Believe

Quackers and sullivanm55 have got it the closest, thogh Sullivan's specific lyric interpretations are way off.

"its already done" is NOT an allusion to suicide, and the song never gives any indication whatsoever that the singer is contemplating suicide (there is a reason for this).

Further, although ideas like the search for meaning and purpose inevitably meld into questions of religion, there is also nothing remotely religiously explilcit in the lyrics.

This song is a fair bit simpler - and a fair bit more depressing - than any of you realize.

This song is about the human condition. Quackers sums it up reasonably well:

"i think this song is just about how we're all trying to make a difference in the world yet few of us do. and how you're waiting for something amazing to happen, for that life changing moment to come around the corner, but it never does, and you're starting to loose hope."

But it's even less dramatic than that. The singer does not imply that he is looking to make a difference in the world, or that they are waiting for a major moment; his hopes are much humbler than that. All he is hoping for is for life to be something other than a linear collection of valueless instants. He just wants thet "one thing" that makes it even mildly worth going through the effort. It doesn't have to be saving the world, or finding a state oif being that fills him with joy. He's not asking for much - he just wants that one single little thing - that one cause, helper, responsibility, to give him something to keep putting one foot in front of the other for.

As Sullivan says:

"someone who has seen past everyday life. One who knows there is no point to the very routine life we live"

He goes very wrongly after that though by suggesting its the state of modern society which the singer has a hard time with. I expect the singer would have similar difficulties at any point in human history. It's the human condition - the state of living itself - with which he has problems.

I said before that there is a reason that the singer never gives any indication of suicidal tendencies, or of anything else so dramatic (in my opinion, doing so would have been greatly to the song's detriment). The reason is this: the singer is describing a state of mind in which living is a fruitless endeavor. And he is in a worse position than most for seeing it.

The lyrics:

"The faces all around me, they don't smile they just crack."

Manufactured pleasantness. We all see it every day, unless you are completely oblivious. How many hours per day do you spend being pleasant to people you have no attachment of any kind with whatsoever - who you are going to forget the moment they leave your sight? Very first line of the song and he's already called attention to the fact that you spend nearly a third of your life suppressing your identity - putting forth a false, crafted image - an image of someone else entirely - just because that's... what we have to do. You will only live 1/3 of the generally accepted length of your life. Obviously, you are asleep for one third, but for the other third, you are drifting around inside your own head, passing the time, while the proxy you does what it needs to do to keep food in your mouth.

"Waiting for our ship to come, but our ship's not coming back."

As Quackers suggested: we spend a huge portion of our lives just hoping things'll turn around. The further implication is that we use this hope to justify not taking matters into our own hands; there is a fictional salvation coming, always just around the corner, and all we have to do is just barely get by until it gets here.

We do our time like pennies in a jar What are we saving for?

Reiteration of the above: most of the time, we're just passing it. Why? Is THAT the point, after all?

"There's a smell of stale fear that's reeking from our skin. The drinking never stops because the drink absolves our sin. We sit and grow our roots into the floor What are we waiting for"

What this paragraph means to highlight is how simply waiting for our 'ship' to come in is worse than it seems. It's not just that we're not actively moving towards a better life - passing the time continually roots us further into our current life.

We forget more and more of what we learned in school. We get more and more tired, and the prospect of going back for further education, or putting in the huge amount of work that would be required to drastically change our position in life becomes more and more intimidating. The longer we 'get by' in a given sitiuation, the more readily we can convince ourselves that we've got enough to live comfortably, and taking any sort of risk to change our position becomes more and more unnerving.

We become afraid of taking any steps to effect the change that we've originally desired, because we're terrified of losing the little that we currently have. Obviously, many have turned to drink in similar situations - that one ain't hard to get.

"so give me something to believe cause I am living just to breath and i need something more to keep on breathing for so give me something to believe"

The crux of it all, and the chorus for that reason. This paragraph explains why he is singing this song.

