I always felt it was more of a song about falling in love.
"You remind me of you" for one thing, and the idea that his audience "broke his window" but "despite all the mess and the broken glass," he was impressed seems to suggest that his opinions of the girl are pretty much set in stone.
He fell off the pier--fell in love--and waited so long he had to look elsewhere--to the waterbugs, skating in figure eights--to find beauty at the bottom of his lake.
The memory part is a little weird, but I think it's sort of like he has told her how he feels and knows she doesn't feel the same, so he's reminiscing about the old days when they joked around about plastic bags and moose's horns.
But now she won't come back around to him--to her homeroom--even when the "bell rings." This makes him very sad, which makes her feel guilty, prompting the Russian play verse.
But on top of it all, he still loves her--which reflects the title: He has named the emotion he feels for her, even if mentally she wasn't "there" for it.
I always felt it was more of a song about falling in love. "You remind me of you" for one thing, and the idea that his audience "broke his window" but "despite all the mess and the broken glass," he was impressed seems to suggest that his opinions of the girl are pretty much set in stone. He fell off the pier--fell in love--and waited so long he had to look elsewhere--to the waterbugs, skating in figure eights--to find beauty at the bottom of his lake. The memory part is a little weird, but I think it's sort of like he has told her how he feels and knows she doesn't feel the same, so he's reminiscing about the old days when they joked around about plastic bags and moose's horns. But now she won't come back around to him--to her homeroom--even when the "bell rings." This makes him very sad, which makes her feel guilty, prompting the Russian play verse. But on top of it all, he still loves her--which reflects the title: He has named the emotion he feels for her, even if mentally she wasn't "there" for it.