The meaning is straightforward, a lonely man has a meaningless job and there is no fulfillment to be had for him anywhere in the area. He really doesn't have anywhere else special to go and starts out tentative, "if I had my way" and "if the folks will have me" yet we listen as he becomes resolved: "Honey I will be there" - and who's that? An unknown (or mythical) honey and friendly folks who are (maybe) out there. "I can see your hands reaching out through a shining daydream" is how come he knows. And he knows that's a totally flimsy reason to believe, but even though still "I must obey this feeling i can't explain away." Me, I believe he is now resolved to act but there could be a cynical interpretation here that he's deluded on so many levels. Why do I believe? Because the ending seems so sincere, in the unknown place he knows is out there, and with the unknown people he longs to have kinship with, his daydream is "a vision of a child returning". Not a return to anywhere he's been but a spiritual homecoming (that he also wrote about in the words to Sun Mountain - but in that song, by then when he's already made his move, it is "all the things I left behind" that if he needs them "they will be there" line emphasized right there! "a part of my mind").
Hipsters might be entirely justified if they see the singer moving back to his parent's place in Arizona. But that doesn't fit with the back story. It's recorded by the time Fagen's 23, maybe well earlier. He'd spent almost his whole life within 100 miles of NYC up to then and is at that point barking up all the wrong trees in Manhattan's fading music industry. He had to see a move to LA coming when he wrote this, or some part of him did. "A kingdom where the sky is burning."
Sure, most Steely Dan songs contain hella obscure references and in the end half of them are anyone's guess really, there are so many conflicting myths about them, and sure it's unusual but it's not unknown for them to just have a straightforward story line. I mean, there's no great mystery about Reeling in the Years either. More to the point relating to Any World - so is Fagen perfectly frank and straightforward about another personal crisis in his solo number On the Dunes maybe 20 years later.
The meaning is straightforward, a lonely man has a meaningless job and there is no fulfillment to be had for him anywhere in the area. He really doesn't have anywhere else special to go and starts out tentative, "if I had my way" and "if the folks will have me" yet we listen as he becomes resolved: "Honey I will be there" - and who's that? An unknown (or mythical) honey and friendly folks who are (maybe) out there. "I can see your hands reaching out through a shining daydream" is how come he knows. And he knows that's a totally flimsy reason to believe, but even though still "I must obey this feeling i can't explain away." Me, I believe he is now resolved to act but there could be a cynical interpretation here that he's deluded on so many levels. Why do I believe? Because the ending seems so sincere, in the unknown place he knows is out there, and with the unknown people he longs to have kinship with, his daydream is "a vision of a child returning". Not a return to anywhere he's been but a spiritual homecoming (that he also wrote about in the words to Sun Mountain - but in that song, by then when he's already made his move, it is "all the things I left behind" that if he needs them "they will be there" line emphasized right there! "a part of my mind").
Hipsters might be entirely justified if they see the singer moving back to his parent's place in Arizona. But that doesn't fit with the back story. It's recorded by the time Fagen's 23, maybe well earlier. He'd spent almost his whole life within 100 miles of NYC up to then and is at that point barking up all the wrong trees in Manhattan's fading music industry. He had to see a move to LA coming when he wrote this, or some part of him did. "A kingdom where the sky is burning."
Sure, most Steely Dan songs contain hella obscure references and in the end half of them are anyone's guess really, there are so many conflicting myths about them, and sure it's unusual but it's not unknown for them to just have a straightforward story line. I mean, there's no great mystery about Reeling in the Years either. More to the point relating to Any World - so is Fagen perfectly frank and straightforward about another personal crisis in his solo number On the Dunes maybe 20 years later.