Sail

Please excuse my poor English, I’m from Germany. Or just blame it on my ADD. This is my very personal interpretation of this song, created with my own experiences. So you won’t exactly agree with it, but I think it is comprehensible. I think this song is about life with ADD and the problems with the “normal” world and in relationships.

1. Apparently his relationship ended because his partner doesn’t understand him and thinks, due to his behavior, that he doesn’t love her. Many people with ADD are introverted and seem egoistically to others. Many things they want to do only happen in their heads, this is how I understand the second line.
2. Maybe, he made her cry because of his sick pride. Sick pride perhaps, because he was too pride to admit that he loves her and what she really means to him. Maybe he was never able to say or show her, that he loves her, because he was scared of her getting too close. In the 3rd stanza he looks for a way out. How to cope with his ADD and this situation? Should he get some help or just kill himself?
3. He feels like a different breed, many persons with ADD feel different or are seen as different. Maybe he is not listening, this was perhaps the trigger for their argument. In relationships with one part having ADD, the “normal” part often gets the feeling that his partner isn’t listening, not interested and not loving him/her. This is often a reason for the end of such relationships. Unlike most interpretations I’ve read here, I understand the word sail as the inability to fight against external circumstances, even if he is trying. Like a boat he always drifts where the wind is blowing. In the video he is sliding away, no matter if he is fighting against it or just resigning. In the end of the song, he is begging her to sail with him into the dark, because he doesn’t know where he is sailing and where the wind will blow him. He just wants her to accept him as he is and to stay with him, but I think he knows it is too much to ask for, because he sounds desperate. In my opinion you have to distinguish between the interpretation of the song and of the video, even if they have a close message. In the video he is hiding from the aliens in a small house. The house might be a metaphor for his brain, it looks like a typical ADD-house with piles of sheet and chaos — the recorder is under the bed, a lamp is placed on a pile of books, etc… so he tries to hide in his brain from the light and the aliens. A self-chosen isolation, typical for people with ADD. The light and the aliens perhaps stand for the outer world and the everyday life, which seem hostile and scary to him, a way many people with ADD or other disorders see the world. In the video there are some ways how he is trying to avoid that the outer world is getting him: running away, hiding in the bath tube (where he can’t see or hear anything) or playing music. But in the end, he will lose the fight, no matter what he is doing.