lostage - 2:50

Listed on one of their early demos as "am 2:50," this song is about waking up to tangled emotions in the middle of the night, a tortured realization of something that has lost its shine.


lostage - 2:50
Translated by Alan Rice

I hid my face in the dark blue night
Having that dream of being alone

I thought¹
It's not like that, leave it for tomorrow²

Lingering memories I can't ignore any longer
Those feelings that won't find a voice³

I thought¹
That bell already chimed
so many times

What do you think, how do you feel⁴
There's nothing left for me

What do you think, how do you feel
There's nothing left for me

What do you think, how do you feel
There's nothing there anymore

1. In the original Japanese below, the phrasing on both of these stanzas is flipped, which creates a very different feeling.  I tried a variant with "So I thought" at the end instead of on the front, but it creates more of a sense of past tense reflection that I thought went against the overall feeling of the song.

2. This line was difficult to put into English, and I'm not really satisfied with it, but he's rejecting the dream of being alone and trying to push off thoughts about it for another day.  Obviously, it doesn't work, because immediately after saying he thinks he'll put it off, he's struck by "un-erased memories."

3. Had to take a few liberties here, because "unerased memories" is not how we'd approach that concept in English, and because "That feeling which did not become a voice," the literal translation of the second line of the stanza, just sounds super silly.  I chose this line over "Those feelings I can't put into words" because it stays a little closer to the original's usage of "voice."

4. Clever lyrics here, he uses two different forms of "omou," which means to "think/believe/feel about" a thing.  Thus, I also used two variants in the translation, although it's impossible to maintain the beautiful wordplay, since there aren't any homonyms that function like that in English for this.


The original Japanese lyrics, for reference:

濃いブルーの夜　顔を隠した
一人だったような　あの夢

そんなもんじゃない　明日に加えよう²
そう思って¹

消してない記憶　もう否めない
声になってない　あの想い³

もうすでにあの鐘は
何度も唸る
そう思って¹

何を思う　何を想う⁴
何もない　もう僕には

何を思う　何を想う
何もない　もう僕には

何を思う　何を想う
何もない　もうそこには