Foreman, Jon - My Coffin Lyrics

One of my fascinations with Switchfoot and Jon Foreman is how they can make unconventional time signatures sound so natural. This song, Float, Dirty Second Hands, Circles, Dig New Streams, etc all do it so well.


Oh and of course the lyrics are great too.

Dear blue sky
Are you afraid to die
Do you fear you'll never see the morning?
And the twilight comes
And you lose your sun
Does it come to you without a warning?
When the brain waves stop
How will I know
When the carbon bonds that hold me
Start to let go
Is there someone buried
Beneath this skin?
And is he free when I am lost
In my coffin
Dear moonlight
When you shine at night
Do you fear you'll use up your resources?
With the sun as king
Do you feel for it's string
When the higher powers run their courses
When the rain falls down
What brings it back?
Opens the resurrected cloud
From white to black
It's a second birth
Under this skin
My coffin
My coffin
Yeah
Resurrection comes
But death comes first
All of our entitlements and rights
Will drive the hearse
I'm bleeding death
Death is unmade
The minute I lose myself I'm saved
From my coffin

Its funny how this song always gives me a feeling of wonder and a weird sense of peace. Its like it has a kind of magical way of questioning reality and the nature of counciousness, giving you a sense of peace in not knowing instead of a crises. Love it!

one of my favorite songs by him =)

This is impossibly beautiful :')

Such an addictive song, an exquisite piece of art, this one keeps me returning to the play button again

Jon Foreman, you're a great songwriter, but some of us still miss Tim, he's apparently the one who made things rock... This barely has a drum beat, like your very early work.

Abigail Cantrell Tim isn't a drummer? He's a bassist. Besides, Tim is on some of these Wonderlands songs, just not this one.

GREAT SONG!

Hermosa canción, saludos desde Guatemala

This may be my favorite song from The Wonderlands...so lovely. So absolutely amazing.

<3 This song is :D

He makes death sound so beautiful

such beautiful lyrics...... so admire this guy; and I love the way he makes the 7/8 sound almost even with that ostinato in the intro

Love it.

Jon Foreman is literally perfection. How can someone give such emotion into every song? What an inspiration he has been for me! 😍

This song is about death and resurrection. He uses natural world phenomena like clouds and rain as poetic examples. I'm familiar with the water process and the way temperature changes things in our atmosphere, but when we die there's no physical process that brings us back.

I've always loved Jon Foreman's music, but I've become a skeptical person. I can't see a spiritual side to the world. I'm disillusioned. My lofty fantasies are fading as I get on with life. I'm afraid my interest in art is waning and I've little inspiration or guidance left. Still, this music manages to bring back some form of emotion and color into my dry greying soul. Even as I descend from lofty castles in the clouds built on ideas like God, Love and Hope, I'll still be enjoying this music.

You wrote, "Just because I'm inspired by something, doesn't mean that I believe in it."
Not sure why it inspires you then. Surely there must be some part of that truth which triggers a sympathetic belief inside of you - something that momentarily overcomes the grayness of nihilism and fills the vacuum of objective meaning,

You wrote, "What we are capable of knowing does not afford us any absolute certainty, only relative."
Remember that statement is a philosophical, non-scientific, subjective claim.

A word like "rational" doesn't make sense if you reject objective truth. "Rational" relates to some objective standard of reason and sensibility, making it a highly subjective (and essentially useless) word in a nihilistic worldview. Everything is subjective to the nihilist (which is apparently part of what you're saying in this comment).

I'm glad that you hope for meaning.
I hope none of my comments are clever or condescending - I hope that when you leap you find Truth.
I think God has given us just enough to go on and find Truth (a religious, philosophical, non-scientific, subjective claim based upon my rational observation of the world and my subjective experience).

Keep living in wonder.

@SteventheThorn My statement you quoted is both philosophical and scientific. Skepticism is a requirement of the scientific method. When making a hypothesis you assume the null hypothesis. Science does not prove or disprove anything, it only gathers support. At the very core of science is experimentation. This means that something must be falsifiable. No scientific 'fact' is beyond testing. In essence, this casts a shadow of doubt over all that we've learned from science.


I just got to thinking, sometimes the burden of proof is better than the burden of uncertainty. Taking a flying leap of faith on an unfalsifiable claim may be the most logical decision after all. Albert Camus once said, "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is." 


I've made a decision. Where things are within the scope of my empirical understanding, I will be rational and avoid unfalsifiable claims, but where things may be relevant, yet beyond empirical understanding, my intuition and inspirations are all I have to guide my understanding. It is there, where we choose what we honestly believe in spite of our own understanding. Indeed, that's where my hopes are, just as you said, music triggers those moments of hope where life feels like there's more than I can see. It's why when I listen to this music, I find it compelling to believe in something beyond myself. Outside of empirical understanding, believing is just a matter of accepting or denying your inspirations. I choose to believe in God, but I can't expect other's to feel the same because it's purely a personal matter and some may never feel a desire to believe.

@Daniel Gerber I think that's well said.

Daniel Gerber Jesus loves you big shooter!

nature can reveal things about the creator i suppose the science or study of the evaporation process is measurable and we cannot measure how when our breathing stops if our spirit or something inside us goes anywhere , i think when followers are honest and contemplate and in the doubts of faith when we pray things are revealed through nature phenomenal things. yes you are so right about superstitions and too many people in christendom add these and then try to explain things God their Father never intended His greatness is written all around in so many ways. I always started seeing in my skepticism times yet continuing to talk to my dad that invisible things are behind whats visible that the visible came form invisible things and invisible things can be in the invisible , creations could reveal something about what we become , maybe not i suppose - i find the wind an invisible fact and though measurable its hard to predict and I feel a Creator leaves mystery there ---in a discussion with Jesus a religious leader who seems to realize Jesus is special but breaking religious rituals and traditions and curious enough to meet separate form his religious club and pious peers ...7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[a] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[b]

9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

i find this interning enough I feel Jon Foreman seeks God and finds things written in the song around us a song in the creation , this inspires me to keep faith and continue to seek out God there is a spirit outside of the hurtful elements of the man made systematic church , its a powerful journey and you are so loved and i love your questions far more than sitting around with so called christians who think they have all the answers -- you are being real real is good and children of God are real

i have waited a long time for this song. i fell in love when Jon played it the first time. now i'm just speechless-ly grateful to be alive.

Favorite song from the EP. 👏

Wow, this is dream like. How beautiful!!!1

I feel the same, it sounds like a dream

The melody of this song is fantastic!!