I like jk's observations regarding "I Alone." Indeed, although I don't see the whole Distance album as an apology, I definitely agree that this song represents an apology (it might be appropriate to call it a repentence), or at least an admission of being way wrong. It starts and ends with Ed saying he was wrong, and interestingly at the end of the song he doesn't really sing those lines so much as just speak them.
As for "recycled" lyrics, this song contains a lot of resolution of a lot of the images used throughout this album. In many ways it ties up the loose ends created by the conflicts underlying all the preceding songs in the album (the one song that follows this one portrays a place where the conflicts are in the past). Most of the songs in this album are second-rate music except in the context of the whole album, in which context they become amazing.
Here in this song Ed has an answer to his question in track 2, "The Distance," "are we locked into these bodies? are we anything at all?" Well, now he knows "we are not these bodies alone."
Here he has transcended the dream-state blindness that kept him from seeing the magic and meaning in the world around him.
Here he knows that there's "something more": "to live a life in love." This is not just romantically "in love," but being "reborn in love" in the Christian sense. Which is why we see that he is "tethered and tied to the heart of the one," a clear depiction of dying to oneself and being reborn in Christ as Paul describes it in the book of Romans (this book along with Jesus's espousing of the Golden Rule became the metaphysical/theological basis for Christian spirituality). Having given up his own will in this way, he can now say that "I feel strong,/ I'm finally at peace,/ The war is all gone," but "by no cause of my own." He is like the eagle who cuts through the air, with "no time for fear,/ faith in his wings takes him there."
I like jk's observations regarding "I Alone." Indeed, although I don't see the whole Distance album as an apology, I definitely agree that this song represents an apology (it might be appropriate to call it a repentence), or at least an admission of being way wrong. It starts and ends with Ed saying he was wrong, and interestingly at the end of the song he doesn't really sing those lines so much as just speak them.
As for "recycled" lyrics, this song contains a lot of resolution of a lot of the images used throughout this album. In many ways it ties up the loose ends created by the conflicts underlying all the preceding songs in the album (the one song that follows this one portrays a place where the conflicts are in the past). Most of the songs in this album are second-rate music except in the context of the whole album, in which context they become amazing.
Here in this song Ed has an answer to his question in track 2, "The Distance," "are we locked into these bodies? are we anything at all?" Well, now he knows "we are not these bodies alone."
Here he has transcended the dream-state blindness that kept him from seeing the magic and meaning in the world around him.
Here he knows that there's "something more": "to live a life in love." This is not just romantically "in love," but being "reborn in love" in the Christian sense. Which is why we see that he is "tethered and tied to the heart of the one," a clear depiction of dying to oneself and being reborn in Christ as Paul describes it in the book of Romans (this book along with Jesus's espousing of the Golden Rule became the metaphysical/theological basis for Christian spirituality). Having given up his own will in this way, he can now say that "I feel strong,/ I'm finally at peace,/ The war is all gone," but "by no cause of my own." He is like the eagle who cuts through the air, with "no time for fear,/ faith in his wings takes him there."