This song is full of double meanings. The line "maybe sprout wings" can either be taken as wishing one could grow wings and fly away, or an allusion to death and angel's wings. He's both wishing for a childlike fantasy of being able to escape by flight and hoping for death. "Ghosts and clouds, and nameless things" is the most powerful line for me... it's both the literal pictures he draws in the mirror, and the things his friends have become. They're dead, or missing, and now all that's left of them are half-forgotten memories, phantoms and whispers in the dark. "Canaries in the mines" could also be a morbid reference to drug use - his friends may have been poisoned or overdosed by their own drugs, making them like canaries indicating the toxicity of a mine to be entered. Their lives were insignificant enough to be thrown away for the dubious benefit of serving as a warning to others, hence they're little more than fleeting canaries.
Basically, the story of this song as I see it is a man who awakens from a nightmare about something perhaps nebulously related to old friends he's lost. He makes a steam room out of his shower and childishly draws pictures in his mirror, wishing as he does so that he could just sprout wings and fly away. When the hot water runs out he stumbles into the other room and stares at himself in the reflection of the window, trying to remember his dream, and sees shapes in the shadows that remind him of his friends. He says their names three times to try to summon their spirits, but their lives were too meaningless to even haunt him. He can barely remember them or the dream he had about them. They're ghosts, clouds, and nameless things... and he wishes he could join them.
It's an absolutely heart-wrenching song and it damned near made me cry the first time I heard it.
This song is full of double meanings. The line "maybe sprout wings" can either be taken as wishing one could grow wings and fly away, or an allusion to death and angel's wings. He's both wishing for a childlike fantasy of being able to escape by flight and hoping for death. "Ghosts and clouds, and nameless things" is the most powerful line for me... it's both the literal pictures he draws in the mirror, and the things his friends have become. They're dead, or missing, and now all that's left of them are half-forgotten memories, phantoms and whispers in the dark. "Canaries in the mines" could also be a morbid reference to drug use - his friends may have been poisoned or overdosed by their own drugs, making them like canaries indicating the toxicity of a mine to be entered. Their lives were insignificant enough to be thrown away for the dubious benefit of serving as a warning to others, hence they're little more than fleeting canaries.
Basically, the story of this song as I see it is a man who awakens from a nightmare about something perhaps nebulously related to old friends he's lost. He makes a steam room out of his shower and childishly draws pictures in his mirror, wishing as he does so that he could just sprout wings and fly away. When the hot water runs out he stumbles into the other room and stares at himself in the reflection of the window, trying to remember his dream, and sees shapes in the shadows that remind him of his friends. He says their names three times to try to summon their spirits, but their lives were too meaningless to even haunt him. He can barely remember them or the dream he had about them. They're ghosts, clouds, and nameless things... and he wishes he could join them.
It's an absolutely heart-wrenching song and it damned near made me cry the first time I heard it.