This song, I think, is about someone who keeps a distance between himself and everything else (his"mask"), upset by the world and all of its obsession mediocrity, futility, and pretense ("medals & trophies... all before the race has been run"). Eventually, maybe initially for fun ("tease") or having been "teased" himself or maybe just out of a sense of hopelessness, he starts fucking around. Then he abandons his determination to rail against the world ("you finally drop the knife") and allows himself get lost in sex ("The long arm of important things/disappears in her gown" and "it feels so good to give up give in her arms"). The last part of the song seems to be this person reminiscing and saying how "it hurts to be young," to be so adamant about one's principles and priorities and beliefs especially once one finds out, gradually but inevitably, that it's a losing game ("you gotta hack your way through and realize it's almost entirely lies"). But then nothing matters anymore and it all becomes a joke (my favourite lyric in the song, "But then you'll begin to smile. Smile for me... real... wide."). That realization changes the individual, and thus "The First Breath You Take After You Give Up" and the last four lines:
"Then you accept what you are.
The transforming is done.
You've become...absorbed into, & you know.
I think I know what to do."
This song, I think, is about someone who keeps a distance between himself and everything else (his"mask"), upset by the world and all of its obsession mediocrity, futility, and pretense ("medals & trophies... all before the race has been run"). Eventually, maybe initially for fun ("tease") or having been "teased" himself or maybe just out of a sense of hopelessness, he starts fucking around. Then he abandons his determination to rail against the world ("you finally drop the knife") and allows himself get lost in sex ("The long arm of important things/disappears in her gown" and "it feels so good to give up give in her arms"). The last part of the song seems to be this person reminiscing and saying how "it hurts to be young," to be so adamant about one's principles and priorities and beliefs especially once one finds out, gradually but inevitably, that it's a losing game ("you gotta hack your way through and realize it's almost entirely lies"). But then nothing matters anymore and it all becomes a joke (my favourite lyric in the song, "But then you'll begin to smile. Smile for me... real... wide."). That realization changes the individual, and thus "The First Breath You Take After You Give Up" and the last four lines:
"Then you accept what you are. The transforming is done. You've become...absorbed into, & you know. I think I know what to do."