Running in slow motion, almost in
reverse. (The dream always begins
the same way). At first, no one else
around is affected. Everything looks
the same, but in the wrong time. I
move my mouth but the sound won't
come. Heat wave lines ripple up like a
TV dream. The sun stays high. not
setting. And then the sound starts
slipping around. Linear time clock
sucks in backwards. Looking out
ahead to the past, to a better time.
I'm passing myself. See me running
by. Relief in a dream of the world.
running in rewind.
reverse. (The dream always begins
the same way). At first, no one else
around is affected. Everything looks
the same, but in the wrong time. I
move my mouth but the sound won't
come. Heat wave lines ripple up like a
TV dream. The sun stays high. not
setting. And then the sound starts
slipping around. Linear time clock
sucks in backwards. Looking out
ahead to the past, to a better time.
I'm passing myself. See me running
by. Relief in a dream of the world.
running in rewind.
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you're tempted to think of this as an actual dream one of the members of the group had, and that the notion of time moving backward as an essentially luddite impulse was sort of added after the fact, as an interesting way of organizing the imagery and of intersecting with the band's politics. the irony -- and grotus trucked in irony -- is that grotus's music was essentially technological. but part of their genius was always in using their tools against themselves: from the start, their music had a sheen of rust and decay to it, an invasive element of the organic, as if the machines weren't up to the task of expressing the terror grotus tasked them with expressing, a terror, this song suggests, ultimately traceable to their ascent. fifteen years on, in the age of the internet, the smartphone, ubiquitous computing, and the like, those fears seem quaint, but one could just as easily trot out the counterexamples: networked jihad, remote-control warfare, biotechnology.