Soul Meets Body

I have known the song Soul Meets Body from Death Cab for Cutie's fifth album, Plans, for as long as I can remember, but until now I had not fully realized the poetic nature of its lyrics. Though the song has a bit of a somber tone, which usually leaves me feeling sad, it is thought-provoking and multidimensional.

The speaker sets up the conflict of the song in the first lines: "I want to live where soul meets body/ And let the sun wrap its arms around me and/ Bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing and feel/ Feel what it's like to be new". The speaker seems to be unsatisfied or unhappy with life and wants to make a fresh start, and feels like the best place to do so is in the theoretical place between "soul" and "body". The experiences of feeling water and sunlight on the skin are purely physical, but the ambiguous use of the word "new" suggests that he wants to cleanse both his body and soul. He goes on to describe the extent of his detachment from his own mind: "'Cause in my head there's a Greyhound station/ Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations/ So they may have a chance of finding a place where they're/ Far more suited than here". These lines reference the experience of taking a journey on a bus, which, in a sense, personify his thoughts, suggesting that each of his thoughts has a unique personality and past. Perhaps he feels like his thoughts are not his own, or that they contradict each other. Thoughts that stem from our physical being and those that stem from our spiritual being may only be able to peacefully coexist in the place where "soul meets body".

The speaker addresses another person near the end of the song with the lines "So brown eyes I'll hold you near/ 'Cause you're the only song I want to hear/ A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere/ Where soul meets body". The audience is a mysterious person with brown eyes whose "song", which is likely a metaphor for the person's presence, he wants to listen to in the place where soul meets body. It is left unclear whether they would be together where the speaker's soul meets his body or where the brown-eyed person's soul meets their body, possibly suggesting that the meeting points of all of our souls and bodies are the same.

I feel that the song's ultimate meaning and purpose is to leave the listener with questions. Are the soul and the body separate entities? How are they different? And, most importantly, how and where do they meet?