Spoils

I think this may be my favourite on Fortress

Fav song on Fortress, this is my interpretation.

"Endowed with the art of casting names upon its being, the humans claimed dominion over every living thing."

Humanity has innate creativity, but with that comes an uneeded desire to name and label everything. We have a word for everything.

"Proud as purpose they became to walk the earth as they arraigned the common creatures caught within corpus, cursed, conscious human brain."

I think this means, man rose over nature and then decided to categorize every animal into infinite groups or species, which comes off as an egotistical task.

"Every word that's ever written will fall short of its intent, even spoke or sung or screamed it will betray what it has meant."

Like Arif said in a recent MOD interview, our words can never fully express what we mean.

"Language is the heart's lament, a weak attempt to circumvent the loneliness inherent in search for permanence (like all the future ghosts who scratch their names in wet cement)."

Language is what sets us apart from animals, we need it to exist and it exists as a way to get past our loneliness as the only intelligent lifeform (that we know) on the planet. This is also a way to remain a memory or idea after death or to mark your place on earth to say, "I was alive, remember me, i was here." Which is where the metaphor "like all the future ghosts (people who are inevitably going to die) who scratch their names in wet cement."

"Demeaning meaning as they shout out at the emptiness, abstraction is the stake between anima and animus."

This is a tough one, but i think it basically means words are pointless for aforementioned reasons, but we still use them because of our lonelieness on this planet.

"The Anima and Animus, are in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, the unconscious or true inner self of an individual, as opposed to the persona, or outer aspect of the personality..."

So to me, in this context it sort of goes with the existentialist view that existence preceeds essence, or in this case our true selves are underneath all these labels or words.

"Deflesh the word as scourge of human destiny. Behold the world in other people, life is clarity."

Words = bad. Hahaha.

Take all that i've said with a grain of salt, its just my personal interpretation.

love the piano bit at the end

Amazing song. I just wished it was spaced out a little (the lyrics) so its easier to read

Fav song on Fortress, this is my interpretation.

"Endowed with the art of casting names upon its being, the humans claimed dominion over every living thing."

Humanity has innate creativity, but with that comes an uneeded desire to name and label everything. We have a word for everything.

"Proud as purpose they became to walk the earth as they arraigned the common creatures caught within corpus, cursed, conscious human brain."

I think this means, man rose over nature and then decided to categorize every animal into infinite groups or species, which comes off as an egotistical task.

"Every word that's ever written will fall short of its intent, even spoke or sung or screamed it will betray what it has meant."

Like Arif said in a recent MOD interview, our words can never fully express what we mean.

"Language is the heart's lament, a weak attempt to circumvent the loneliness inherent in search for permanence (like all the future ghosts who scratch their names in wet cement)."

Language is what sets us apart from animals, we need it to exist and it exists as a way to get past our loneliness as the only intelligent lifeform (that we know) on the planet. This is also a way to remain a memory or idea after death or to mark your place on earth to say, "I was alive, remember me, i was here." Which is where the metaphor "like all the future ghosts (people who are inevitably going to die) who scratch their names in wet cement."

"Demeaning meaning as they shout out at the emptiness, abstraction is the stake between anima and animus."

This is a tough one, but i think it basically means words are pointless for aforementioned reasons, but we still use them because of our lonelieness on this planet.

"The Anima and Animus, are in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, the unconscious or true inner self of an individual, as opposed to the persona, or outer aspect of the personality..."

So to me, in this context it sort of goes with the existentialist view that existence preceeds essence, or in this case our true selves are underneath all these labels or words.

"Deflesh the word as scourge of human destiny. Behold the world in other people, life is clarity."

Words = bad. Hahaha.

Take all that i've said with a grain of salt, its just my personal interpretation.

oh shit sorry about the double post, but on the Anima and the Animus...

