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Ill Lyrics
I am ill
I am deathly ill and white
I am sick again
I am ill
I am sick of being ill
Up, up, up
Down, give up
Make it stop
I am ill
I am deathly ill and white
I am sick again
I am ill
I am sick of being ill
Up, up, up
I give up
Make it stop
Call up the hospital
Make me a bed
Reception is down
So I'm better off dead
Movement suggests
That I am still alive
With my head in my hands
I lost my taste for life
I am deathly ill and white
I am sick again
I am ill
I am sick of being ill
Down, give up
Make it stop
I am deathly ill and white
I am sick again
I am ill
I am sick of being ill
I give up
Make it stop
Make me a bed
Reception is down
So I'm better off dead
Movement suggests
That I am still alive
I lost my taste for life
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hmm, i think it may be about turning off life support machines when it seems that the patient isn't ever going to get better, and being alive is just prolonging their pain.
or maybe it's just about depression.
At the end of the album this song comes as a hypathetical solution to the prolonged, perpetual pain and desperation of previous tracks. It is ultimately about giving up. Losing faith, giving up on life - giving up on hope. Sounds depressing when read as a lyric; but I'd maintain of its only being a hypathetical exploration of an end. The gentle guitar, that the song is so brief and the fact that it comes 10 minutes after the rest of the album, all serve to give it an ephemeral, dream-like quality.
It should be viewed then, not as a morbid conclusion to an erstwhile uplifting album, but as a contrasting suggestion of what is worse than carrying on through the pain. In this respect it can be seen as an entirely uplifting song in its own right; one which seems to float angelicly above the realities of the rest of the album. One gets the feeling with Martin, that anything else would be too simple. Typically ambiguous and written when he was 16!