"Well, the lyrics are based on a story I read by, I can’t remember his name, Oliver Sacks (Note: this could quite possibly not be the author’s name... the fidelity of the tape kind of gives out as Kevin is mentioning the author’s name). Anyway it’s the true story of a guy, an artist, who gets into a car accident and loses the ability to see colour. So, he starts painting in black and white. So, yeah, it’s sort of based on that."
Kevin himself described the lyrics like this:
"Well, the lyrics are based on a story I read by, I can’t remember his name, Oliver Sacks (Note: this could quite possibly not be the author’s name... the fidelity of the tape kind of gives out as Kevin is mentioning the author’s name). Anyway it’s the true story of a guy, an artist, who gets into a car accident and loses the ability to see colour. So, he starts painting in black and white. So, yeah, it’s sort of based on that."
http://www.oocities.org/hume2112/chromakeyint.html