Like in many others of Martin's songs this one, too, is about the ambiguity and difficulty of coping with the most fundamental human emotions and needs.
It's about the longing to feel alive even if you ruin your health by the means you use in the course of it. It's about the desperate need to receive love and affection and the deep fear of being turned away. So you're not daring to open yourself to someone, to give something in return. Desire comes like a sickness over you because of the moral implications, the implanted guilt in you.
Like in a self-fulfilling prophecy you expect to get hurt and so you act in a (self-)destructive way that allows no other outcome. But feeling pain seems to be better than feeling nothing at all. Thus instead of pursuing your own free will or dreams you yield to something you call fate (or karma in this case). You're like a martyr for your own philosophy - it's pointless.
After all this you're then left with one last question that may lead you out of your gloomy existence: Are you still able to feel that bit of love, to live that bit of dream that will keep you alive and give you at least the hope on happiness? Or do you settle in your darkness, find some modus vivendi.
Sounds depressive? Well, it's Depeche. But I think in many people's lives you will find aspects of those conflicts Martin's songs describe. Love is a many splintered thing.
Like in many others of Martin's songs this one, too, is about the ambiguity and difficulty of coping with the most fundamental human emotions and needs.
It's about the longing to feel alive even if you ruin your health by the means you use in the course of it. It's about the desperate need to receive love and affection and the deep fear of being turned away. So you're not daring to open yourself to someone, to give something in return. Desire comes like a sickness over you because of the moral implications, the implanted guilt in you.
Like in a self-fulfilling prophecy you expect to get hurt and so you act in a (self-)destructive way that allows no other outcome. But feeling pain seems to be better than feeling nothing at all. Thus instead of pursuing your own free will or dreams you yield to something you call fate (or karma in this case). You're like a martyr for your own philosophy - it's pointless.
After all this you're then left with one last question that may lead you out of your gloomy existence: Are you still able to feel that bit of love, to live that bit of dream that will keep you alive and give you at least the hope on happiness? Or do you settle in your darkness, find some modus vivendi.
Sounds depressive? Well, it's Depeche. But I think in many people's lives you will find aspects of those conflicts Martin's songs describe. Love is a many splintered thing.