Blackouts and the 7th draft

Okay, so I have finished the new draft two weeks ago and what have I done since then? Nothing. I suppose I am preoccupied in finishing off the short, Reconciliation, but I also wanted some distance from it before I look at it again.
Then I realised how little I have said about it. I have discussed so many different problems and ideas, such as sound as particular narrative element, Claire's image and blackouts.
So the new draft incorporates 3 or 4 blackouts.
What do they mean? I struggle to explain them, or understand myself. Perhaps if I describe them...?
First, all of these come out of the narrative. That is, there is a logic to their placement. The first comes about as the camera pans across the rooftops and is blocked by...we don't know what, but it is black.
The second from last, and the longest blackout could be interpreted as Claire's POV, as she sits on a park bench speaking to Nick, with her eyes shut, and she hears...? So I could say that they are Claire's view (I am a long way from deciding if they will form a part of the other stories), or better, are a part of Claire, or an expression of Claire's. The makes sense especially in the final scene, after she has ended it with Nick. She scans the sky, looking for an opening, but finds nothing. Then there is the moment of recognition, the iconic look. And then the black. Here it might be that Claire has accepted the black as expression of her true self?
Then I think I contradict all of this by adding sound. I think I have already said that the blackouts here function differently than those I used in Reconciliation in that in the short film they were punctuation for the scene previous and the scene to follow. In Tidal Barrier - Claire, the blackouts are scenes themselves, and the sound is the content. The image I return to in each:

If the Thames could roar or rush, this is the sound it would make.

And this sound is again tied back to Claire and the story in two scenes.
When she takes up her new life at Natalie's she looks into every corner of the flat, even to the extent of climbing up on a ladder to see what is hidden on the top of the bookshelves. Here she feels a breeze coming in an open window, and inhales. What is that she can smell? Later, with Nick, she tries to convince him to experience it with her, and that the odour was the Thames. Nick is having none of it. The Thames is a long way off, and anyway it doesn't have it's own odour, or at least not a pleasant one.
So looking back at this, are the blackouts, the sound scape and Claire's image one and the same?