"So give me something to believe"

Something. Anything. Just that one thing that will make his life more than a simple succession of days. Something that will persist past one sleep/wake cycle. Something more than getting through that day on the job without getting fired. A greater victory than getting through the month with no disasterous medical expenses, or the car breaking down.

"Cause I am living just to breath"

Cause at the moment, all he has is the next breath. The only reason to draw it is to get to the one after it.

"and I need something more"

The breathing itself just ain't enough.

"to keep on breathing for"

see?

"somethings always coming you can hear it in the ground it swells into the air with the rising, rising sound and never comes but shakes the boards and rattles all the doors"

There's two things this paragraph could refer to, both equally relevant. If he meant for it to refer to both, he is simply a genius.

1.) We've moved beyond the ship metaphor, but this something is the same thing as the ship. His point with "you can hear it in the ground" is that we're very good at convincing ourselves that it's on the way - that we can 'see it just on the horizon,' so to speak. "Swell"ing into the air, and the "rising sound" are further manifestations of the ship - we can see, feel, and hear it - it's just always right there - a week, amybe a month away. If we can just get through the next day, and a few more after that... But it "never comes," though the shaking boards and rattling doors tell us its oh-so-close!

2.) Alternatively (and I would lean towards this, as the 'ship' has already been addressed), the something could be the disaster that will knock him from his place of bare subsistance. The incident that will force him to change his path, since in his current state of drastic underachievement he doesn't have very many resources to deal with disaster. This distructive event is always just on the horizon as well. and he continually narrowly avoids it (or he wouldn't be here singing this), but he can't help but feel, at all times, that he's just one bit of bad luck away from everything falling apart. Shaking the boards and rattling the doors concurs images that go very well in line with this.

(The possiblity that part of him is hoping for this disasterous thing to happen should be noted. He is so dissatisfied with his current state, that perhaps being knocked onto ANY other course would be more desirable than remaining "rooted" where he is.)

"I am hiding from some beast but the beast was always here watching without eyes because the beast is just my fear That I am just nothing now its just what I've become what am i waiting for its already done"

My least favorite verse. He didn't need to tell us the beast was his fear - there was enough there to figure it out.

The point here is, as I mentioned before, his own fear of things falling apart has become the force that is holding him in place. He wants nothing more in the world than to find some other state of being that he can live with, but HE is the one preventing him from making that discovery. And he's proven to himself again and again that there's not a damned thing he can do about it by now; if he hasn't made a move and shaken things up by now, there's clearly nothing short of something directly forcing his hand (that this that shakes the boards and rattles the doors) that will cause him to.

"I am hiding from some beast but the beast was always here"

Acknowledgement of the paradox described above: The beast is what is causing him to hide, but wherever he hides, there is the beast.

"the beast is just my fear that I am nothing. Now it's just what I've become."

Although he was finally able to get out his thoughts, he realizes that it's already too late. He's the victim of his own self-fulfilling prophecy: his fear of his life becoming valueless has played a major role in causing it to become so. He is acknowledging that fearing that conlusion is a waste of time at this point, because he's already arrived at that end.

Now, despite the fact that he just seems to directly admit that his hopes no longer have any shot of being fulfilled, he ends the song with the chorus - one last request for that one thing. Perhaps this is simply because ending on the chorus worked, musically, for this particular song, but perhaps not. No way to know except straight from the horse's mouth, I suppose. But I'll suggest two other possibilities:

1.) Despite telling even himself that it's over, hope springs eternal, and he still has, somewhere, some tiny bit of fight left in him. He'll keep on looking for that one thing to believe in until he's got no means left of finding it.

2.) Despite his stark honestly with himself, and his ability to eloquently express the speicifcs of the situation that the rest of us don't even realize we are in, he's still no farther along than us. At the end of the day, he can tell himself all he wants that something's got to change, but he's living proof that none of us - not a one - can transcend this human condition. That we're all just...

"Waiting for our ship to come. But our ship's not coming back."