Austin's View
This song is expressing Andrew's feeling for how life is not how T.V. makes it out to be. Everything's not perfect, and everyone has problems in their family, so don't feel so bad when something goes wrong in your home life, or even your social life. I think that in the first verse Andrew is expressing how he must answer all the questions to what is happening on his own, hence "if ever these questions were yours what would you say? I don't know" as in I'm the one answering the questions, and I'm not getting any help. "But I'm writing the answers on cheap paper napkins" is saying these napkins don't mean much to anyone else, becuase their cheap, but the questions im answering are hard for me, and these paper napkins mean a lot to me, or my problems may look like nothing to everyone else, but to me they matter a lot. "And now he's turning off, and now she's shutting down" is expressing how the mother and father in the families sometimes just stop answering questions, and that's the end of the fight. When Andrew says "it's not what it seems" he means even though you may not be talking with whomever your fighting with, it's not what it seems, and it's ok because it may seem that nothing's going to change now but it will sometime. When he says "nothing's the same when you give it away" he means don't give the relationship up, or 'give it away', because things will clear up. "It's not what it seems, it's just what you think it is." is saying, again, that it may only be in your head and it will all clear up. "And these fights, they climb through my veins like it's mercury rising. And these nights." Here Andrew is saying the fights we have really wear me thin, and I hate to be fighting with you, and the way we were before was a lot better than the way we are acting now, hence "I seem to remember a home that was better."
Katie's View
This song is about a family that is falling apart. Andrew wrote this after his parents decided to get a divorce, which left him deeply impacted by it all. When he asks "if ever these questions were yours what would you say?" I think he is talking about his younger siblings and how they must feel about the divorce. He also says that even though you may think that everything is going right and your family is not having problems, nothing is "what it seems" and that "nothing's the same when [your parents'] give it away", or divorce. He also reminisces about a "home that was better" before all the fighting that comes with divorce began.
BeXs' View
I don't know if I've got this right at all but this is one song that when I hear i kind of understand a lot. This is drawn from my own experience and how I think of the song. Firstly, I think it's about Andrew's parents divorce (that seems fairly obvious). It can be looked at in two ways: either as Andrew looking at his parents, or as an outsider looking at his family including himself (I�ve interpreted it from the latter). I think this song is about how Andrew feels that his family, or his parents, has always pretended that everything is OK and they're all happy and now that his parents are getting divorced he feels he has to deny it to everyone and keep up appearances. "It's not what it seems..." Obviously people, or he looking at his parents' deteriorating relationship, realize that something is wrong and Andrew�s telling them its not because he doesn�t want to accept this big change that will occur if he tells people. "Nothings the same when you give it away..." implies that he doesn�t want everything to change; he wants to keep it the same by not giving away this secret. In that case, "it's not what it seems, it's just what you think it is" means it's not what it looks like but, in reality, it is. The line "if ever these questions were yours what would you say? I don�t know..." is almost like a conversation in which he�s asking for help, and asking those around him to answer all these questions he has. Yet, they don�t know what's really going on in his life, so he�s "writing the answers on cheap paper napkins" as if the answers he�s being given are worthless and disposable. The "now he�s turning off..." bit is about how everyone has just stopped fighting because they don�t care anymore; his parents have reached a point where they don�t even talk. The "mercury rising" tidbit has always been a bit confusing to me. I think either he�s
referring to the planet as in maybe a new beginning or to a thermometer such as his temperature is rising as he get more angry about what�s happening. "I seem to remember a home that was better..." He�s thinking back to how things used to be but because of all the fights it seems like he can only just remember it. "This family�s breaking down" seems fairly obvious to me; he�s actually saying what is happening.