Gary Ditsch

Dumpster in the driveway

Written: 2/13/2026

Lyrics that hit home today came from Death Cab for Cutie's song, Black Sun. I was watching their Tiny Desk session with Romy when this song came on. The verse that caught my attention:

There is an answer in a question
and there is hope within despair
and there is beauty in a failure,
And there are depths beyond compare
There is a role of a lifetime
and there's a song yet to be sung
and there's a dumpster in the driveway
Of all the plans that came undone

All these lines inspire hope and are poetic, but the last two lines really jumped out.

When I see a dumpster in a driveway, I most often think about the plans a family has to make a home something new. Interesting that he represented it as plans that had come undone.