I'll agree that this song is thematically similar (and a bit lyrically similar too) to No One Live's Forever. But I almost want to take it a step further than that. Although I wouldn't call Dead Man's Party any sort of "concept album" all the songs somehow strike me as having some kind of common theme. It is most prevalent in those two songs, but I actually somehow want to believe that it's a theme common to all of them.
That said, everybody seems to have gotten the interpretation right. Especially greedyskunk. A Dead Man's Party is a rather frightening way to look at life, but that's kind of what it is. I kind of see life that way too, me being slightly morbid and thinking with some consistency about death. (As a result this song appeals to me.) "Waiting for an invitation to arrive" is basically saying "waiting to die" (if you think the party represents death at all). Which is a scary thought, but one I'm familiar with...
And I have finally figured out what it means to leave your body and soul at the door. I was reading something once that proposed that humans are composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit. (And this is actually a somewhat commonly accepted idea.) Your body is the physical you. That's the part that keeps you in the third dimension, so to speak. Then there's your soul, which is your personality. Your soul is the part that makes you you. When we enter into friendships with somebody, we're befriending their soul. That's the part we like about them. The spirit was described in the book as the part that would allow you to enter an afterlife (although the book specifically was talking about Heaven, being as that it was in a Christian context). So you're basically leaving your physical body and your personality at the door to enter the afterlife.
I'll agree that this song is thematically similar (and a bit lyrically similar too) to No One Live's Forever. But I almost want to take it a step further than that. Although I wouldn't call Dead Man's Party any sort of "concept album" all the songs somehow strike me as having some kind of common theme. It is most prevalent in those two songs, but I actually somehow want to believe that it's a theme common to all of them.
That said, everybody seems to have gotten the interpretation right. Especially greedyskunk. A Dead Man's Party is a rather frightening way to look at life, but that's kind of what it is. I kind of see life that way too, me being slightly morbid and thinking with some consistency about death. (As a result this song appeals to me.) "Waiting for an invitation to arrive" is basically saying "waiting to die" (if you think the party represents death at all). Which is a scary thought, but one I'm familiar with...
And I have finally figured out what it means to leave your body and soul at the door. I was reading something once that proposed that humans are composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit. (And this is actually a somewhat commonly accepted idea.) Your body is the physical you. That's the part that keeps you in the third dimension, so to speak. Then there's your soul, which is your personality. Your soul is the part that makes you you. When we enter into friendships with somebody, we're befriending their soul. That's the part we like about them. The spirit was described in the book as the part that would allow you to enter an afterlife (although the book specifically was talking about Heaven, being as that it was in a Christian context). So you're basically leaving your physical body and your personality at the door to enter the afterlife.
...That's a scary idea...