Set the Dark on Fire

Drink up, baby, stay up all night
The things you could do, you won't but you might
The potential you'll be that you'll never see
The promises you'll only make

-"Between the Bars" by Elliot Smith

*

I wonder if everyone is caught between the bars. And then I think: no, that's only for the folks who are prisoners in their own minds. The rest can't fathom an existence lived between bars.

"I'll kiss you again between the bars."

Desperation and eroticism in that sentence? Certainly it's affecting. The question is why. I think it's the cocktail mix of various emotions. Also because of how vividly an image of a man kissing a woman comes to mind while the window slats make shadows on his shirt so that it really looks like he is kissing her between the bars. Does anyone else here think in images?

The beginning of a story, to my mind: Caught between the bars, he chooses to set the dark on fire.

It's not a story that ends happily in my mind.