NOTE:

I thought that the song playing in the background was an appropriate one. 

Apologies for those of you using slow dial-up, where it may take up to 2 minutes for the song to play. Those more fortunate people with broadband should hear it in about 15 seconds

Lyrics

  My interpretation of the lyrics

Title

The tide in the title is the pressures and problems we face in life; powerful, potentially destructive, potentially useful, but  inevitable,  unstoppable.

These pressures and problems can overwhelm a person's efforts to lead a normal existence, and can significantly impact or destroy your dreams, goals and aspirations.

I’ve been searching for my dream
A hundred times today,
I build them up, you knock them down.
Like they were made of clay,

Your dreams, goals and aspirations can be the simple things in life, or they can be challenging, and if you are passionate about them, you think about them frequently.

Irrespective of how simple or challenging they are, they are important to you hence you think of them often, but no matter how hard you try, again and again, the everyday pressures and problems of life can impact or destroy  them. 

Then the tide rushes in
And washes my castles away.
Then I’m really not so sure
Which side of the bed I should lay,
I should lay...

Sometimes the problems overcome you quickly, taking you by surprise,

The castle is the representation of a  passionate dream, goal or aspiration, something which is solid and strong, a source of comfort such as "an Englishman's home is his castle". The castle also represents the strongest most  important thing in someone's life, their family, their future. 

When the problem destroys your dream, goals or aspirations,  you cannot really be sure what to do next hence the uncertainty. 

Given a choice of side, the bed is empty, and the fact it is a bed, represents a deep emptiness of  love which has or will be lost. 

Once your dreams have been destroyed, you have to make choices of what to do next, and sometimes the choice can be irrelevant, since your dreams have been destroyed, nothing more is important to you. 

When in shock, even a choice of something trivial confuses and confounds you. 

You keep looking for someone
To tell your troubles to,
I sit down and lend an ear
Yet I hear nothing new.

You continually look for someone to talk to about your problem, and although they listen, they cannot help you, and your problems cannot  be solved, no matter who you talk to or see. Time is running out.

Chorus x2

Blackbird sitting in a tree
Observing what’s below,
Acorns falling to the ground,
He’ll stay and watch them grow.

And eventually, you accept the inevitable, and there is nothing you can do. Life will go on, and abnormal normality continues. 

The bird in the tree provides an helicopter and non-participant view of the world below, observing not only the normality all around you and below you, but of growth and new life.

You need to live life for yourself and those nearest you as best as you can for as long as you can. And  the cycle of life goes on and on, which is the way of the world and the universe, irrespective of what you might believe or not believe in, the lowest common denominator of Religion, Philosophy, Science and Atheism.