Beauty is Within Us

aww nobody commented on this song? It's a great song. Very beautiful. Yoko Kanno is a great song writer and Scott Matthew is an awesome singer :)

I'll give a personal translation of this song for me.

"O mother dear Look what you've done To your forlorn and once beloved son Why was I born at all?"

This son is realizing that his mother has failed to properly foster his personality and virtues. He feels like a freak and has internalized the shame that he feels should be directed at her. He does not feel his mother's love, and instead just feels like a mere product of her faults.

"O mother dear I'm such a freak A mutant man, a woman underneath Why was I born at all?"

This line is a little more of the same personalized shame, but the third line is extremely powerful. The meaning behind mutant man is the son describing himself as a failed human product. In his soul he sees the grimacing from society at large and has realized that he is nothing but the shell of his mother acting in his body. Her ideals, or LACKING thereof, have imprinted on him. Beneath this mutant is his mother.

"It's you I blame for all the shame This anguish and this aching The mirror turned against the wall Myself despised, forsaken"

The son is trying to relieve himself of the shame and pain from mere existence by passing it on to his mother. Cognitive dissonance. He feels he is supposed to take on the full burden of his person, but he understands who made him this way. In Episode 2 of SAC, Takeshi was part of a religion that prevents him from going into a prosthetic body. Takeshi helps give more context to this song. He is cursed with body dysmorphic disorder, and he knows that his inheritance of every facet of his life was due to his mother's choices.

"You say, "Beauty is within us, your mother knows" "There's a beauty that's within us, just like a rose" You say, "Beauty is within us, so let it grow" But it's grown so dark and ugly"

The mother's words are the only advice this son has ever received, and he follows her instructions to let his "beauty" grow. The son sees why this ended so poorly. The product of her advice is individual shame.

"O mother dear I curse you so For breathing life into your wretched son Why were you born at all?"

The son is directing the anger at causality. The mother here isn't really his mother anymore, she is mother nature. He is unsure of where the end of responsibility for his existence lies. The mother is the closest point to which he can criticize.

"O mother dear I love you so O please forgive this anger in my soul Without you I'm alone"

The son longs for approval. He is again speaking to his real mother. He cannot pass the shame of causality onto her, so from her he will try to seek the only acceptance he can get in the world.

"It's me who's been eternally damned Trapped inside this cage, a ruined man All damaged and depraved"

Again with Takeshi, this line has some context. The mutant man is doomed to suffer because of his ancestor's choices. He understands how he is imperfect, and longs for the opportunity to escape from causality.

"O mother dear This misery Has settled like a stain upon my skin -a vast unspoken sin"

The son feels the anguish and horror he sees in the eye's of others like it is a scar or blemish on his body. He can physically feel their disgust as if it were present on his face.

"And my mistake is much too late But your mistake was trusting That out of grief, a goodness comes And love comes out of lusting"

The son understands it is too late to unbecome the consequence of causality, but now he has properly identified his mother's faults. This is the last thing I think they say to their mother, and it is fitting for the son to finally be able to relieve some of the burden he feels. The son has identified that his mother made a choice. People are their actions, and whether or not they intend to act doesn't affect that. If you trip all of the time, you are clumsy. If you eat unhealthy foods, you are unhealthy. If you bring a child into the world under terrible environmental conditions without having worked to make them better, you are a terrible mother. The son can now see his mother's faults. She fostered his childhood for her own needs and sake, and not his.

"But it's grown so dark and ugly"

Again, the mutant man feeling the disgust like he is wearing his shame on his skin.

"But it's grown so dark I can not see you anymore"

The son has accepted responsibility for his person. He is panicked at not having his lifeline of causality to blame for his continued shame.

"O mother dear, let me out of here!"

Panic. Escape. He is asking for causality to repent and repay him. They owe him this much...