The Widow

So to me I picture an old man sitting in his apartment building. He's smoking Clove cigarettes and he's coughing and wheezing, alone. Slowly dying. He knows he's slowly killing himself. He can feel it in every breathe he takes, but he doesn't care... he is the widow. Now The person who is singing (Cedric) Is a younger guy. He lives in the apartment next to the widow. And every night he here's this old man, this widow. He can feel his pain in every cough that he can hear through the paper thin walls of the apartment complex. To the point where this old mans emptiness, loneliness, haunts him in the streets. For he too feels a sort of loneliness. Even though he never sleeps alone. Every night it's a new girl. Someone, just anyone so that he doesn't wind up exactly like the widow. But he is ashamed of this, so he hides. He hides from what he is terrified to become, yet is already there. This emptiness, and loneliness bonds these two polar opposite people together.

That's what this song means to me.

----He's got fasting black lungs Made of clove splintered shardes They're the kind that will talk Through a weezing of coughs

And I hear him every night In every pore And every time he just makes me warm----

INTERPRETATION: I think the man with the bad lungs is death. The fact that he has weezing coughs and burnt lungs is detail. The song is being sung through the eyes of a dying man who is willing to accept his fate (gets a warm feeling).

----Some of you guys refer to the man with black lungs as an actual human being, but then when it comes to the second verse/bridge, you refer to him as as needle or drug. It doesn't make sense. I'm almost certain Cedric and Omar are referring to the same 'being' in those verses.----

Freeze without an answer Free from all the shame Must I hide? Cause I'll never Never sleep alone

INTERPRETATION: Here, he has no response to the presence of death. He knows that death will be his only salvation and freedom from shame. When he says "Must I hide?" I feel like he pulls some sarcasm on himself because he knows death is there beside him as he sleeps.

Look at how they flock to him From an isle of open sores He knows that the taste is such Such to die for

INTERPRETATION: I feel like this verse is a dream or flashback ("Look at.."). I feel like "they" are prostitutes or maybe addicts but I'm sure "him" is the narrator/singer. Sores can be a type of STD or affect of taking a needle. Now this "taste" is either drug or lust.

And I hear him every night On every street The scales that do slither Deliver me from… Freeze without an answer Free from all the shame Then I'll hide Cause I'll never Never sleep alone

INTERPRETATION: Here is the narrator/singer in his bed again. He knows his death will occur at any moment, and he hears him creeping and "slithering" throughout his day. Him knowing that he WILL IN FACT DIE delivers him from any type of "freeze without an answer" and will free him from his embarrassment/shame. I honestly don't know what he means when he says "THEN I'll hide." Maybe his death will be his haven? His best hiding place? ... Don't know.

Oh lord Said I'm bloodshot for sure Pale runs the ghost Swollen on the shore

Everynight in every pore The scales that do slither Deliver me from…

INTERPRETATION: Finally the narrator dies. "Oh Lord! I'm bloodshot for sure!" -- His eyes bloodshot from pain. "Pale runs the ghost swollen on the shore!" -- My favorite line of the entire song.. only because i have no idea of what it could mean. :/ Any ideas will be great.

Freeze without an answer Free from all the shame Then I'll hide Cause I'll never Never sleep alone

Freeze without an answer Free from all the shame Let me die Cause I'll never Never sleep alone

INTERPRETATION: The narrator finally meets his demise.

I've listened to this song 20 30 40 times.. One of my favorites. :) If you read this thanks for taking in a different perspective. I think all of your interpretations are good.. just make sure they make sense!

It's dedicated to Jeremy Ward, who died of a drug overdose...

I always thought it was the point of view of a widow - guess I was wrong! Maybe it's the fcat the widow spider eats her mate, and drugs are like that...they destroy you, although they fill that void "I never sleep alone".

this wht i think the album is talkin about u can agree wit me or disagree..

Frances the Mute:

Frances is a prostitute in a small town that is influenced by the Catholic Church. One day a preist hires her, and gets Frances pregnant. The church doesn't want anyone to find out, so to clean up the mess, they give Frances an abortion. However, the baby survives and Frances is thought to be dead. L'via had seen the whole thing and did nothing about it.

The church didn't want Frances, her sister (L'via) or mother (Miranda) to tell anyone, so they threatened to kill them if they told, so there was always someone watching their every move.

Cygnus (the almighty fetus) was raised in the orphanage, where he was frowned upon and abused or possibly molested by the priests. As he grows up, he constantly wonders about his origin, which the priests wont tell him about. Cygnus grows up to hate the nature of males, the way they rape peple and etc, and he is sortof ashamed to be a male. He develops a female split personality, Cassandra, who "talks" to him in his mind. Cygnus has a bad drug habit, and possibly one day Cassandra encourages him to go find the origins of his family. His friends tell him not to, but he wont listen.

