Half Asleep

This song is mesmerizing. This is about how apathy, anxiety and lethargy are so difficult to overcome in our day-to-day routines, and how looking back at months or years spent uninspired, tired and unproductive can be so sad as we've stopped making new memories and only look back at the old ones as they fade. "I long to feel again" - trying to wake up from apathy and move and experience things again. How familiar this feeling can be.

I think the best thing about this song is that if you dont really listen to the lyrics it could seem like a pop-ish peppy song especially in the beginning. But once you really key into the song it sets a different mood, and always gets me thinking about the past. It kind of reminds me of times when you can be so happy that there is a hidden sadness because you know that it wont be like that forever. Overall it is such a beautiful song that I cant help but repeat over and over.

Since I went through it myself for months on end when I was a teenager, I've always taken this song literally as being about addiction to dreams as a means of escapism, lucid or otherwise.

"Sometimes I go whole days listening bored, half sleep I won't say anything that's worth a thing to me" is a pretty fair description of how you feel when you're in the midst of that sort of addiction. Real life feels unreal, you can barely focus or function, all you can think about is how much you NEED to escape back into your dream world.

"One day, suddenly, time took a turn that once felt so brief I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly

What begins as an unguarded train of thoughts slowly can become an addiction to the slumber of disconnection and the resonance of memory that no longer has a shape but keeps you numb through the hours till gone is another day." How it all starts. A dream lingers in memory, maybe you write it down, maybe it just sticks in the back of your mind. You start wondering if maybe, just maybe, sleeping a little more wouldn't be such a bad thing - an unguarded train of thoughts that leads you slowly into an addiction where that need to retreat, to escape, becomes more and more overwhelming and you spend less and less time awake, until you're really just going through the motions of life because you're expected to, until you sleep away entire weekends and holidays, barely leaving your bedroom except for bathroom breaks and meals.

"Be aware, my darling these things I say I mean are just traces of something I long to feel again I see our time expand in the air almost forcibly, spreading thinner till it dissolves completely." This come across almost like a warning to me not to abuse dreams to the point where you form an emotional dependence on them. The last few lines ring true especially for me - even in the aftermath, knowing how unhealthy your lifestyle was at that time, it's incredibly alluring to fall right back into it again, to miss all those hours of dreamtime stretched into days without a care in the world.

super-agree

It is indeed a beautiful song an I love the hints of discordance in the play out of the song which, as the above poster said, hints at the bitterness and regret of reality butting into the hazy and etheral quality of memory of great times gone, and obviously hints at the implied message that life itelf is so fleeting. Great stuff.

Great song. First line sounds like Sometimes I go whole days listening, bored, half asleep to me though :S

perhaps it's "I blink to see, but light goes fading quickly."

This song struck me as being exactly about an eating disorder. I suppose it's hard to see unless you've been through it. Particularly the lines, "An addiction to the slumber of disconnection" and "keeps you numb through the hours till gone is another day," capture the feeling of an eating disorder perfectly. I wonder if anyone else can see that connection?

*I take this song as a girl who is trapped in love with a lover she no longer cares for, and she has met someone new who she is slowly becoming addicted to. (This is just how I see the song; not what is necessarily right)

VERSE 1; Sometimes I go whole days; Listening, bored, half asleep I won’t say anything that’s worth a thing to me *(Obviously means that most times she is “out of it”, or detached emotionally from herself)

One day, suddenly time took a turn that once felt so brief I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly *(one day she met someone for a brief moment that made the ‘ghosts’ of her past lovers fade- or made her forget about them) ***OR; if the lyrics are; "I blink to see, but light goes fading quickly." as ginasf says; then this could mean that she was blinded by the beauty of this person when first seeing them.

CHORUS; What begins as an unguarded train of thought slowly can become an addiction To the slumber of disconnection *(She has a feeling about that new person and soon these thoughts come on so regularly that it’s like she is addicted to them. “To the slumber of disconnection” can perhaps mean, having these feelings until the moment the previous lovers disconnect, or break up.)

And resonates a memory that no longer has a shape, but keeps you numb *(These new feelings bring on memories of her past lover, that no longer have meaning and rather than feeling love or happiness, she’s numb)

Through the hours still gone’s another day. *(wasted so many days with these feelings)

VERSE 2; Be aware my darling, these things I say I mean Are just traces of something I want to feel again, *(to her old lover; she is addicted to this new man and she means it- these feelings are traces of how she used to feel about her old lover, and what she wants to feel again.)

I see our time expand in the air almost forcibly
Spreading thinner ‘til it dissolves completely. *(She sees their time as lovers slowly coming to an end and soon their love will dissolve like the air or fog she describes as expanding and spreading thinner)

**this is how I see it anyway... but again; personal experiences can make us interpret it all differently

It seems to me that this song is about depression.

"Sometimes I go whole days, Listening bored, half asleep. I won't say anything worth a thing to me." Apathy and lethargy are perhaps the hardest symptoms of depression to deal with, since they have already defeated any effort to pull yourself out of it.

There is mention of an addiction to the "slumber of disconnection," which can refer to pulling away from your loved ones as well as the habit of sleeping away your days, or at least spending them inside your own head.

Time goes achingly slowly, and you survive only on the memories of a time when you weren't numb. And this can go on for days and weeks and months. You find yourself creating a fantasy out of what once was, out of the simple act of feeling something, anything.

Of course, this is just my interpretation.