'It's like I'm watching the A4 paper taking over the guillotine.'
Let's say the guillotine is the cutting off of the relationship, and the A4 paper is the people in it.
Suddenly the reality of the people's lives becomes more important than what happens between them.
Why 'A4'? This seems to deepen the contrast. 'Paper' has several possible meanings - newspaper, wallpaper, paperwork etc., but 'A4 paper' is just an everyday commodity, so a passive thing (peoples' lives) suddenly takes over from an active thing (the separation).
'It's like I'm watching...' shows the speaker overwhelmed by the experience, unable to describe it without sounding contradictory.
I like jhibley's 'Cover up their mouths' explanation, but the last verse seems to take us into a wider world ('Now they say the Army's on fire) which suggests that the 'munitions rain' is one terrorist incident in a campaign that gets worse for everybody ('I haven't seen the body count lately' etc.).
'sitting with our parachutes on when the airport's gone' relates to its choral partner 'sitting in a Faraday cage when the lights all failed' - an illusion of safety (a Faraday cage protects you from lightning/wearing a parachute) in a disaster (the lights all failed/the airport's gone) though I still can't tie either directly to the rest of the song.
I think the clue to this song is the line:
'It's like I'm watching the A4 paper taking over the guillotine.'
Let's say the guillotine is the cutting off of the relationship, and the A4 paper is the people in it. Suddenly the reality of the people's lives becomes more important than what happens between them. Why 'A4'? This seems to deepen the contrast. 'Paper' has several possible meanings - newspaper, wallpaper, paperwork etc., but 'A4 paper' is just an everyday commodity, so a passive thing (peoples' lives) suddenly takes over from an active thing (the separation). 'It's like I'm watching...' shows the speaker overwhelmed by the experience, unable to describe it without sounding contradictory.
I like jhibley's 'Cover up their mouths' explanation, but the last verse seems to take us into a wider world ('Now they say the Army's on fire) which suggests that the 'munitions rain' is one terrorist incident in a campaign that gets worse for everybody ('I haven't seen the body count lately' etc.).
'sitting with our parachutes on when the airport's gone' relates to its choral partner 'sitting in a Faraday cage when the lights all failed' - an illusion of safety (a Faraday cage protects you from lightning/wearing a parachute) in a disaster (the lights all failed/the airport's gone) though I still can't tie either directly to the rest of the song.