Since I went through it myself for months on end when I was a teenager, I've always taken this song literally as being about addiction to dreams as a means of escapism, lucid or otherwise.
"Sometimes I go whole days
listening bored, half sleep
I won't say anything
that's worth a thing to me"
is a pretty fair description of how you feel when you're in the midst of that sort of addiction. Real life feels unreal, you can barely focus or function, all you can think about is how much you NEED to escape back into your dream world.
"One day, suddenly, time
took a turn that once felt so brief
I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly
What begins as an unguarded
train of thoughts slowly can become
an addiction to the slumber
of disconnection and the resonance
of memory that no longer has a shape
but keeps you numb through
the hours till gone is another day."
How it all starts. A dream lingers in memory, maybe you write it down, maybe it just sticks in the back of your mind. You start wondering if maybe, just maybe, sleeping a little more wouldn't be such a bad thing - an unguarded train of thoughts that leads you slowly into an addiction where that need to retreat, to escape, becomes more and more overwhelming and you spend less and less time awake, until you're really just going through the motions of life because you're expected to, until you sleep away entire weekends and holidays, barely leaving your bedroom except for bathroom breaks and meals.
"Be aware, my darling
these things I say I mean
are just traces of something
I long to feel again
I see our time expand
in the air almost forcibly,
spreading thinner till it dissolves completely."
This come across almost like a warning to me not to abuse dreams to the point where you form an emotional dependence on them. The last few lines ring true especially for me - even in the aftermath, knowing how unhealthy your lifestyle was at that time, it's incredibly alluring to fall right back into it again, to miss all those hours of dreamtime stretched into days without a care in the world.
Since I went through it myself for months on end when I was a teenager, I've always taken this song literally as being about addiction to dreams as a means of escapism, lucid or otherwise.
"Sometimes I go whole days listening bored, half sleep I won't say anything that's worth a thing to me" is a pretty fair description of how you feel when you're in the midst of that sort of addiction. Real life feels unreal, you can barely focus or function, all you can think about is how much you NEED to escape back into your dream world.
"One day, suddenly, time took a turn that once felt so brief I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly
What begins as an unguarded train of thoughts slowly can become an addiction to the slumber of disconnection and the resonance of memory that no longer has a shape but keeps you numb through the hours till gone is another day." How it all starts. A dream lingers in memory, maybe you write it down, maybe it just sticks in the back of your mind. You start wondering if maybe, just maybe, sleeping a little more wouldn't be such a bad thing - an unguarded train of thoughts that leads you slowly into an addiction where that need to retreat, to escape, becomes more and more overwhelming and you spend less and less time awake, until you're really just going through the motions of life because you're expected to, until you sleep away entire weekends and holidays, barely leaving your bedroom except for bathroom breaks and meals.
"Be aware, my darling these things I say I mean are just traces of something I long to feel again I see our time expand in the air almost forcibly, spreading thinner till it dissolves completely." This come across almost like a warning to me not to abuse dreams to the point where you form an emotional dependence on them. The last few lines ring true especially for me - even in the aftermath, knowing how unhealthy your lifestyle was at that time, it's incredibly alluring to fall right back into it again, to miss all those hours of dreamtime stretched into days without a care in the world.