Timekiller

I suspect there are a couple different meanings, somewhat complementary but mostly separate. Peter has always said that he writes the music first, and then tries to turn it into lyrics, and occasionally he's surprised at where they go. And I think that's what happened here.

Start with the music. It closely approximates a perfect dance club anthem (and to hear the song it approximates, just listen to the And One version), but it's full of bits of timing that are just wrong. That's why it's called "Timekiller".

So, how do you translate that to words? Creativity drives you crazy, and being "unstuck in time" is the most obvious symptom. The only thing that drives you crazier than writer's block is unblocking and writing compulsively. And either way, when you sit down at your workstation and then look at the clock 20 minutes later, and it'll either be the still same time as when you started, or suddenly 4am. You know there's a state in between, where most people live, but you can never get there. It's a short step to seveneyedfox's interpretation, and the video takes that step. It's about a Kafka-esque writer (with hints of Dostoevsky and William S. Burroughs as well) rather than a songwriter, but that doesn't really change anything. Nor do the hints of speed and absinthe—they may be an addition for the video, but they fit just fine.

But the chorus isn't from the maddened writer's point of view; it's from the point of view of his madness, taunting him. Or, if you instead take those words to be from the narrator's point of view, then he's not singing about his creative demons anymore, he's singing to a lover who only needs him as a time killer rather than for something deeper. And this is where the rest of the song comes from, which leads straight to SubGothius's interpretation.

Some of the lyrics only make sense from the "trapped lover" point of view rather than the "maddened writer" one, but I think the latter is there in the song, not just invented for the video.

I am almost certain that the motif behind this song is related to sex with no strings attached. There are a few obvious lines such as "I'm in a state of mind/which makes me blind/for the fact that I'm a man" that hint at it. I also think that the phrase 'Liquid words' is a metaphor for sweat while the 'stairs' are their bodies. At the bridge of the song we begin to see that there really is no emotional attachment behind our protagonist (The Timekiller...lol) and the object of his infatuation ("In my heart there's no place for you/in my mind there's no space for you) and really all he was looking for was a way to escape his own mind for a good time...a time killer.

Though this wasn't my original interpretation, I'm pretty sure it was the authors.

The music video depicts a man in a fit of hypergraphia. There is a bottle of mysterious liquid (possibly ansinthe) and several nondescript pills on his desk (amphetamines?). As the song/video progresses he becomes increasingly manic as he rises out of his chair and flies around the room while he appears to experience a number of hallucinogenic visuals. This seems to indicate that the lyrics are referring to the addictive pleasure/suffering of ecstatic writing (possibly under the influence of drugs). The author is writing obsessively for the sake of regulating his reality and sense of self (he's able to "calm his mind," reality and fiction "melt together," he fills the void of meaning in his life "with sense", his "mind expands"). However, he may also be writing for the sake of erasing himself in the act of writing or symptomatically self-negating (note the lyric he's "made blind to the fact that [he's] a man"). Of course, all of this erodes his sanity and utterly sinks his time.

He's taunting and rebuking a delusional and obsessive yet frivolous drama-queen lover, perhaps one with a personality disorder (I'm getting a whiff of Borderline here in particular). The amorous times they'd had together were deliriously all-consuming, but now he's recognized her fickle madness for what it is and telling her he's had enough; the amazing sex isn't worth the tradeoff for his peace of mind anymore. For all her desperation to keep him forever, her tenuous grasp of actuality always winds up making her relationships unstable, and he's been little more than a way for her to avoid dealing with the realities of her life by escaping into a dramatic and unrealistic romantic fantasy.

In the song "Timekiller", the protagonist fights against something called the Timekiller, which represents their struggle with getting distracted and not being able to focus on their creative work. They feel like time is passing strangely, and they often find themselves lost in activities that don't help them achieve their goals.

As the song progresses, the protagonist gets stuck in a cycle of getting distracted and wasting time instead of working on their creative projects. They realize that this cycle is making it hard for them to make progress, and they feel frustrated about it.

But then they have a moment of clarity where they decide that they need to break out of this cycle. They realize that they've been avoiding their responsibilities and making excuses for not doing their creative work. So they make the decision to stop being controlled by distractions and instead focus on their goals.

This decision to take control of their time and energy is symbolized by the protagonist's decision to lock up the Timekiller. It represents their determination to overcome their struggles and finally make progress on their creative projects.