the previous posters are correct, ben is talking to kerouac in the song. it's summed up in the line 'i fear what will happen when the road fails to flow under me', in other words, what happens when ben reaches the end of the road, and his endless search of self-discovery and search of a home actually ends?
but that's when he realizes that 'he hasn't gone anywhere', and that any journey along a road he thought he took was mostly for naught, because all the problems he had sought to leave behind by going down this road in the first place are 'couches in alleys' that he's simply got to deal with once he gets home, only now they're 'rainsoaked and rotted'.
so there's an obnoxious line-by-line translation of an extremely depressing but wonderful song.
the previous posters are correct, ben is talking to kerouac in the song. it's summed up in the line 'i fear what will happen when the road fails to flow under me', in other words, what happens when ben reaches the end of the road, and his endless search of self-discovery and search of a home actually ends?
but that's when he realizes that 'he hasn't gone anywhere', and that any journey along a road he thought he took was mostly for naught, because all the problems he had sought to leave behind by going down this road in the first place are 'couches in alleys' that he's simply got to deal with once he gets home, only now they're 'rainsoaked and rotted'.
so there's an obnoxious line-by-line translation of an extremely depressing but wonderful song.