Peartspicacity

He seems oblivious
To Lerxst's soft spring rain
Like a man in pain
So light, yet endless
From Dirk's leaden sky

And:

Is he oblivious
To this quality?
A quality of light
Unique to every city’s streets.

The less altered second stanza could represent the extent to which a person cannot or will not know what somebody else is going through because, as the lyricist put it on the previous record, "each of us [is] a cell of awareness". Some cells develop more empathy than others that get caught up in their own walls.

 

It wouldn't be the first time a frontman had his head so far up his own swelling synth that third person observers and even members of the band themselves might wonder if the obliviousness was but feigned ignorance born of narcissism.

 

In this case it could have been spawned by the conceit that the band was so much better than their peers in the mainstream, a view spurred on by their fans yet still a side effect of group self-indulgence.