Philippians 3:20–21[1][2][3]

Lyrics

The path to the awful room
That no one will sleep in again
Was lit for one man only
Gone where none can follow him

Try to look down
The way he'd gone
Back of the closet whose depths go on
And on and on

Nice people said he was with God now
Safe in his arms
But the voices of the angels that he heard on his last days with us
Smoke alarms

Well, the path to the palace of wisdom[4]
That the mystics walk
Is lined with neuroleptics[5]
And electric shocks

Hope daily for healing
Try not to go insane
Dance in a circle with bells on
Try to make it rain

And nice people said he had gone home to God now
Safe in his arms, safe in his arms
But the voices of the angels singing to him in his last hours with us
Smoke alarms, smoke alarms

Footnotes

1. For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (KJV) ↩
2. The demo for Philippians 3:20-21 was released on The Life of the World in Flux. (Credit: Annotated TMG)↩
3. From Breihan 2009, Pitchfork:
Pitchfork: 'Philippians 3:20 – 21', that's a verse about how Jesus will make your body like his body. That's when you're dying?
JD: Yes. It's about what happens after you die.
Pitchfork: That's what you're singing about there?
JD: The song is actually about a specific person. I'm not going to say who, but it's a person of note.
Pitchfork: Is it Michael Jackson?
JD: No. [laughs] No, I would have to have been pretty fast to have written a Michael Jackson song, gotten into the studio, gotten it mastered into the sequence and ready for the album. The song is about the conflict between what people say happens after we die and the sort of lives we live. It's kind of an angry-at-God sort of song. Because you hear of people who suffered their entire life that, once they die, now their [sic] won't have bad days, because they're with God. People say that.
And you think, well, maybe God could have been more merciful and let them off the hook earlier. Brought them into this place of no suffering and eternal bliss and presence of the most high a lot earlier and saved this person a lot of unnecessary pain, instead of having them suffer their entire lives. And in the case of people who are so damaged they wind up taking their own lives, well, you'd think an all-powerful God could have prevented that. It's in the nature of being all-powerful, right? I had a specific person in mind. The song is about the sorts of hard questions that come up when somebody kills himself. (Credit: Annotated TMG)↩
4. A reference to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In the section Proverbs of Hell, Blake writes: "In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." The poem celebrates sensual pleasures and earthly feelings as having a spiritual place, in contrast to the morals typical of his time. Thank you to Mairead Beeson to pointing out this reference! (Credit: Annotated TMG)↩
5. An obsolete name for the class of medications now called antipsychotics. The word "neuroleptic" derives from the Ancient Greek meaning "that which takes the nerve". In the demo version, this line is sung as "lined with psychotropics". ↩