Rectifier

Warning: An adderall infused Production - this comment may include excessively analyzed material about From One//Ra lyrics which, may not be suitable for children. [Rated PG -'Too Much Free Time'] by the American Free Time Association.

Hmm, no, not much of an actual "comment" is it....

I listened to various interviews and partly about this song. I did not get the full interview (would have had to pay for it) so I don't know if he had additional things to say.

First, a generalization that Sahaj (lead singer, song writer) made about the album "From One": Every song, according the Sahaj, was about an interpretation of a form//experience of loneliness. He also said they have a viewpoint from a person in confinement, stuck in their current position.

That they are stuck like that, we may have unconsciously assumed but perhaps didn't realize, seeing as though we typically avoid feeling truly alone. If we are, we want to get out of this situation. Perhaps what is left is introspection, and that can be dangerous. At times this leads to realization, perhaps that we lacked the means to prevent what happened, or worse - we made all the wrong decisions. Maybe we still don't possess the means or the answers to escape it.

Some Forethought on the album: After learning this, since I knew these aspects would be present in From One, I often saw it for the first time in certain places. Sometimes it is present in thoughts about the loss(es) that lead to this overall sense of loneliness or descriptions about the speakers life. Often it's like you are hearing a sort-of scattered and cryptic monologue. In the latter case, the audience then experiences the characters present feelings or hears about aspects of their situations, learning about their current lonely existence. We often see it permeating decisions//motivations that are being rationalized. For instance, in this song the character depicted by the singer, primarily restrained by the circumstances, he must reach absolution through his own efforts. We see this desire in the line "So far to go to reach absolution". In this sense, he is alone, even while there are people around him. Worse though, is that he fully knows it or feels it is true. He also states specific conditions tied to pain from loving relationships gone awry - which is typical in the album. It is worth noting that Rectifier is a unique example in "From One" because only here does Sahaj, as he explained in a different part of the interview, speak as the character who directly experienced what is expressed in the lyrics; they were at one point or another all true; they were his circumstances of loneliness and they lead, in part, to the lyrics for Rectifier. That is, it is partly a description of what he felt about his own life, albeit true that temporally variable aspects may only have been true during a certain time in ones life. Notwithstanding, the song is experienced as thoughts from someone in a lonely and conflicted state of mind. As mentioned before, this is in keeping with a theme, where archetypes or more or less specific characters feel as if they are stuck in the same situation over a period of time, all the while experiencing things that create an overall similarity across all songs. The various positions in "From One" vary in the extent of this aspect or how it was felt. For example, in parole it is simply a story about someone who just got off on parole and started stalking the person of his obsession. In Do You Call My Name it is Manic Depression that is felt from many viewpoints. From meaning in From One, Rectifier can be better interpreted, specifically, the parts of this song about failure in loving relationships and the resulting pain. These are attributable to the underlying theme, present in real life for Sahaj. Two specific aspects in this song that demonstrate this are the vagrant lover prisoner and the "On broken hearts I cut myself". In these we see loneliness embodied by painful experience of former companionship and also as seemingly inexorable confinement to emotional solitude.

Now, I move to lyrics for this song in particular. I'm paraphrasing many statements from Sahaj's description of Rectifier but it is still my interpretation. However, it's mostly from what he said, which can be deep and elusive just like the lyrics' meanings themselves. Overall, this is NOT just my own contrived conclusion but the details are still always speculative:

Firstly, and for reasons later described, we must realize that the singer is, in fact the 'rectifier'. It is Sahaj. To explain this, it's interesting to note that Sahaj takes perspectives into consideration in various songs, for instance, in Do You Call My Name, there are three different speakers - one in each verse. But here there is only one. The conflict in the song is shown in the idea that you can't always be the nice guy in life; sometimes you have to go "And put good intention up on the shelf". When you do, the self may be in conflict, or at least here our character's morality inspired point of view is pitted against necessary yet detrimental choices.

In the time described, as the dialog ensues throughout the song (it is inner monologue when akin to language, it speaks like a conversation with one's conscious), we see that he was trying to make things go right and had good intention. However, he always had to change these things by himself. He is the only speaker and the only rectifier here, the same one who he dares himself not to be so, and while he was not the only one trying he was the only one changing things.

The choices he made caused certain outcomes, which he refers to only by mention of the things that went wrong; things that are now causing images that appear to him, depicted by spiritual metaphor, as they are haunting him, as "ghosts that can see me" and "chaos" which is "beneath his skin". When he says, "why don't you care", and, "don't, don't you dare", he's asking himself, doubting his action and intention.

