I like to take this song literally and picture it as a ghost (of a dead friend, relative, lover, whatever) talking to someone who's hallucinating them. The song then takes on a kind of creepy, angry tone; the ghost both wants to relinquish the curse of afterlife, but is also terrified of when the person he's haunting doesn't want to see him, and he ceases to exist.
Line by line reasoning:
*'It's not a matter of going to grow/ It's not a matter of time or how I feel'. In other words, the person who the ghost's being seen by won't grow for as long as they're stuck in the past, whilst the ghost has no decision as to whether it wants to ruin the person's life.
*'I'm throwing off the shadow of a better man now'. The ghost is simply a poor replica of the man it imitates. 'Throwing off the shadow' is perhaps a reference to how shallow the ghost is; it doesn't even have a shadow.
*'What you see is what you never had/Get real/Get another'. The ghost is bitter, and makes the person doubt the initial relationship they had the person when they were alive.
*'You can make believe when we're apart'. When the person's not seeing the ghost (when they're talking to someone else, for example), they pretend that they haven't got a problem.
*'You never learnt/You bought me/Everything and less'. The person never learnt to get over their loss. Furthermore, the deadman, who's been bought to life, has been given 'everything' (life) but with a price: their loss of freedom.
I like to take this song literally and picture it as a ghost (of a dead friend, relative, lover, whatever) talking to someone who's hallucinating them. The song then takes on a kind of creepy, angry tone; the ghost both wants to relinquish the curse of afterlife, but is also terrified of when the person he's haunting doesn't want to see him, and he ceases to exist.
Line by line reasoning: *'It's not a matter of going to grow/ It's not a matter of time or how I feel'. In other words, the person who the ghost's being seen by won't grow for as long as they're stuck in the past, whilst the ghost has no decision as to whether it wants to ruin the person's life.
*'I'm throwing off the shadow of a better man now'. The ghost is simply a poor replica of the man it imitates. 'Throwing off the shadow' is perhaps a reference to how shallow the ghost is; it doesn't even have a shadow.
*'What you see is what you never had/Get real/Get another'. The ghost is bitter, and makes the person doubt the initial relationship they had the person when they were alive.
*'You can make believe when we're apart'. When the person's not seeing the ghost (when they're talking to someone else, for example), they pretend that they haven't got a problem.
*'You never learnt/You bought me/Everything and less'. The person never learnt to get over their loss. Furthermore, the deadman, who's been bought to life, has been given 'everything' (life) but with a price: their loss of freedom.