Cygnus sells drugs because he has no money, so he becomes notorius as a drug dealer. One of his main customers is The Widow, who is actually Frances. Neither the widow or Cygnus know this. Frances might have gotten married and her husband died, which is where she got the name "the widow". But the widow develops a heroin addiction and joins cygnus on his journey to get her drugs, and possibly sleep with cygnus. (the line "ill never sleep alone" could refer to her never sleeping without medication, or never sleeping withour Cygnus). The Widow eventually dies from her drug addiction, and Cygnus goes on, not realizing he killed his mother.

Cygnus finds out about L'via nad Miranda, and finds them in hopes of finding out more about his origins.. He finds them, and talks to them, and Miranda tells Cygnus about his mother being "killed" by the catholic church. Miranda has been trying to tell the public about how corrupt the Catholic Church is, but noone believes her. Cygnus's other personality, Cassandra, takes over and she kills L'via and miranda while he is on heroin because he is enraged that they did nothing to stop the priests from killing his mother. Cygnus spends little or no time sober and lets Cassandra get the best of him. By now there are wanted signs on the streets for him, but he doesnt realise it because he is always on heroin.

Cassandra influences Cygnus to get revenge on the Church, so he goes and rapes 25 priests (because apparently there had been 25 other women raped and killed ("25 wives in the lake tonight")). By now he is dying of aids, and one night when he is sober Cassandra is talking to him , and reveals her "plan". She tells cygnus about how the whole thing with Frances and the priests had never happened, that the priests and the people at the church had tried to tell him that his parents had abandoned him when he was a baby. L'Via and Miranda were people he had dreamed up and the whole story is something he had made in his mind when he was high. Cygnus had murdered two random people who he thought were L'via and Miranda. He doesnt believe Cassandra, so he plays the story out in his mind and realises that it wasnt true, and he had done all this for nothing. Then he realises that The Widow was his mother(his father had died), and he realises he was the one responsible for her death, and many others who bought heroin from him and ODed, and the 25 men who he had raped and killed. He is no better then the men who are rapists, killers, etc with a violent nature. He decides he will start a new life, but Cassandra reminds him he is dying of AIDs, so basically hes screwed. He then dies, and in his mind he hears cassandra taunting him, saying " No theres no time, No theres no light, You aint got nothin, your life was just a lie."

The reason i think that that acoustic riff (Sarcophagi) was played aty the end and the beginning of the cd is because this will probobly happen in a similar way again, with diffrent people and different stories, children of rape. This starts the cd over, which is also why i think there are no real giant details, but just a similar basic plotline, to show that this will happen again and again, but different stories every time...

This isn't about Cedric or his mother, and anything like that. The whole album is based on a diary found in the backseat of a car that their former Audio Artist found working as a repo man. It's a very interesting tale about an orphan who tries to find his origin but ends up killing his mother ('The Widow') by selling her heroin and ultimately having her addiction kill her.

!!! el_coyote's interpretation is now my official interpretation.

Hmm...I will tell my interpretation. Agree or don't. I get the impression that "He" is the singers drug dealer, one who the singer murdered either to save others from his poison, or perhaps out of self defense. Fasting black lungs might indicate that he had severely worn out his body by now anyway, thus the lungs barely work - or, this could refer to death itself, since a lung fasting would indicate that it was taking nothing in. Having killed a dealer, one would typically dump the body, which may perhaps end up washing up "swollen on the shore", while his ghost runs pale. The singer is both bloodshot from the blood constriction of the drug, and because he has metaphorical blood on his hands. Clearly, those flocking to him from an isle of open sores would be the addicts, with track marks and other sores that heroin and meth cause, flocking to him to buy more poison, because once you taste it once, you will die to keep tasting it. Hearing him every night in every pore would allude to the entire body, down to the pores, being permeated and affected by the drug, and it makes him warm, indicating heroin. Hearing him every night on every street may allude to seeing addicts on every corner, seeing the malignant influence wrought by the drug dealers greed and indifference, and the scales that do slither would allude to a snake, as many cultures represent evil or the devil in the form of a serpent. The only thing that can deliver the addict from his pain, the cold, and the fear, is more evil entering their veins. The singer is now free from all the shame, due to the redeeming death of the dealer, but freezes inside without his narcotics. The singer never sleeps alone, due either to the pain brought on by the drug (the drug in this case being so powerful that it becomes its own entity, or "thought-form"), or perhaps the ghost of the dealer, still as repugnant and evil in death as he was in life. By the end, "The Widow," who is named so because they have lost their lifelong companion (drugs), is so miserable and tormented, they are ready to simply give up and die. And, as El Coyote suggests, I think the final riff being the same as the beginning riff of the CD is to emphasize that it will always happen again and again, a never ending cycle that will never stop in the world we live in (note that the CD on repeat will blend both riffs seamlessly). Or, you know, maybe a cat on shrooms jumped on the keyboard and wrote random lyrics. Whatever.

Oh, and by the way, the scales that do slither may also have referred to scales you would use to measure drugs, and their inherent evil.

this song is a bout a short fat balding man who lives on chewing tobacco and sheeps wool. he appears to be having a rough time.

i absolutely love this song, i can't believe only one person has commented it. but i don't really get how the widow fits into the story... can anybody help?