Dug this up from my lyrics journal:
"8 Oct 2007: …I was recalling something J said about moving to Korea, how part of the appeal was the prospect of being there at an historical moment—reunification of North and South, or at least an opening of borders, the kind of thing that would send people spilling into the streets en masse in both celebration and anxiety. Somehow I ended up writing about a couple separated in the confusion, and the undertones of disturbing possibilities that lurk in any dramatic moment of change, particularly a revolution or liberation. I remember searching hard for interesting phrases, trying to evoke vivid images and feelings in striking word combinations, not really knowing what the hell I was actually writing about.
"…Though I have a weirdly fierce attachment to this song already, it’s problematic for a number of reasons. Musically it sounds a lot like some other song I can’t pinpoint, and that’s been P’s and A’s reaction to it as well (the two people who’ve caught snippets of it so far). Lyrically it suggests the fall of the Berlin Wall, since that’s the most iconic event of that sort in recent memory and so the first thing people will assume, but there’s no such thing as St. Stephen’s cross in Berlin, and none of the details are meant to be historically accurate to that night. What’s more, the phrase ‘St. Stephen’s cross,’ which somehow feels right enough that I don’t want to change it, isn’t easily mapped to some other political situation; there’s no bifurcated border town in Northern Ireland, and it’s doubtful any wall-split city in Asia or the Middle East would have a Catholic church. I’m not sure how I would explain or defend this song if it went out in public, basically.
"Still…something about this song captures the effect I’ve been chasing all summer, the ‘Old Friends’ standard: spare words, simple chords, a framing of a deeply personal moment in a bigger swirling world."