| The Cat Empire – No Longer There Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It could be a simple as climate change, But I like to think it runs deeper. Consider the idea of a more generalized legacy, a more personalized message of perpetuity. The idea that we are forever, dispite our meager finite intentions, that our induviduality is merely a vice and life persists. We can strive for the ideals of our own life, or we can become ideals for the future, or we can do both, but not without courage and acceptance of our own mortalities and moral obligations. So easy is it to monger the good life and become captive to its soft distractions while harshness and desolation cast it's shadows across vast expanses of the world where we fail to shine our light for lack of interest and an overabundance of reward stimuli available for the repeted behavior of avoidance. We are trained to behave, and we repeat behaviours that are perceived as rewarding to ourselves while we exist. "here it goes again, here it goes again, here it goes again" Now, this song is also misrepresented lyrically. I think the line oft quoted "swift as honor steeds" is actually "swift as honest deeds" But I could be mistaken. "To deny or to despair is really just the same" begs to consider HD Thoreaus quote: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" We are avoidant creatures, ever deluding ourselves, projecting our will upon reality to reaffirm the passivity of our awareness of doing just that. We are wracked with guilt for desires and intentions we do not entertain, and we reassign our system of morality to accept ourselves from the ones we do. Often we devote our personal divine focus on a deity and hele to their power like children, calling for their forgiveness, and then perceiving ourselves failed in their mighty eye, we lose our perception of connection and feel ourselves forsaken. Consider the passage "all of our desires would mirror the skies with flames and smoke out heavens halls, who was that you called? there no longer there" This is common enough to be the legacy of humanity, if we were to cease existance, and future sentience were to gleam our essence from the evidance in our archetecture, literature, music, bones, and environmental impact. I believe an unbiased understanding would reflect a very neurotic, ever-self-limiting society of perpetual children, hanging tenaciously onto captivity in a paradoxical quest for personal freedom, failing to acheive empathy with the collective, and therefore never reaching it's ultimate potential. That may be what you leave behind when your no longer there. I have no desire to leave a name to remember, merely a legacy to persist in the benefit of the world. But what could it be? and how? This type of thinking makes a song like this mean very personal and spiritual things in contrast to conclusions one might make that tie into popular and timely media topics. I'm not saying they aren't valid, but rather, put into a quality of disconnection from our own senses of personal impact and identity. They become far away, like across the sea, while we hide within the haze, softly close our door, pretend the world was saved, and wait for heavens call. The impossable premise of virtue in the face of outrageous obstical stands a idol upon an epoch, and we, it's denizens and stewards, similtaneosly it's resourse and slaves, must chose to risk it all against the sea to have a better life, or to perceive the same life better. That is the horizon, for we are mortal. When we become mortal in our own eyes, we become disposable. so what then? What WOULD you leave behind, when your no longer there? |
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