I suspect there are a couple different meanings, somewhat complementary but mostly separate. Peter has always said that he writes the music first, and then tries to turn it into lyrics, and occasionally he's surprised at where they go. And I think that's what happened here.
Start with the music. It closely approximates a perfect dance club anthem (and to hear the song it approximates, just listen to the And One version), but it's full of bits of timing that are just wrong. That's why it's called "Timekiller".
So, how do you translate that to words? Creativity drives you crazy, and being "unstuck in time" is the most obvious symptom. The only thing that drives you crazier than writer's block is unblocking and writing compulsively. And either way, when you sit down at your workstation and then look at the clock 20 minutes later, and it'll either be the still same time as when you started, or suddenly 4am. You know there's a state in between, where most people live, but you can never get there. It's a short step to seveneyedfox's interpretation, and the video takes that step. It's about a Kafka-esque writer (with hints of Dostoevsky and William S. Burroughs as well) rather than a songwriter, but that doesn't really change anything. Nor do the hints of speed and absinthe—they may be an addition for the video, but they fit just fine.
But the chorus isn't from the maddened writer's point of view; it's from the point of view of his madness, taunting him. Or, if you instead take those words to be from the narrator's point of view, then he's not singing about his creative demons anymore, he's singing to a lover who only needs him as a time killer rather than for something deeper. And this is where the rest of the song comes from, which leads straight to SubGothius's interpretation.
Some of the lyrics only make sense from the "trapped lover" point of view rather than the "maddened writer" one, but I think the latter is there in the song, not just invented for the video.
I suspect there are a couple different meanings, somewhat complementary but mostly separate. Peter has always said that he writes the music first, and then tries to turn it into lyrics, and occasionally he's surprised at where they go. And I think that's what happened here.
Start with the music. It closely approximates a perfect dance club anthem (and to hear the song it approximates, just listen to the And One version), but it's full of bits of timing that are just wrong. That's why it's called "Timekiller".
So, how do you translate that to words? Creativity drives you crazy, and being "unstuck in time" is the most obvious symptom. The only thing that drives you crazier than writer's block is unblocking and writing compulsively. And either way, when you sit down at your workstation and then look at the clock 20 minutes later, and it'll either be the still same time as when you started, or suddenly 4am. You know there's a state in between, where most people live, but you can never get there. It's a short step to seveneyedfox's interpretation, and the video takes that step. It's about a Kafka-esque writer (with hints of Dostoevsky and William S. Burroughs as well) rather than a songwriter, but that doesn't really change anything. Nor do the hints of speed and absinthe—they may be an addition for the video, but they fit just fine.
But the chorus isn't from the maddened writer's point of view; it's from the point of view of his madness, taunting him. Or, if you instead take those words to be from the narrator's point of view, then he's not singing about his creative demons anymore, he's singing to a lover who only needs him as a time killer rather than for something deeper. And this is where the rest of the song comes from, which leads straight to SubGothius's interpretation.
Some of the lyrics only make sense from the "trapped lover" point of view rather than the "maddened writer" one, but I think the latter is there in the song, not just invented for the video.