Long Gone

I agree it's ace. Very lost mariner.

I think it's autobiographical. In his lyrics he more than often speaks in the third person, and he tends to refer to himself as female a lot too. In my opinion it's for two reasons.

In this one it's 'she' as in a ship or veichle he's steering - or rather that he's meant to be steering but he's on strike & has stopped or run aground (rather than given up). Like him being beached in Opel.

In some others it's sarcasm - because his girlfriend (and I reckon women in general) have pushed to acquire & have taken over the dominant male role by trading off their sexulaity (like a gigolo). Stupid thing is, they forget that they haven't taken, men have surrendered and given. Fine, but they should have some grace about it and recognise what real strength is - rather than their over-blown show off posturers who are only inflated in their padded bag of safe civilisation. Boagrecious's to a man, or rather water bison.

The hands are what's he's done to his life by using it as a picket line to demonstrate and communicate his dissatisfaction. That's 'abstract oppositional defiance' for you.

The sky is death, the light in the sky is God - Apollo. Syd's Achilles too don't you know.

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.

I think he is saying a lot in this song. Part of it is that even though he is crazy, he is a loving person. He is always making reference to the sky, and I think he's talking about the way he thinks when he mentions that. I am still trying to decide what the "larger her hand" part means. Maybe it's the effects of something hitting him like a hand would hit somebody. That's the way he speaks. It's always visuals to explain events lol. He says beauty of love in her eyes... "her" is his mind I think. I could be wrong lol. Syd is a tricky feller lol.

this song is an excellent one,loved the chorus.

a minor, offhand thought. Syd had probably read Rilke's justifiably memorable poem about the caged leopard. and when he added this memory to his song, he included the word "borrowed" to indicate it wasn't entirely original; it was a literary allusion.

and thus--probably more-or-less accidentally--he created this unusual but marvelous image. melding together rhyme, the beast inside, and an appeal to the surreal: putting it all together in a way which sounds pleasing.

i heard

and i borrowed a page from her "leopard's cage" and i cried in the evening sun's glaze

which made me think of reading the diary (cage, outlet for rage, vessel of frustration) of a frustrated person. now, people wouldn't normally lend out their diaries, and the girl is gone, so: did she kill herself? run away?

I think it’s about Syd having lost either his muse and his mental stability/equilibrium.

Having lost his ability to create music in the way he wanted and being unable to express himself.

The particular lyric that seems to be the most difficult to interpret is:

“She was gone, gone, the bigger they come The larger her hand 'til no one understands Why for so long she'd been gone.”

He’s saying that the greater the influence or part that the muse/artistic inspiration plays in someone’s life, the harder it is for others to appreciate the impact and severity of that loss.

And also the path that led to losing that spark, which in Syd’s case was his slow mental decline which undoubtedly started long before he showed outward signs of it.

Just my opinion.