Unscripted Moment

Todd Kowalski: That’s about finding meaning in a world that seems harsh and empty. Whether that’s art, your family or volunteering – whatever you’re interested in. The world can be bleak and dark and you gotta find something that makes you tick, so you don’t become too much of an empty hole. And as the song says, if you become too much of an empty hole, you can’t wipe away the stink. How many people are there who’ve lulled themselves into a hole they can’t fathom or conceive getting out of? That again will make people turn on each other. Who can admit to themselves that, while they’re personally failing, other people are going hard and doing it?

http://music.cbc.ca/#/blogs/2012/9/Listen-to-Propagandhis-Failed-States-read-the-bands-track-by-track-insights

Does anyone know any information regarding the opening voice clip in this song? Or perhaps a link to it?

Anyone know who the mile wide meteor refers to?

This song is so deep! It draws upon the terror of the holocaust to realize how truly blessed we are for each happy moment, but as the same time, we cannot avoid the evil lurks in man which crashes through to destroy us.

First of all: It's clearly draws upon the story of Siegbert Freiberg, who is speaking in the begining

"Friegberg's life story winds from a happy, middle-class ''house filled with music'' to avoiding Auschwitz by a fluke accident, to being hidden for two and a half years by gentiles. He returned to Berlin after the war to marry the daughter of the family that had saved him.

Perhaps the most dramatic moment of his story came on a New York radio program on July 6, 1947, with the surprise appearance of his father, Max, who had believed his son dead like the rest of the family. Max screamed. Father and son hugged for 20 minutes."

[Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/nyregion/siegbert-freiberg-dies-75-told-radio-audience-boyhood-escape-holocaust.html]

Line by line:

"We describe the sensation as a tearing in our chests and there is a quality in Feiburg's father's post-war wail that reaches through the world's worst speakers and beseeches anyone who happens by, on their way to somewhere else"

"clicking through the endless screens for the garbage on the shelves reflections of ourselves - to consider the cost of all this shit we seem to think will fill our perforated souls."

[Imagine hearing the scream of joy at this re-union just flipping through the radio looking for some garbage to fill yourself with]

"We're more hole than human being, can't wash away that stink. 13 billion years in the making: a live, unfiltered moment."

We are inherently bad people.

"An unscripted encroachment upon the province of routine evil - of all-too-human people. So pious, so peaceful. So quick to turn on you. Thought I was fucking outta here with two middle fingers in the air."

Really, I think what he is saying here, is that "happy moments" and goodness are "unscripted encroachements" or unplanned and unintentional events in a sea of evil And when we have these moments, we think that we have left evil shit behind "with two middle fingers in the air".

"Then like a mile-wide meteor, he came crashing through my door. That's just how it goes. And everybody knows ain't too much can be done."

--And just like that, the evil just slams back into reality... i think he is referring to hearing Frieburg while flipping through the channel. And then a realization that there isn't anything we can do about about the line below.

"All the avarice and greed and puny human hatreds that dare to come between two human hearts." [Father, mother and son]

[Now some bittersweet recognition of the good moments in life.]

I try not to live in fear and I'm truly grateful for every happy moment here.

"Upstairs I hear her voice she softly singing to him and I come undone. Something wicked this way comes. And that's just how it goes and everybody knows ain't too much can be done."

[Probably refering to the songs Friebergs mother would sing to him before they were seperated]

I think the overall theme of the song is that the world is generally bad, and we can expect bad things to happen (they're "scripted"). Occasionally though, there's an unscripted good moment, one of love and happiness and purity. In the case of Freiberg, it was he and his father reuniting after the Holocaust and decades apart.

The last half of the song, I think, is about Chris's unscripted moment--his son being born.

"Thought I was fucking outta here with two middle fingers in the air. Then like a mile-wide meteor, he came crashing through my door."

Presumably they weren't planning on having a kid , but it happened, and Chris sees it as one of the purely good things in the world. Before that, he was ready to give up on the world as entirely bad and worthless.

The line "Upstairs I hear her voice she softly singing to him and I come undone." further suggests this is about his son, and his wife singing to him. Chris does have a young son right now, probably 3 or 4 years old, so the timing fits with the song well too.

Something wicked is always out there brewing something up. History repeats itself.

Here is a link to original audio sound byte. Your welcome. https://www.yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/reunion/