Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
She was long gone, long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'til no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
And I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
The beauty of love's in her eyes
She was long gone, long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'til no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
And I borrowed the page
From a leopard's cage
And I prowled in the evening sun's glaze
Her head lifted high to the light in the sky
The opening dawn on her face
She was long gone long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'till no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
And I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
The beauty of love's in her eyes
She was long gone long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'till no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
She was long gone long, long gone.
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'til no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
And I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
The beauty of love's in her eyes
She was long gone, long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'til no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
And I borrowed the page
From a leopard's cage
And I prowled in the evening sun's glaze
Her head lifted high to the light in the sky
The opening dawn on her face
She was long gone long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'till no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
And I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
The beauty of love's in her eyes
She was long gone long, long gone
She was gone, gone, the bigger they come
The larger her hand 'till no one understands
Why for so long she'd been gone.
She was long gone long, long gone.
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I wote this a while back:
Alright, so given the conclusions drawn here, I submit to you my psychoanalysis as well.
Think "long gone", like gone crazy, gone fishing, not there ...
The lyrics are about being trapped, as though in one's own mind; though it is a bit more than that, for this entrapment seems to be a malady, suffered in the first person, and viewed in the third. The malady cannot be treated, cannot be compromised; the harder one presses - or others press -to dissolve it's hold, the stronger it holds.
The sufferer is illustrated in one sad scene, in which He (or She, as it were) is standing at a window, and crying, either tearfully or perhaps shouting - this can be pictured literally, though it is also metaphorical. The sufferer is also here cast into the role of the hero; for standing in the window, he is thinking of the people he loves, and even here in his (or Her) isolation behind the window of his (or Her) mind, His eyes (the eyes are the windows to the soul, afterall, have you not heard that?) engender the beauty of the love he feels for those people.
The lyric ends in the fourth stanza, where the entrapment theme becomes evident, the imagery of a wild animal in a cage, who at the very end lifts Her head to that great symbol of freedom, the sky - the light, in the sky, in fact, which is the dawn, the beginning of the day anew - the dawn opening, to which Her face lights up, as She sees this from inside her cage.
But what I think is most interesting, in this interpretation, is that Her dilemma is not solved. For her cage does not open, but it is the dawn that opens, and lights up her face - only we then, in the final stanza, return to the songwriters assertion that She is long gone.
This is a sad song.
Makes me think a little bit of the song Dominos. Themes of whiling away time, remaining cloistered from the rest of the world. Memories. Dream reference.