Lyric discussion by sam6964564 

I feel like this song is primarily an attempt at portraying life's ineffable essence, specifically when it seems to be wholly expressed as the beautiful totality of seemingly unrelated or normally unimportant or even negative events.

Also, I see a strong connection between the lyrics and the film "Princess Mononoke."

The first stanza would correlate well to the demon that Ashitaka first encounters, whose skin is ripped and blooming with rot. This curse infects his arm when it touches him, and causes his arm to kill people, which is something he would normally never do.

The second set corresponds to the nightwalker, who is a giant shadow that rises from the hiss of the forest each night. He is huge, with an iridescent glow, but remains anonymous, only as the representation of the night's spirit.

The third stanza would have to be about the smooth weapons that lady Eboshi designs for killing the forest animals and spirits that encroach on Iron Town. These are what caused the rotting curse in the first place. Furthermore, they are cylinders, which represent mankind's oppressive influence over the natural world. Both language and brick are symbols of man as separate from the natural world, which Iron Town is undoubtedly meant to represent.

The last stanza is incredibly similar to one of the last scenes in the film, where the infected boar gods run into battle, but are caught off guard by explosive traps, each boar with hundreds of parasites burrowed deep within them.

The stanza's are so eerily similar to the film, and that coupled with the fact that (if they are related) they would be in chronological order with the film:

  1. Ashitaka is infected, he commits evils with his arm that he would not otherwise.
  2. The Night walker is seen rising from the forest
  3. Lady Eboshi and her gunsmiths finish the cylindrical weapon
  4. The boars are intercepted in battle, all covered in hundreds of parasites.
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