song about a man

The people in these songs should have names.

She worried about words and names, because words and names were important. She read articles about how language was a prison and books about how language would set us free, and she agreed with them all. And when life got chaotic she relied on names and words to keep things in order, because these things could never be taken away from her.

But life was always chaotic and it often resisted being described, and so she couldn't impose her order on it. Too much of life defied description. It was enough that she couldn't use her words--the words that carried her through everything--to explain things to others, to convince them, to make them understand. On some nights she couldn't even shape them to her own liking.

And yet, she clung to these words, because words are important, because the alternative was to come unchained from the sun entirely, to plummet endlessly through the dark, away from all suns--so she chose her words carefully. But with each failing she withdrew, into worlds of beautiful words, into worlds she could describe. Sometimes she worried if she was hiding, but she didn't know any other way.