"If your frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."">
Forsaken Meanings & Lyrics Discussion by AmbienDaydream | SongMeanings
"If your frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."" />
I've owned this song for quite some time. For most of that time, I had only heard the original, instrumental version. My feelings about the song were formed from that, rather than the version with lyrics.
Listening to the instrumental version, I've always had the image of a flawed, or even "bad" person as they pass and meet that which awaits them. Imagine someone who has, in life, alienated everyone or who has even wronged many others, all the while maintaining an attitude of superiority, callousness, indifference, or even aggression & spite, and who is beginning to worry about the idea that they may not share in the bounty which awaits the good. The old man lies in a cold, sanitized room at the end of a lonely hallway in some neglected area of a hospital, and with the final flits of his eyelids springs a tear. His transporting angel arrives, and his sobs transcend the physical as he wonders whether his private pain, that which has tortured him in life despite his misanthropic, antisocial veneer, will be sufficient to gain him passage. The loving angel plants a kiss on his heavy forehead, smiling in a mixture of awe and pity. The hospital recedes into the distance, and the departed is left to eternity. His questions of whether that eternity will be one of peace or turmoil are forgotten as the sheer breath of eternity becomes apparent, and his privacies become part of the trivial.
"For 40 years I have plotted to bring down the party; I was sick, in mind and body."
--------->
"If your frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."
I've owned this song for quite some time. For most of that time, I had only heard the original, instrumental version. My feelings about the song were formed from that, rather than the version with lyrics.
Listening to the instrumental version, I've always had the image of a flawed, or even "bad" person as they pass and meet that which awaits them. Imagine someone who has, in life, alienated everyone or who has even wronged many others, all the while maintaining an attitude of superiority, callousness, indifference, or even aggression & spite, and who is beginning to worry about the idea that they may not share in the bounty which awaits the good. The old man lies in a cold, sanitized room at the end of a lonely hallway in some neglected area of a hospital, and with the final flits of his eyelids springs a tear. His transporting angel arrives, and his sobs transcend the physical as he wonders whether his private pain, that which has tortured him in life despite his misanthropic, antisocial veneer, will be sufficient to gain him passage. The loving angel plants a kiss on his heavy forehead, smiling in a mixture of awe and pity. The hospital recedes into the distance, and the departed is left to eternity. His questions of whether that eternity will be one of peace or turmoil are forgotten as the sheer breath of eternity becomes apparent, and his privacies become part of the trivial.
"For 40 years I have plotted to bring down the party; I was sick, in mind and body." ---------> "If your frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."