..."These energies are theoretical constructs or concepts, which are useful for explanation but are not identical with gender. The separation of these concepts from gender is very difficult to maintain in the English language because of the similarity of words. Masculine energy and male and feminine energy and female seem to be the same but are not. The concepts may be better understood if viewed from a different context."

that was a wonderful interpretation

ima try to add a little, although you have plenty.

in thinking that this, as a plateful of our dead, sums up the previous songs (this song ends conquest and capture), this would be an overview of humanity in general. when "god" brought us upon the earth, he made us different from everything else. he gave us a brain bigger and more different than all other animals', obviously to make up for our lack in strength or ability to survive without intelligence. proud of this ability, humans obviously thought we reign superior to all other animals, since we are much more intelligent and whatnot. since our intelligence is so great, we must need a way to communicate ourselves, so we created music. by using "betray" i think arif is saying that this was our mistake. we create these words, but with these words we diminish our communication. no matter how we say these words, they will not come close to the emotional expression and communication that flows through music. like all the future ghosts who scratch their names in wet cement--- if you ever see names scratched in wet cement, you would never take notice of it, it would never be a big deal right? therefore language should be the ghost that carves its name in wet cement. language should be the lesser communication whereas music should be greater. obviously demeaning meaning will mean we created language in failure, while we had music first as better means of communication. defleshing the word would mean to take less impotance of what people say, and more in what they do, in the music they produce. since music is the ultimate expression, we will see people as they really are. life will be clear, no one can lie through music, only through words.

that was again, ranty, but oh well

shit my words are all jumbled in the last. here, its proofread now

in thinking that this, as a plateful of our dead, sums up the previous songs (this song ends conquest and capture {bloodmeat-limb from limb}), this would be an overview of humanity in general. when "god" brought us upon the earth, he made us different from everything else. he gave us a brain bigger and more different than all other animals', obviously to make up for our lack in strength or ability to survive without intelligence. proud of this ability, humans obviously thought we reign superior to all other animals. since our intelligence is so great, we must need a way to communicate ourselves, so we created language. by using "betray" i think arif is saying that this was our mistake. we create these words, but with these words we diminish our communication. no matter how we say these words, they will not come close to the emotional expression and communication that flows through music. like all the future ghosts who scratch their names in wet cement--- if you ever see names scratched in wet cement, you would never take notice of it, it would never be a big deal right? therefore language should be the ghost that carves its name in wet cement. language should be the lesser communication whereas music should be greater. obviously demeaning meaning will mean we created language in failure, while we had music first as better means of communication. defleshing the word would mean to take less importance of what people say, and more in what they do, in the music they produce. since music is the ultimate expression, we will see people as they really are. life will be clear, no one can lie through music, only through words.

I agree with Ravolution a lot, but I also thought that there is a kind of anti-religious tone to it as well.

"Proud as a purpose they became to walk the earth. As they arraigned the common creatures. Caught within the corpus, cursed, conscious human brain"

In the bible it speaks of Adam naming all the animals and I think this quote explains how arrogant and self centered humans are to think that we have such reign over other species. The only thing that separates us is an odd set of events over time that gave us this brain, we didn't really earn, though we act like we did.

"They will betray what they have meant"

This reminds me of how religious followers are always going back on their words and when the bible doesn't say what they agree with they often ignore it or try to shift it into something else, like saying slavery in the bible wasn't talking about the ownership of other humans.

"Abstraction is the stake between the animal and animus"

Made me think about the social pressures to act feminine if your a female and act masculine if your a male, and how we still live in a nation that punishes people for expressing their sexuality.

Words=Bad is one way to put it, but look at it this way. Previous to this we are exposed to 2 divine figureheads in the album, some sort of god (represented as kings in On Conquest and Capture which by the way, ends after Bone Marrow, the middle of the album is untitled) and Flidias, who was only referred to by name in Limb From Limb. That said, the "Anima Animus" statement is possibly the most important line on the entire album, as it clearly differentiates the two opposing forces. To quote from Wikipedia "In the unconscious of the male, this archetype finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus". So, the true distinction made between the benevolent goddess of nature, existence and reason and the malevolent god of man's true ignorance as abstraction. Holding to no doctrine or objective views of reality is the only way to be true, and to "deflesh the world" or to remove it of all preconceived ideas made by us as humans is the only way to see reality in it's purest form. So yeah, Words=Bad would be one way of saying it. This song also sets the stage for Isosceles, where human ignorance overthrows the goddess of reason just as the people killed Shah-Jahan in C&C, which explains the title.