Cheraderama

This one has always seemed to me to have the connotation of "Charade" and "Drama", or Charade-o-rama:

-orama (ə ram′ə, ə rä′mə)

a greater-than-usual number, volume, or variety of a specified thing: used to form commercial names and other words for events and displays like sportorama

Whether it’s a weekend sale-o-rama at the local car dealership or a laserama show at the planetarium, we do seem to love to add “rama” to a word indicate the spectacular wondrousness of an event. Blame Irish artist Robert Baker for the suffix. In the late 18th century, he combined the Greek words pan (meaning “all”) and horama (“view”) to copyright the name “panorama” to refer to his oversized paintings that offered 360-degree views of famous cities. His panoramas were such a hit that other artists followed suit with cycloramas (large scenes painted on the inside of a cylinder) and dioramas (three-dimensional models).

In 1939, industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes created a space-age exhibit for General Motors at the New York World’s Fair. He dubbed it “Futurama,” which officially gave the “rama” suffix its coolness cachet. Of course, it loses a bit of its impact when local furniture stores have a “mattress-o-rama” every weekend.

So, here the person writing the lyrics is - at some club. I usually imagine some goth dance club. Both he and some girl are dancing beneath a strobe-light. Everyone is probablly wearing black, and the reason he is wearing black is because he is sad that all the colourful things have seemed to have left the scene. A hopeless character, he is crying through happy hour passing the time endlessly watching the dancing girls dance while intoxicated on god-knows-what, having every chance in the world to see him there, sitting, waiting for a nice conversation perhaps, but instead the girls are more interested in the hallucinatory patterns on the walls.

"Choose your masks and raise your armour" could be an oblique reference to Hawkwind's song "Choose your Masques", which I believe is from the Live Chronicles album. This was Hawkwinds rendition of Micheal Moorcock's Elric saga put to music.

They're handing out the weapons And your armour's ready too But the most important item Has been left up to you You must make a firm decision And once it's made you'll find That the form that you have chosen Can entirely fill your mind

For the mask you have selected Stands for Chaos or for Law And you cannot take it off now 'til you're no longer in the War And the Masks of War are grinning And from under them you howl Out the slogans of the part you play for the Battle's starting now

Choose your Masks The ranks are forming Choose your Masks The day is dawning Choose your Masks And choose the side that you'll be on And learn the words of your new song For the Battle will be long.....so long........

In this case, the armour appears not to be literal, but the psychological armour more akin to the character armour of Wilhelm Reich, who noted:

FUNCTIONS OF MUSCULAR ARMOR:

KEEPS POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE EMOTIONS IN WARDS OFF EMOTIONS OF OTHERS.

Reich noticed men have trouble taking away armor because they are so accustomed to suppressing feelings and emotions.

An armored person does not feel their armor as such. Reich believed that mind-body work is necessary for people to rid themselves of this armor.

BODY ARMOR AND CHARACTER ARMOR are essentially the same. Their function is trying to protect yourself against the pain of notexpressing things that society says you may not express. Muscular armor is character armor expressed in body, muscular rigidity.

Armoring is the sum total of the muscular attitudes which a person develops as a defense against the breakthrough of emotions, especially anxity, rage, sexual excitation. Character armor is the sum total of all the years of the muscular attituded that have also been incorporated in the person's character. CHARACTER ARMOR CAN BE REFLECTED IN LIFE-PATTERNS. Karen Horney, reflecting on Reich's work, noted that people may arrange their lives to fit their character armor. Thus a severely introverted person may find an apartment in a building that is so configured that he or she need not meet or interact with neighbors, and shop at impersonal stores where minimal contact with others is necessary.

Also, armoring seems to cause Neurotic Sexuality. This can result in the "cold eyes searching for a space that's warm enough to take them through the night- There's only black and white - Express; we never touch (we only press) - Can taste the desperation in your breath"

The idea of "touch" in Edward's lyrics is also multi-layered. In "Princess Coldheart" we get the line "It's touching" as in "something that moves me internally". In "Laughing Venus" from Edward's solo album "Scriptures of Illumina" we get "I'd give you back the day - just touch me" - this could seem to contain either meaning. "Please do something that actually moves me" or "I long for your physical touch." In this song, the characters express themselves through mechanical touch - a physical pressing, and not the inner connection that the lyric writer wants. Also, compare the lines "Was I just a passing phase? Did we ever really share? Did we just soliloquise - Was I ever really there?" from "Love Noete and Carnations" on Tear Garden's "Last Man to Fly" album.

At the end, the lyric writer says that he'd protect this girl (from her own Neurosis?) if she'd only give him a chance and look into his eyes instead of ignoring him to draw attention to herself. Also, once again we run into a multi-layered use of the eye as a symbol. It could mean "If you only saw things the way I did you wouldn't need to wear your masks...raise your eyes upwards and look at each other, make a connection."