This interpretation is based on my own experiences. Though I think that’s one of the beautiful things in the ambiguity of lyrics, that it leaves room for interpretation and many to relate. For me it illustrates how I felt after my Dad died. It was this darkness, this shadow like a cloud that fell over my life. Grasping at anything within reach for hope, the pain, you hit bottom and have to deal with it. The light being some hope in the way you perceive life and death but grappling with the point of life if there’s so much pain and it always ends in death. What’s the purpose of us all going through the loss? My favourite lines are: “Your eyes were wide but there's a world that keeps you blind, A painted serpent turning water into wine, Seekin' light”. After my dad passed I started diligently seeking proof that his spirit lived on- I got into seeing psychics and that. I was opening my eyes, but we live in a world that typically scoffs at such things. A lot of truths are hidden in our world. Personally I take the painted snake as alluding to the demonization of a creature that holds wisdom, knowledge, from a time when church and state were one and the objective was control, thus free thinkers were dangerous to said control. This snake is painted after all. It seems to hold magical abilities- things we don’t yet understand (through science) and so it must be condemned. This is how I feel metaphysics is painted, as a pseudoscience. I pretty much begged for proof of spirit and in some ways it was “be careful what you ask for”. You might say I “seen too much”. And I can’t have my dad in the physical- so it’s very in your head, not the same. I can relate to grappling with “blue sky” and not wanting to see “the light” because it feels so wrong to see any sort of positive in something so horrible as death. If you get into reincarnation and the thought of life as learning lessons, that can speak to the purpose the lyrics ask for, but again- it feels horrible to think of a purpose or lesson in death, to justify death in any way, and it feels to me like that’s what this song grapples with. It’s easy to feel like you don’t fit into the world after a big loss- like the whole world has changed and blue skies or happiness just feel wrong, like they suffocate you. The ending I wonder if it’s a panic attack or anger. There are so many emotions in loss.
This interpretation is based on my own experiences. Though I think that’s one of the beautiful things in the ambiguity of lyrics, that it leaves room for interpretation and many to relate. For me it illustrates how I felt after my Dad died. It was this darkness, this shadow like a cloud that fell over my life. Grasping at anything within reach for hope, the pain, you hit bottom and have to deal with it. The light being some hope in the way you perceive life and death but grappling with the point of life if there’s so much pain and it always ends in death. What’s the purpose of us all going through the loss? My favourite lines are: “Your eyes were wide but there's a world that keeps you blind, A painted serpent turning water into wine, Seekin' light”. After my dad passed I started diligently seeking proof that his spirit lived on- I got into seeing psychics and that. I was opening my eyes, but we live in a world that typically scoffs at such things. A lot of truths are hidden in our world. Personally I take the painted snake as alluding to the demonization of a creature that holds wisdom, knowledge, from a time when church and state were one and the objective was control, thus free thinkers were dangerous to said control. This snake is painted after all. It seems to hold magical abilities- things we don’t yet understand (through science) and so it must be condemned. This is how I feel metaphysics is painted, as a pseudoscience. I pretty much begged for proof of spirit and in some ways it was “be careful what you ask for”. You might say I “seen too much”. And I can’t have my dad in the physical- so it’s very in your head, not the same. I can relate to grappling with “blue sky” and not wanting to see “the light” because it feels so wrong to see any sort of positive in something so horrible as death. If you get into reincarnation and the thought of life as learning lessons, that can speak to the purpose the lyrics ask for, but again- it feels horrible to think of a purpose or lesson in death, to justify death in any way, and it feels to me like that’s what this song grapples with. It’s easy to feel like you don’t fit into the world after a big loss- like the whole world has changed and blue skies or happiness just feel wrong, like they suffocate you. The ending I wonder if it’s a panic attack or anger. There are so many emotions in loss.