So I see you standing
silent,
painting pictures
of the future,
while destiny is
clinging to your side.
And you're walking
like a raven
with your hands
sewn up in circles,
while everything
you've planted here has died.
Don't ask me why if I don't know.
(Refrain)
The sun revolves
around the moon.
The moon has no
specific place;
And I am standing
here alone.
The sea is plated
in silver,
but silver walks
away.
Dear boy, you should
have known.
So goodbye and then
hello again;
It's back somewhere
to haunt you,
But the light of
day is hidden from the sky.
There's an overcast
of longing,
hanging shadows
from my window,
But all that I
can say to you is goodbye.
Don't go to sleep if it's not light.
(Refrain)
I should have known.
When sparrows disappeared,
I should have known.
There's insanity
in grief and there's insanity in me,
and there's insanity
in everything I know.
I've been waiting
in this shell for some great lesson to be clear,
but all of us must
reap the seeds we sow.
Don't fly away if it's not cold.
(Refrain)
The first verse is about watching someone with whom you are absolutely great friends. It also is about the type of person that does everything wrong, screws everything up, but still always manages to come out on top... well, almost always.
"Don't ask me why if I don't know," is exactly how it sounds. No matter how much trouble this friend of mine got into, he always seemed to land on his feet, and when he asked me how I thought that always happened, my reply was "How am I supposed to know?”
The second verse is about the same person realizing that eventually, his good luck will run out and eventually he will have to pay the piper. And then, this is the kind of friend that even though he hasn't always been there when your luck has hit rock bottom, he expects you to be able to do it.
"Don't go to sleep if it's not light..." is a reference to all of the nights we'd sit up discussing the deep topics that came across our minds, him wanting to get to bed and me thinking, "Well, the sun's not up yet, and I'm not sleepy. Will you please stay up and keep me company just a little longer?" Which he never did, because I, my friends, am a TRUE insomniac.
The bridge is simply about change, a common theme throughout my songs. It refers to the inevitable re-arrangement of things and the fact that "I should have known that would eventually happen. "When sparrows disappeared, I should have known..." means simply, when everything great started slowing down, I should have known something bad was going to happen.
The last verse is about how crazy it is to linger over the past, when
it is only the present we can do anything about and only the future we
can attempt to enforce change on. And I had to wait for this knowledge
to
come - stupid, I know, because I should have been able to figure that
one out from the get go. But do we ever do anything the easy way?
"Don't fly away if it's not cold...” is obviously a parallel for birds flying home in the winter, but in this case I was literally asking my friend not to leave. To stay, to keep me company, to just be there.
The chorus is about how insane things can get. How at the worst
possible time, it will seem like the earth has turned on it's axis just
to irritate and annoy. And everyone's misery is relative – and even
though there are people worse off, you always think it's your situation
that's terrible. The last part, "Dear boy you should have known..."
means that sometimes, we have to have someone kick us in our complacency
to make us understand that things can ALWAYS be worse, so we should do
our best in the here and now.