So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
Stood there leaning to the city moon,
Casting silhouettes tall to grip her white rooms
The black-clad voyeur in his black-clad masque
In the serpentine sun of tragedy basked
Stood there cursing at the soul-dead mass
With their fabled illusions, the vain dreams that passed
Splinters of a life rushing by in the whirl
Alone, silent warrior in a fantasy world
He cried for night / but night could not come
So, swept in the shroud of misanthropia he went away
And fed the empty galleries
With the artifacts of the black rain
Sunken into the shadows with a dry, sardonic smile
He made the footprints a part of his heart
To rouse a sacred confrontation
Stood there carving on the monument to lies
Digging of the Earth, making friends with the soil
As the all-mother rises and bares her bleeding thighs
He disappears into her cold, icy womb
Casting silhouettes tall to grip her white rooms
The black-clad voyeur in his black-clad masque
In the serpentine sun of tragedy basked
Stood there cursing at the soul-dead mass
With their fabled illusions, the vain dreams that passed
Splinters of a life rushing by in the whirl
Alone, silent warrior in a fantasy world
He cried for night / but night could not come
So, swept in the shroud of misanthropia he went away
And fed the empty galleries
With the artifacts of the black rain
Sunken into the shadows with a dry, sardonic smile
He made the footprints a part of his heart
To rouse a sacred confrontation
Stood there carving on the monument to lies
Digging of the Earth, making friends with the soil
As the all-mother rises and bares her bleeding thighs
He disappears into her cold, icy womb
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Best guitar evar.