I know it's dumb to assume songs are about drugs, but this one might have a couple references. "Something to plant in the lawn" meaning "grass" and "junkman" referring to junk or heroin. I don't think it's about drugs at all but perhaps informed by a deep reflectiveness that goes along with some drug states. This was part of the times, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch, especially since people in that time period generally started looking for drug references in nonsensical lyrics.
That conjecture aside, the lyrics are definitely about a type of isolation, about not ever really knowing others. "Someone and someone" suggests everyone is a "no one", that people are kind of faceless and nameless, going through dull motions: looking, turning, sitting, waiting. Also, the idea of "thinking your mind was my own" seems to be about losing track of who one is inside and needing to connect with someone on the deepest possible level.
"Windows" come up twice. To me, this is about being the observer, sitting back and watching others going through mundane, repetitive motions in their lives, but always from behind glass. It's his job to sing about what he sees and to speak with some depth, but also he's saying that the meanings can never be fully communicated, just briefly glimpsed between the lines.
There is a surreal, illogical quality that invites multiple meanings. The impossibility of making a coherent story out of this is really exactly what the lyrics are about. He starts like he's going to tell you a story, but the story goes missing. By the end it has an uneasy, surreal fairy tale quality. The King is an archetypal image, but even the king veers off into nonsensical rhymes. I don't think this song is about a hopeless loneliness; it starts from that but it's also about the power of words and song to reach across the gaps and "shine the stars" of our being. I think this song is meant to be deep and existential. "Lines of age" refers the weight of the years we feel from the loneliness, as if time itself has etched deep lines into our soul's landscape.
I know it's dumb to assume songs are about drugs, but this one might have a couple references. "Something to plant in the lawn" meaning "grass" and "junkman" referring to junk or heroin. I don't think it's about drugs at all but perhaps informed by a deep reflectiveness that goes along with some drug states. This was part of the times, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch, especially since people in that time period generally started looking for drug references in nonsensical lyrics.
That conjecture aside, the lyrics are definitely about a type of isolation, about not ever really knowing others. "Someone and someone" suggests everyone is a "no one", that people are kind of faceless and nameless, going through dull motions: looking, turning, sitting, waiting. Also, the idea of "thinking your mind was my own" seems to be about losing track of who one is inside and needing to connect with someone on the deepest possible level.
"Windows" come up twice. To me, this is about being the observer, sitting back and watching others going through mundane, repetitive motions in their lives, but always from behind glass. It's his job to sing about what he sees and to speak with some depth, but also he's saying that the meanings can never be fully communicated, just briefly glimpsed between the lines.
There is a surreal, illogical quality that invites multiple meanings. The impossibility of making a coherent story out of this is really exactly what the lyrics are about. He starts like he's going to tell you a story, but the story goes missing. By the end it has an uneasy, surreal fairy tale quality. The King is an archetypal image, but even the king veers off into nonsensical rhymes. I don't think this song is about a hopeless loneliness; it starts from that but it's also about the power of words and song to reach across the gaps and "shine the stars" of our being. I think this song is meant to be deep and existential. "Lines of age" refers the weight of the years we feel from the loneliness, as if time itself has etched deep lines into our soul's landscape.
@bigmike7 (Y)
@bigmike7 (Y)