This song deals with being given a glimpse of God. It's something we dearly want, but unless we work for it, we will never see it again and even then may not be worthy of it.
Gaffa is gaffa tape, a thick industrial tape used in the music business for taping down and tidying up large numbers of leads (wiring, etc.) particularly useful in concert situations. The song is trying to simulate being trapped in a kind of a web; everything is in slow motion ("it all goes slo-mo") and the person feels like they're tied up and can't move.
Kate told MTV in 1985 how her religious background inspired the song: "I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and had the imagery of purgatory and of the idea that when you were taken there that you would be given a glimpse of God and then you wouldn't see him again until you were let into heaven. And we were told that in Hell it was even worse because you got to see God but then you knew that you would never see him again. And it's sorta using that as the parallel. And the idea of seeing something incredibly beautiful, having a religious experience as such, but not being able to get back there. And it was playing musically with the idea of the verses being sorta real time and someone happily jumping through life and then you hit the chorus and it like everything sorta goes into slow mo and they're reaching for that thing that they want and they can't get there."
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