

Sorry if that seemed unnecessarily morose, but I've always found this offbeat interpretation beautiful in its own strange way. This could frighten him and inspire second thoughts, although he knows he cannot turn back that could cover the "Nowhere is there warmth to be found/Among those afraid of losing their ground" stanza. Whatever these visions are, the dying individual can only wonder whether those "shapeless forms" will become tangible and he will at last "touch down" in this foreign land when he closes his eyes to sleep (and to die) or whether they will simply fade as the last of his thoughts slip away. When I hear this song, I think of a depressed person attempting suicide, probably through inhaling gas like nitrous oxide that might at first induce a "high." When the gas is starting to reach dangerous levels and the user is nearly unconscious, the lyrics describe the faint visions that are just beginning to take shape in the suicidal person's mind, perhaps mere hallucinations (they certainly seem fragmented enough to be the inventions of an oxygen-starved mind!) perhaps distant memories, or perhaps remote visions of heaven, hell, or glimpses of an afterlife too strange for the living mind to comprehend. My InterpretationI'm pretty confident that this song was originally about a mere psychedelic experience, but to me it represents something a little different, although possibly related.
