Even though my life has had a very different trajectory than Lanegan's, I believe I've been in the place he sings about in this song--that desolate sort of place where you're "in between the worlds," not dead but yet strangely aloof and detached from the world of the living. The narrator of this song is surprised that he's still alive, and still feels close to death--that "frozen border"--but knows that his "number isn't up," that it isn't his time to die. What's left is to "janitor the emptiness"--which is all any of us ever really do, it's just that the narrator of this song has the haunting knowledge of it.
Even though my life has had a very different trajectory than Lanegan's, I believe I've been in the place he sings about in this song--that desolate sort of place where you're "in between the worlds," not dead but yet strangely aloof and detached from the world of the living. The narrator of this song is surprised that he's still alive, and still feels close to death--that "frozen border"--but knows that his "number isn't up," that it isn't his time to die. What's left is to "janitor the emptiness"--which is all any of us ever really do, it's just that the narrator of this song has the haunting knowledge of it.