Carbon

Honestly I thought embers were the points of light and the ashes/smoke rising from them were the monuments in darkness (obviously since it would have to be at night time to see the embers).

The rest seems hint at our dogma and how it's destroying us. All this fighting and bullshit over doing what we think is right for something we can't even prove, or for the sake of progress. Do good for goodness sake and not for your ego or someone/something else. In the end there will be no one to witness anything we've done if we're all dead; no people, no consciousness, no god for us to imagine either.

In an interview somewhere Ronan said that he got the idea for this song while in a 50's diner (I think) and the 'million points of light' refers to the view of a city at night.

I think he's saying that we're basing our values on trivial and futile things, and that we think that for some reason we're exempt from the laws of nature. Heh. The perfect metaphor for this is from a book I read... In the same way that a man wearing a coat of feathers, flapping his arms as he jumps off a cliff is flying and defying the laws of aerodynamics because, "So far so good," we believe that Civilization is the "best" way for humanity to live based on the fact that despite all the shit we've killed, we're still around. Not necessarily for long, though...

This is no doubt my favorite song from the new album. It backround is so amazing and so is the melody. I was disscussing the lyrics with my mom and I figuered it out. The million points of light are the lights in the city. The next few lines talk about the light shining up towards the sky as a sign of how we have put our selves so high. The light he is talking about is electricity. When I first heard the song I thought it was about God, and being a christian I didn't like the song. The line "Monuments in darkness" is the lights are on at night. "Stadning watch untile the sun will rise" how our city lights go off during the day. The song is bout the fact that we have put all our dependance on electricty. Our very society is dependant on it. Y2k scared the dung out of people but that was just comps. Electricity has become the key to our being. And that is "blindess and stupidity". Because to power our houses and to contiue this we have to cut massive forests down and steal all the resources from the earth. This song rocks!!!!

Interesting viewpoint there, I tend to view VNV Nation as against all organized religon. IMO I feel their music forces the listenter to analyze how religion plays into our lifes and the history of mankind.

I've always seen VNV Nation as being very spiritual, but not religious. They're not pushing any particular view, but they sing a lot about life after death, spirits, angels, eternity, etc.

This song has a more down to earth theme. It's about how man abuses the earth. "We kill everything.", "We cut the earth until it bleeds, rain ashes from the sky." And in typical VNV Nation fashion, it leaves you with a question, not an order. "What will be our legacy?"

VNV Nation's political messages in their songs are way subtler than most bands (think KMFDM or Rage Against the Machine), but I think that makes it hundreds of times more effective. When I hear this song I see trees falling, smoke pouring out of factories, polluted rivers, and dying animals. Instead of blaming the evil "system", like a Rage Against the Machine song would, VNV Nation lets us know that we are guilty, too. We HAVE deified ourselves; we only look out for #1 and to hell with the rest of the world. We as Western society are using up Earth's resources, relying on technology to save us. Someday our technology may not save us, and what will be left, only "monuments in darkness" to a culture that destroyed itself?

PS: I don't mean to hate on Rage Against the Machine, they're good. I just think they lack subtlety.

I think he hit one nail on the head at least:

"Without this light we've made we are no more".

IMHO this one line is the essence of productivity, of living in order to create. Sadly the rest of the song is about the futility of life which I can't abide. Gah.

If you really want to understand this song I suggest you look up carbon on wikipedia like I just did and see how much clearer it seems suddenly... Here's just a piece: "The name "carbon" comes from Latin language carbo, or coal. Carbon compounds form the basis of all life on Earth and the carbon-nitrogen cycle provides some of the energy produced by the Sun and other stars. Although it forms an extraordinary variety of compounds, most forms of carbon are comparatively unreactive under normal conditions."

Just to make a light is a double metaphor. In one sense it's referring to how important our lives seem to us yet when we die and decompose we eventually meet up with all the dinosaur bones and become petroleum or coal which is then mined (we cut the earth until it bleeds rain ashes from the sky just to make a light) to be burned for fuel or electricity so we can light up the darkness at night if we feel so inclined to not sleep. The other point here is that we as life are essentially pure energy. The light that no one sees is the light that comes from within us connecting us to the divine that is named in the song as the traditional religious deity that we recognize as ourselves yet we cover our eyes so with our blindess and stupidity we kill everything by denying responsibility and deflecting it to some authority outside. Then it also refers to the traditional pagan or scientific creator usually symbolized as the Sun (monuments in darkness standing watch until the sun will rise) once again both the artificial light used at night but it also speaks to how spiritually navigate through life by our own light or connection to God, our guardian angel if you will watches out for us until the time we rise to greet the day of true destiny (a million points of light ascending to the sky).

There's a line from a Skinny Puppy song that keeps popping up in my head to further explain this "I only kill to know I'm alive".. Humans learn by trial and error. We don't seem to know what's right until we figure out what's wrong. We learn from our mistakes. In order to create you must destroy. It is this dual nature that causes us to love despite how much it hurts. We kill everything to see if we can feel anything (what inspires in us this madness that out existence should be defined by a light that can't be seen by anyone) and we do feel it madly. We struggle everyday of our lives driven by something we will never be able to explain- love. Love for self that keeps us alive then that which contadicts it completely, a love for everything outside that we seek to attract and please like lovers & family or a love for God that we seek but never behold with our eyes. Our passion is what defines us, the will to shine (that without this light we are no more) keeps us alive.

To be honest with VNVs lyrics and all lyrics I dont think there is a solid meaning for them, yeah, Ronan had a meaning for it when he wrote it, he is singing about whatever he was thinking when he wrote the song. My belief is that everyones meaning to the lyrics is true, if it means something to someone and if the lyrics say something to someone then to that person that meaning is correct.

To me it all makes so much sense singing about how blindness and stupidity is killing everything because thats true, the world is being destroyed by blindness, stupidity and greed and the lyrics 'What inspires in us this madness that our existence should be defined by a light that we can't see?' I dont believe in a God, not just for the reason that he cant be proven to exist but this is what this lyric means to me.

a dream of me in a club dancing and a beautiful man watching me from a far.

This is no doubt my favorite song from the new album. It backround is so amazing and so is the melody. I was disscussing the lyrics with my mom and I figuered it out. The million points of light are the lights in the city. The next few lines talk about the light shining up towards the sky as a sign of how we have put our selves so high. The light he is talking about is electricity. When I first heard the song I thought it was about God, and being a christian I didn't like the song. The line "Monuments in darkness" is the lights are on at night. "Stadning watch untile the sun will rise" how our city lights go off during the day. The song is bout the fact that we have put all our dependance on electricty. Our very society is dependant on it. Y2k scared the dung out of people but that was just comps. Electricity has become the key to our being. And that is "blindess and stupidity". Because to power our houses and to contiue this we have to cut massive forests down and steal all the resources from the earth. This song rocks!!!! Oh and this song really became cool to me when I was at a camp. It was about 11 pm and it was totally dark, I looked accross the lake and all I could see was the lights from three signal towers. The kind you see along hihg ways. With three blinking light. Adn I started singing to my self. "IN 1000 years what will be our legacy a millon points of light that no one could see."