So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
A primordial flow across the blood-brain barrier.
Cryptic ring structures bind to receptors.
These duplicate keys throw the floodgates open
On a raw datasphere of pure information.
An inner path to outer space
Or a facile article of faith?
Falsifiable fantasies
Or freestanding parallel realities?
We're so frequently seduced
By such novel, exotic views.
Our confirmation biases
Leverage everything we perceive.
Visions so astonishing, preposterous, impossible.
A cosmic lattice of calligraphies, geometries
Unthinkable.
Infinite Jaali screens, alive, florescent
As I shatter, melt. Annihilation.
Rolling hills. The water flows. The flowers bloom.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all.
There is no you. There is no me. And that is all.
A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry.
A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of the
Universe is love.
Cryptic ring structures bind to receptors.
These duplicate keys throw the floodgates open
On a raw datasphere of pure information.
An inner path to outer space
Or a facile article of faith?
Falsifiable fantasies
Or freestanding parallel realities?
We're so frequently seduced
By such novel, exotic views.
Our confirmation biases
Leverage everything we perceive.
Visions so astonishing, preposterous, impossible.
A cosmic lattice of calligraphies, geometries
Unthinkable.
Infinite Jaali screens, alive, florescent
As I shatter, melt. Annihilation.
Rolling hills. The water flows. The flowers bloom.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all.
There is no you. There is no me. And that is all.
A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry.
A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of the
Universe is love.
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The beginning of this song is awesome the way it sounds to me. He seems to be describing how a fantastical thought forms, and questions it's validity. Couldn't have been written better by Shakespeare (well maybe). The rest is about what this thought has allowed him to understand about his feelings towards life.