The choices facing him now bring fear that things will end up going the wrong way again, bringing others pain. He ruminates on this opposition, but also his recognition of the unavoidable choices for his position, that is, his need to rectify the situation via action, even if it means hurting others. He recognizes that sometimes you have to be aggressive, and initiate. That is why he ends the song critically, leaving us with the evoked image of an, "aggressive action batterer", which i think may be an overemphasized and emotionally charged self-condemnation. Perhaps it is half heartedly spoken by his conscious, which he believes had to be ignored. Perhaps this belief is a response to human nature, which often makes us regret far too often or far too strongly. If we hurt others, this belief is a aegis for peace of mind, which leads him to self-acceptance, it replaces this typical regret, lends assurance, saying "The action was justified, it was necessary."

Sahaj also made reference about wondering why it is that that you always have to go back to who or what you trust the most. Then he said the thing he trusts most, is himself. I think the unanswerd 'when' portion of this comment is - whenever you're feeling that there is a necessity, so to speak, 'to rectify' - when you try and get out of your solitary confinement and break free, perhaps alluded to by "a chain with no linkage" - a double entendre because, in having no linkage the chain is also alone, where it should be held by adjacent pieces of chain on both ends. In these sort of times, you need to make choices and in doing so you first confide in a trusted source. For another person who trusts in something or someone else more than they trust themselves, necessarily, it becomes a different situation. An example of this an alternative fitting of Sahaj's spiritual song writing tendency would be trust in God more than yourself. You would confide in God and not be reliant on a self-determined outcome - He would be your rectifier and make the choices - then in tragedy ask God if HE doesn't care or beg HIM not to dare.

Go to the source in order to change the outcome; convince the rectifier of your point of view and you are partially in control. However, be weary of this course of action in the world of "From One". Those who confide comfortably in love and trust those who MUST rectify their own life, can become emotional casualties and learn to beg the sad question, "don't you care?". When fleeting love reigns, it would prove a mistake to be vulnerable. Perhaps it's safer to rectify your social life defensively, but then again, you can't ensure you won't end up alone - the rectifier is alone too. It's almost as if, no one can avoid loneliness altogether, as it comes in many forms with varied guises. What is left is for you to choose: whether to take emotional risks, initiate change or sit idly by, be defensive or vulnerable, or just skip it all. Why not choose nothing altogether - become like a leaf gusting across an endless tundra - alone, the only leaf around - with in inescapable affliction but not that laborious and futile desire to escape it. For me, the solution is to accept loneliness when you must but to still risk//avoid it. The only thing to change is whether to fear it. But perhaps this brings self-preservation.

In the song he yells his ideas but in the background a surreptitious whispering tells of cynical//realist beliefs. We find a world where pleas made by the vulnerable for moral adherence fall on deaf ears, even their very own, where the hero does not listen to orders from mountaintops where deities call home and the ethical man is not always moral because sometimes good intentions only enter into life in our own minds.

You see, the cause of pain was motivated by a need for ending one's own loneliness and, in one sense, loneliness can rectify life. But, so too, can it become a sad story of dualistic tragedy that causes people to shatter hearts, getting "cut on the glass", while they also create new loneliness in others. By the very same feeling, it recreates itself. And it may not solve itself in the rectifier's life. As such, it is the double-edged sword of society, striking the heart of the world on both poles. Here it is simply the writers qualm; he is questioning himself, aligning his intention with his morality. All the while, loneliness and confinement - a general backdrop or a sort of guide for our understanding. It underlies imagery and feelings expressed and it leads the song purposively into conflict. It brings characters to paths whose directions ironically place them on a roundabout journey, paths that lead in many directions but all to and from nothing worldly with lasting higher significance. That is, unless on paths already traversed, in which walking back we arrive at a scene ruined by regret where we expected to see a scene from our memory, where happiness with our love we used to be. The conflict is not resolved in "From One", it is purely realized. That job is for the next album.

Lastly Sahaj's comments created the sense that, at that time he was stuck in this situation. For a span of time, feeling that he couldn't get out of what became a recurrent pattern, all the while trying, he sought to rectify what caused him to want change. He endured difficulty in doing so. He got tired, especially his soul, because it is the source of many difficulties for a rectifier depicted in his lyrics about how his "sanity and soul wear thin". Rectifier is purposively laced with spirituality, as all Ra songs are. Sahaj believes spirituality is the most appealing aspect of being alive. It is a higher meaning that is not found in relationships with people, where it cannot be broken by these failures and pains. There is a distinction between this and religion, as such this song would not be "Christian" or any other designation. It is simply spiritual, lonely, conflicting and in my opinion it is like most Ra songs... It is awesome.

They could have many meanings. Fortunately for me, I heard the true one and then thought about it and maybe mine is still not the best one. They are my favorite band. Deep lyrics, cryptic and beautifully constructed.