This song is about what poets, artists, etc a long time ago used to call "the Muse". The Muse was always depicted as a woman and is simply the personification of artistic inspiration. In the middle part of the song he is describing the muse as smoke, steam and haze meaning one minute it's there the next gone. Also she is laughing and smiling at him as if to tease him. Anyone who's ever tried top write a song, book, poem etc knows exactly what he's describing. When the idea is right on the edge of your mind but it seems you can't quite capture it. That's why he says he lost more songs to floods, meaning there were many songs he created that never came to fruition. Saying "the piano knows something that I don't know" makes me think of a songwriter plucking out a tune, perhaps a haunting tune, on the piano keys and trying to form a song from it. In my opinion the beginning and end is the song he is working on, a beautiful haunting melody that isn't finished and that he doesn't quite know what to do with. As to the meaning of that song, well that's a whole other story :)
This song is about what poets, artists, etc a long time ago used to call "the Muse". The Muse was always depicted as a woman and is simply the personification of artistic inspiration. In the middle part of the song he is describing the muse as smoke, steam and haze meaning one minute it's there the next gone. Also she is laughing and smiling at him as if to tease him. Anyone who's ever tried top write a song, book, poem etc knows exactly what he's describing. When the idea is right on the edge of your mind but it seems you can't quite capture it. That's why he says he lost more songs to floods, meaning there were many songs he created that never came to fruition. Saying "the piano knows something that I don't know" makes me think of a songwriter plucking out a tune, perhaps a haunting tune, on the piano keys and trying to form a song from it. In my opinion the beginning and end is the song he is working on, a beautiful haunting melody that isn't finished and that he doesn't quite know what to do with. As to the meaning of that song, well that's a whole other story :)