Life's for the Living Lyrics
Cars stood like toys made of Taiwanese plastic
The boy laughed at the spastic dancing around in the rain
While laundrettes cleaned clothes, high heels rubbed toes
Puddles splashed huddles of bus stop crows
Dressed in their suits and their boots, well they all look the same
The boys lost in books and crackling vinyl
And carved out a poem above the urinal that read
Don't you cry for the lost
Smile for the living
Get what you need and give what you're given
Life's for the living so live it
Or you're better off dead
Stars shone like buttons on an old man's jacket
We needed a nail but we tacked it 'til it fell off the wall
While pigeons pecked trains, sparks flew like planes
The rain showed the rainbows in the oil stains
And we all had new iPhones but no one had no one to call
Where the widow takes memories to slowly drown
With a hand to the sky and a mist in her eye she said
Don't you cry for the lost
Smile for the living
Get what you need and give what you're given
Life's for the living so live it
Or you're better off dead
They take your dreams down and they stick 'em in storage
You can have them back son when you've paid off your mortgage and loans
Oh hell with this place, I'll go it my own way
I'll stick out my thumb and I trudge down the highway
Someday someone must be going my way home
Till then I'll make my bed from a disused car
With a mattress of leaves and a blanket of stars
And I'll stitch the words into my heart with a needle and thread
Don't you cry for the lost
Smile for the living
Get what you need and give what you're given
You know life's for the living so live it
Or you're better off dead
Smile for the living
Get what you need and give what you're given
Life's for the living so live it
Or you're better off dead
I think this song is about being misunderstood. In a large perspective, disconnected in society as a whole. He walks around the town, watches people do their thing in a sort of out-of-body aspect. He sees that everyone is the same, no one has life to them. Life's for the living, he says, but none of these people are truly living. He's sick of this lifeless town, this fakeness in the people in modern day society. He's going to go off on his own to find someone else who feels the same way, another bright soul (artist) to settle down with. He's done now with this ridiculous way everyone behaves, he's going to live his life like he should be alive. Even if it means being disconnected as the artist he is.
I think this song is about passion. In contrast to @marsbars interpretation I think that he is not judging no other person around him: I see the descriptions rather as a statement, these mere lifes exist and he sees them all in the same situation basically while offering a remedy: be compassionate, be loving and forgiving and respect life above all.