’s a one-hit wonder. But there’s a long list of great songs under his name, and after running the popular music gauntlet he turned his attention to Broadway and became a prolific writer and composer of music for the stage. Such Reveries was released on Sheik’s 2002 album Daylight, but it’s his December 2020 version on Live At The Cafe Carlyle that brought the song back into my sphere. I’ve always been a huge fan of artists remaking or re-recording earlier work at a more advanced age, because it’s often a window into the progression of that person’s life and world experience. (Another great example of this is the acoustic re-recording of Jagged Little Pill that Alanis Morissette did many years ago…the songs that were edgy and angry then are considered and wistful now). The music and setting itself is beautiful, as many of Sheik’s songs are. But because semiotics, I’m going to focus on the words…the signs in the lyrics that first conceal, then reveal true meaning.

The song begins as a very typical-sounding love song:

You and I in the room with the balcony
You lie on the bed while I stare at the sea
I stare at the sea
Oh, such reveries

“Reverie” is not a word that you often hear in a 2021 pop song, so let’s stop for a moment. The OED primarily defines the word ‘reverie’ as “…a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream.” In the early going, therefore, there’s nothing special here. It’s a man happily remembering a past experience with someone he obviously cares about deeply. And following verses say essentially the same thing. A swim in the ocean with his beloved. A horseback ride in Mexico. It’s a song about a happy daydream, a look back at things that happened in the past that makes the singer smile. And the chorus says nothing to suggest otherwise:

Yes all of these things, all of these things
They are such reveries, ohh
All of these things, all of these things
They are such reveries

Around the end of the fourth verse, something starts to be a little…different.

‘Cause you are my treasure, a love that astounds
The end of my searches, my looking around
No more looking around
A love that astounds

Now, I’ve experienced love. And I’ve used a lot of words to describe what that feeling is like. But the word “astounds” is not one of those words. So, back to the dictionary! OED defines “to astound” as “to shock or greatly surprise”. It would be understandable to describe a sudden fall into love or new obsession to astound. But that word doesn’t feel right here. For a thousand other songs and a thousand other artists, it would be easy to shrug and assume that Sheik just needed a word that rhymed with “looking around”, and this one happened to work.

But Sheik majored in semiotics. So we’re going to file that one away and save it just in case something else surprising happens. And ‘just in case’ quickly arrives. The music turns to a more minor chord. The vocal range goes up. And we find out…

…that it’s all a lie.

Don’t listen to me
It’s my imagination
I don’t even know you
It never happened
Just dreams in slow motion
They never happened
All that I told you
It never happened ever

None of the things in the song happened. The PERSON in the song, the object of love, the sharer of every experience, isn’t around. She may not even EXIST. And, very subtly, the chorus also changes:

’cause all of these things, all of these things
They are just reveries, ohh
All of these things, all of these things
They are just reveries

They’re not SUCH reveries. They’re JUST reveries. “Such reveries” implies value, a sort of cherished nature to their content. “JUST reveries” takes those prizes and throws them in the trash. It’s JUST a reverie…a made-up scene that never happened and therefore has no value in the real world. All of the glittering gold is pyrite. Even the SOUND difference in the two words conveys meaning…the word “such” ends with a soft liquid ‘ch’ that melts into the next word, but “just” ends with a sharp labial “t” sound. It literally spits itself out of Sheik’s mouth. See, they aren’t happy memories of days gone. In fact, the word “reverie” has a more archaic meaning: “a fanciful or impractical idea or theory”. A reverie can be something that isn’t true yet tries to give meaning to the world, even though ultimately hopeless. The song isn’t a happy memory…it’s a confession that the singer has imbued his made-up thoughts with value that doesn’t exist. And while he holds them dear, he ultimately knows that they are just spectres of nothingness.

The epilogue that ends the song as it melts into silence is equally hopeful yet hopeless:

So many visions still to see
And many travails before I may sleep
But then when I sleep
Oh such reveries

He’s not giving up his reveries. He will die with them. And, through death, he releases himself from this world where he can daydream of his non-existent love to eternity.

And this is where I generally become a blubbering mess.