Well, first off I notice the entire song is built upon a paradoxical extended metaphor. Every lyric illustrates this. "I am a million pieces of the sky" indicates a hyperbolic image of a shattered, broken continuity of the sky; "I found a way to be alone," following the statement that he is the sky, creates a paradox of a sky being separated from the people it is always watching over, even though many people always consider the sky to be with them. "I'm gonna wait until you want me // Until you finally decide to go home" illustrates a disjoint between desire and departure. These oxymoronic statements are intended to convey the narrator's/author's confusion to the listener/reader.
Using apostraphe to question the diamond in the sky -- brilliant, beautiful, yet small fragments compared to the wholeness of the sky -- tries to reckon with whether whatever or whomever the narrator is speaking to is with him, if all of the diamond is with him, because he makes a near-direct admission of confusion that is unusual in the use of paradox. The lines "I can't believe all of these beautiful lies // As they surround me I will take a photograph of the sky" serve as admission of disbelief, where the narrator basically says he doesn't understand the situation he is in, and will photograph himself (the sky) as the situation unfolds to understand it from another point of view in the future. The reader/listener is meant to understand this confusion as a paralysis of action due to inability to understand--something the narrator hopes to alleviate by future rumination.
The second part of the meaning to this is the imagery and diction. Description of these elements are simple as they both contain two things in common: beauty and romanticism. The romantic and beautiful descriptors, such as the reference of the woman as a "diamond" and the lies as "beautiful," the narrator asking to be "bur[ied] ... alone in the light" serves to enhance the paradoxical nature of the relationship between the narrator and the diamond, and to communicate to the reader/listener how intensely the author feels about this relationship and the beauty of it, implying a more deeply painful effect as the relationship shows itself to be conflicting and confusing. The romantic diction and imagery reveal that the narrator holds onto an unchanging, romantic ideal that is contradictory to the hurtful confusion in the relationship.
Toward the end, describing now the girl as "smiling from the top of the world" and "sleeping on, amazing I know" reflect even more the narrator's romantic ideal and serve to underscore that point even more. The narrator puts the girl on a pedestal, and introduces another paradox of seeing this girl, a source of confusion for the narrator, as so grand despite her actions. The reader/listener is meant to view this as a seemingly unconditional acceptance of the girl, even to unhealthy extents. The abusiveness of the relationship and self-destructiveness lies in the fact that the narrator wishes for the girl to "lower, lower, lower [him] down" because he recognises that she "lowers [him] clearly," so he accepts the problematic nature of the relationship. The songwriter's selection of this request reflects the ideas that the narrator is willingly engaging in a destructive relationship, and that the reader should understand that this behaviour is not necessarily desirable.
Without continuing to beat this song to death, the devices make it clear what the meaning is: confusion about what the relationship is and how the other person feels, leading to conflicting and confusing feelings, and intensifying the pain because of the romantic ideal in the narrator's mind. The song explores the theme of dealing with a romantic ideal even in a hurtful and confounding relationship in which a person willingly prolongs, and ultimately appears to leave the problem up to an open-ended solution, as the chorus stanza is repeated to a point at the end, demonstrating how difficult it is to produce a stock solution for this problem.
Well, first off I notice the entire song is built upon a paradoxical extended metaphor. Every lyric illustrates this. "I am a million pieces of the sky" indicates a hyperbolic image of a shattered, broken continuity of the sky; "I found a way to be alone," following the statement that he is the sky, creates a paradox of a sky being separated from the people it is always watching over, even though many people always consider the sky to be with them. "I'm gonna wait until you want me // Until you finally decide to go home" illustrates a disjoint between desire and departure. These oxymoronic statements are intended to convey the narrator's/author's confusion to the listener/reader.
Using apostraphe to question the diamond in the sky -- brilliant, beautiful, yet small fragments compared to the wholeness of the sky -- tries to reckon with whether whatever or whomever the narrator is speaking to is with him, if all of the diamond is with him, because he makes a near-direct admission of confusion that is unusual in the use of paradox. The lines "I can't believe all of these beautiful lies // As they surround me I will take a photograph of the sky" serve as admission of disbelief, where the narrator basically says he doesn't understand the situation he is in, and will photograph himself (the sky) as the situation unfolds to understand it from another point of view in the future. The reader/listener is meant to understand this confusion as a paralysis of action due to inability to understand--something the narrator hopes to alleviate by future rumination.
The second part of the meaning to this is the imagery and diction. Description of these elements are simple as they both contain two things in common: beauty and romanticism. The romantic and beautiful descriptors, such as the reference of the woman as a "diamond" and the lies as "beautiful," the narrator asking to be "bur[ied] ... alone in the light" serves to enhance the paradoxical nature of the relationship between the narrator and the diamond, and to communicate to the reader/listener how intensely the author feels about this relationship and the beauty of it, implying a more deeply painful effect as the relationship shows itself to be conflicting and confusing. The romantic diction and imagery reveal that the narrator holds onto an unchanging, romantic ideal that is contradictory to the hurtful confusion in the relationship.
Toward the end, describing now the girl as "smiling from the top of the world" and "sleeping on, amazing I know" reflect even more the narrator's romantic ideal and serve to underscore that point even more. The narrator puts the girl on a pedestal, and introduces another paradox of seeing this girl, a source of confusion for the narrator, as so grand despite her actions. The reader/listener is meant to view this as a seemingly unconditional acceptance of the girl, even to unhealthy extents. The abusiveness of the relationship and self-destructiveness lies in the fact that the narrator wishes for the girl to "lower, lower, lower [him] down" because he recognises that she "lowers [him] clearly," so he accepts the problematic nature of the relationship. The songwriter's selection of this request reflects the ideas that the narrator is willingly engaging in a destructive relationship, and that the reader should understand that this behaviour is not necessarily desirable.
Without continuing to beat this song to death, the devices make it clear what the meaning is: confusion about what the relationship is and how the other person feels, leading to conflicting and confusing feelings, and intensifying the pain because of the romantic ideal in the narrator's mind. The song explores the theme of dealing with a romantic ideal even in a hurtful and confounding relationship in which a person willingly prolongs, and ultimately appears to leave the problem up to an open-ended solution, as the chorus stanza is repeated to a point at the end, demonstrating how difficult it is to produce a stock solution for this problem.