Devil in the Water

@asSTARSfallx @rrrobinson Thanks for your thoughts, rrrobinson. My comment may have missed the mark with this song, although I do still see threads of dismissing origination theories - Matt tends to do albums that link up to a larger theme though, and your thoughts and a re-read caused me to reevaluate. Perhaps it's Matt's own existential realization about the so-called meaning of life. It's interesting the way he contrasts the indoors (as an anxiety-inducing prison "hard to breathe") with the outdoors (enjoyment/liberation, through symbolic sunshine). He's brooding in his apartment, distracted by sounds coming from the ceiling until they actually become a floor (a ground, so to speak, that enables his epiphany). Still, it seems even in the light or when drowning the sand in the tide, the memory seems to wash in again. Then Matt is plagued with new questions -- thoughts about origins. In forgetting his past he is still confronted with his existence and what it means. To me, the end seems exasperation at not knowing (but it could be a bit more shallow in that he's sitting in his apartment constantly wondering what another person is thinking... someone he misses and cares about... and he realizes that even though he can't actually drown that memory he has to start looking at it differently). All that said, we are our past and our future [we just don't always know what that means depending on what point in time we evaluate]. The song is a bit, as you said, throwing the past away; again, the thought of burying the sand and drowning it in the tide does suggest two things: i.) cyclical nature (does the sand really ever go away or does it become part of something else?), and ii.) origins - what could be more primitive than grains of earth/sand?

Thanks for your thoughts.