Fates Warning – Still Remains

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  General Comment: i think its about someone missing their significant other who has passed away. They read a diary and it triggers the memory of them dying, they then talk about where you go when you die. the next 2 verses seem to talk about them searching for someone new to light their candle, but with no luck. so their at home still looking at things they remember

  Flag Disspositionon January 15, 2009   Link

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    I recently had my daughter listen to this song and write an essay about it in order to get out of punishment for bringing home a bad grade in English. She did an excellent job, but this made me go back and listen to the song again and do my own interpretations.
    
    I don’t think that you can really dig in to this song with the lyrics alone. The music has its own story and enhances the emotion of the lyrics. The first 4 lines of the song describe feelings that the author cannot express with words, and I think that the music provides what is missing for him.
    
    I do agree that the main subject is someone who is gone, probably dead, but I do not feel that it is a significant other/spouse. There are hints that suggest a parent or a grandparent; these are the people that we usually have regret because of unspoken words. An old diary, a dusty shelf, and unread history… these all suggest someone older than the author, someone who has a past that was not necessarily made (or shared) with him. Another clue is the line “open arms of over protection”. I think our parents at one time or another have overprotected us all, and as we get older and we lose those people, we yearn for the protection that we felt from them.
    
    The majority of the song is filled with regret and frustration. He has the regret of not speaking or expressing himself prior to this loss, and he has the frustration from the pain caused by his regrets. Even though he has memories, including words (both spoken and written), and images of this person… he feels like they are an illusion, which cannot hide the truth that this person is gone. The spoken words that he sings of could very well have been the last words that he heard from this person.
    
    He begins to look for all of the things that this person taught and promised him (the way, the direction, the hope, the laughter), and he is possibly looking for a sign that his memories are real.
    
    In the end he realizes that his memories are real, and that because of his memories that person still remains.
    
    The last 4 lines of the lyrics now mean something opposite from their original meaning. The doubt that he had about his memories is now what has become tragic and absurd.
    
    We should all learn from this and realize that the loved ones we have lost do live on in our hearts and in our memories, even though they are physically gone, there is nothing that can change our memories of the past that we share with them.
    

    Flag TwistedColorson January 23, 2009  

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    This sounds like a song about a man who has finally left an abusive and troubled relationship, with his ex-spouse. He looks back on that period in his life with mixed emotions, but the realization that there is no love there anymore, just an empty heart, and emotionaless memories of that love.
    
    That's my take on it, but perhaps I'm inserting too much of my own experience into it? :)

    Flag DerrickC1975on August 12, 2011  

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