I feel it is about grief and the inability to feel that comes along with it. Sounds like he is drinking to numb himself, but he is already feeling emotionally numb and does not want others forcing emotion out of him because he is vaguely aware of how inappropriate his not-feeling seems.
He convinces people that he see a "bright white beautiful heaven" to fend off attempts to share his deeper, more complex feelings of death/grief that he does not want to acknowledge.
The "if you want to see me cry" lyric is basically saying to other people, "you're not gonna see me publicly grieve, but if you really want to see me have emotion, do something simple and easy and unrelated like playing a song."
A beautiful song about the complexity of losing someone.
I feel it is about grief and the inability to feel that comes along with it. Sounds like he is drinking to numb himself, but he is already feeling emotionally numb and does not want others forcing emotion out of him because he is vaguely aware of how inappropriate his not-feeling seems.
He convinces people that he see a "bright white beautiful heaven" to fend off attempts to share his deeper, more complex feelings of death/grief that he does not want to acknowledge.
The "if you want to see me cry" lyric is basically saying to other people, "you're not gonna see me publicly grieve, but if you really want to see me have emotion, do something simple and easy and unrelated like playing a song."
A beautiful song about the complexity of losing someone.