So much of Covenant's music concerns longing for transcendence and immortality. The perspective is often that of an outsider, observing the world, the universe, or the cycle of life and death objectively and impartially, as though detached from it. Though sometimes he is within it, and there is a dichotomous theme of the joy of existence coupled with the agony of inevitable annihilation.
I like to imagine that this song concerns a long-forgotten mythic ritual that tied a community of isolated and alienated individuals to its collective identity, and was suddenly remembered or discovered. "The sailors" represent the mythic lore kept in this ritual, that over time lost its significance, just a children's bedtime story. The mythic value was lost in the interest of pragmatic value, and the eternal collective consciousness of the people was lost in the interest of pleasure. But the reasons that the community needed the lost mythic value are the same reasons that will bring them back to it. It's that, individually, life is haphazard, ephemeral, accidental, and absurd, and there's no escaping that. Individually, they are countless lonely voices, whispering in the dark. But collectively there is history, progress, continuity, meaning, transcendence, and immortality. Lighting the fires, calling the ships to port, means rediscovering this ancient wisdom before we're gone.
So much of Covenant's music concerns longing for transcendence and immortality. The perspective is often that of an outsider, observing the world, the universe, or the cycle of life and death objectively and impartially, as though detached from it. Though sometimes he is within it, and there is a dichotomous theme of the joy of existence coupled with the agony of inevitable annihilation.
I like to imagine that this song concerns a long-forgotten mythic ritual that tied a community of isolated and alienated individuals to its collective identity, and was suddenly remembered or discovered. "The sailors" represent the mythic lore kept in this ritual, that over time lost its significance, just a children's bedtime story. The mythic value was lost in the interest of pragmatic value, and the eternal collective consciousness of the people was lost in the interest of pleasure. But the reasons that the community needed the lost mythic value are the same reasons that will bring them back to it. It's that, individually, life is haphazard, ephemeral, accidental, and absurd, and there's no escaping that. Individually, they are countless lonely voices, whispering in the dark. But collectively there is history, progress, continuity, meaning, transcendence, and immortality. Lighting the fires, calling the ships to port, means rediscovering this ancient wisdom before we're gone.