Pulaski at Night

Andrew Bird’s song, “Pulaski at Night”, off the album I Want to See Pulaski at Night, is a multidimensional, poetic masterpiece. The song depicts Bird’s conflicting opinions of Chicago, his home city.  “Pulaski at Night” illustrates the bright aspects of Chicago, while tempering the city’s grandness with bleak images of Chicago’s current state. Imploring his listeners to “Come back to Chicago,” Bird ends the song with his emotional bond to Chicago still in conflict with the city’s darker side.

The first two lines in “Pulaski at Night” convey Bird’s strong connection to Chicago. The parable, “Half empty, half full,” lays the groundwork for the two perspectives of Chicago that are explored further: the good half and the bad half. Bird alludes to the Bible in his second line, “Cup runneth over,” which means having more than one needs. Essentially, Bird is saying that regardless of which perspective he takes, Chicago will always fulfil his need for a home.

In verse 2, Bird despairs over Chicago’s grand image acting merely as a cover for the dark truth of city crime and corruption. He sings:

I write you a story But it loses its threadAnd all of my witnessesKeep turning up, keep turning up dead

The story Bird refers to is the story of Chicago, so it follows that Bird wants to give Chicago a strong narrative, but things have turned too chaotic recently. The image of a thread being lost conveys a sense of Chicago’s foregone potential. The reference to witnesses has multiple meanings. On one level, Bird is saying that he can’t write his story of Chicago because he has no one to talk about the city with. On a deeper level, witnesses turning up dead relates to Chicago’s notorious mobs and gangs. In other words, Bird can’t write a story of Chicago’s good nature because crime keeps surfacing in the background.

The third verse mirrors the message of the second verse. It reads,

I paint you a picture

But it never looks right

Cause I fill in the shadows

And block out the, I block out the light

Bird’s picture is, once again, of Chicago. So the hidden meaning behind filling in the shadows is that Bird is forced to acknowledge the city’s shortcomings, and sometimes that means hiding Chicago’s beauty, or light.

Pulaski, the central image of the song, is used by Bird to symbolize the violence of Chicago’s streets. He tries to demonstrate that Pulaski has its bright side as well, just as Chicago also has its bright side.