I love how the sixth line of each verse is sung by a second voice. I read the second voice as being the unspoken confession that the first voice really wants to say, but doesn't, or can't:
A: The picture was a masterpiece of comic timing
You wouldn't laugh at all
B: And I wondered what the boy was thinking
A: The picture was an old collage of something classical
The model with a tragic air
Because without a doubt he'd given up the fight
The ghost of somebody at his side
---Here the analysis is interrupted by his true thought: I wondered what the boy was thinking?
B: And if you think you see with just your eyes you're mad
---Again, an unspoken thought--perhaps too cliched to risk voicing.
A: But I was so embarressed that I missed your party
It was me that paid for it eventually
Because you know how much I wanted
B: To meet your friend the star of stage and local press
---The second voice reveals the real reason he wanted to go to the party.
A: Frankly, I let my heavy eyelids flutter
B: Because I have been sleeping badly lately
---Again, the first voice doesn't want to admit a weakness.
In the end, the person being addressed isn't impressed by the narrator--maybe because he won't reveal his true self? The lines after hint at the presence of the second voice:
"A whisper in a choir stall
The man was talking about you simultaneously"
I love how the sixth line of each verse is sung by a second voice. I read the second voice as being the unspoken confession that the first voice really wants to say, but doesn't, or can't:
A: The picture was a masterpiece of comic timing You wouldn't laugh at all B: And I wondered what the boy was thinking A: The picture was an old collage of something classical The model with a tragic air Because without a doubt he'd given up the fight The ghost of somebody at his side
---Here the analysis is interrupted by his true thought: I wondered what the boy was thinking?
B: And if you think you see with just your eyes you're mad
---Again, an unspoken thought--perhaps too cliched to risk voicing.
A: But I was so embarressed that I missed your party It was me that paid for it eventually Because you know how much I wanted B: To meet your friend the star of stage and local press
---The second voice reveals the real reason he wanted to go to the party.
A: Frankly, I let my heavy eyelids flutter B: Because I have been sleeping badly lately
---Again, the first voice doesn't want to admit a weakness.
In the end, the person being addressed isn't impressed by the narrator--maybe because he won't reveal his true self? The lines after hint at the presence of the second voice:
"A whisper in a choir stall The man was talking about you simultaneously"