From the album MJ Lenderman
Lenderman turns the ghost town into a self-imposed exile disguised as loyalty. He's stuck in a place with no people, claiming it's all for love and work, but the promise to keep working arrives too late. The beloved isn't waiting on the other end of all this labor. They're just gone.
I've been living in a ghost town / I've been living in a ghost town
The repetition doesn't clarify. It emphasizes. He's trying to make the ghost town mean something by saying it twice, like the location itself is the confession. But a ghost town is defined by absence, which makes this less a place and more a state of being alone.
Because I know what it's like / To walk beside you / And to lay beside your lovin'
The word 'because' is doing strange work here. Knowing what closeness felt like should make him want to leave the ghost town, not explain why he stays. The logic only works if memory has replaced the actual person as the thing he's committed to.
Workin' love / Is the only love / That is true
He says this twice, like he's trying to convince himself the philosophy is sound. But working love while living in a ghost town means all the labor is being done in isolation. The work has no recipient. It's performance with no audience.
I am living in a ghost town / Not sure when I'll come down
The tense shift from 'I've been' to 'I am' lands harder than it should. He's not remembering the ghost town. He's in it right now. The phrase 'come down' suggests elevation or altered state, which reframes the whole song. Maybe the ghost town isn't a place at all. It's what happens when you stay committed to someone who left.
By the end, the ghost town stops being a metaphor for loneliness and starts feeling like the natural outcome of his approach to love. He's still there because the work gives him something to do while pretending closeness is coming back. It's not.