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I feel that I was meant for something more
My curse, this awful power to unmake
And ever since you found your taste for war
You forced me onto those whose life you'd take
While Guernica in peaceful valley lay
And Dresden dreamed of anything but death
The day was turned to night and night to day
You let me loose upon their fragile flesh
And so I hid among the smaller things
You found me there and ferried me above
The flame deluge is waiting in the wings
The smallest thread holds back the second flood
And who will stand to greet the blinding light
It's lonely when there's no one left to fight
My curse, this awful power to unmake
And ever since you found your taste for war
You forced me onto those whose life you'd take
While Guernica in peaceful valley lay
And Dresden dreamed of anything but death
The day was turned to night and night to day
You let me loose upon their fragile flesh
And so I hid among the smaller things
You found me there and ferried me above
The flame deluge is waiting in the wings
The smallest thread holds back the second flood
And who will stand to greet the blinding light
It's lonely when there's no one left to fight
Lyrics submitted by Mortisfacio3
Track duration: 03:28
"The Flame Deluge" as written by Edward Carrington Breckenridge, James Riley Breckenridge, Dustin Michael Kensrue, Teppei Teranishi
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
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Death is supposed to motivate life because our natural death will eventually end our life. However, through war, mankind has instead used death as a tool to build up pride. Now God is furious at mankind for using his power of death. If it continues, then death will be cast upon the entire world.
In a way it is as though death is saying, "I did not want to do this, but by waging wars you made me use my power on the whole world."
Quite morbid, but I think that's part of Dustin's style... exposing the dark to praise the light.
I chose this song for a comprehension-expression class (i'm a french student in British and American civilisation/litterature). And this is what i came up with. If you manage to get through the whole of it, thank you very much! And you're more than welcome to give me your opinion
In this thesis, we’ll try to find a possible way of understanding this poem written by Dustin Kensrue, songwriter and singer for the Californian band Thrice. It is part of the concept album called ‘The Alchemy Index’, which is in fact made of four EP of six songs each (extended plays – too short to be call ‘album’). Each one of these EP are related to one of the Four Elements of Nature (Fire, Water, Air and Earth). Both the music and the lyrics are strongly woven with the element. Each EP finishes with a Shakespearean sonnet, in iambic pentameter ; in which the Element is talking to Man, telling its regrets about mankind. The Water sonnet, ‘Kings Upon The Main’ deals with human pride ; the Air sonnet, ‘Silver Wings’, in my opinion, is about how Man isn’t thankfull for just being alive, and is unable to feel simple pleasures brought by Air. The Fire sonnet is ‘The Flame Deluge’, which will be explained futher on. The Earth sonnet is called ‘Child Of Dust’ and I see it as a conclusion of the three sonnets.
Thus, in this poem, Fire is personified and speaks to mankind, and I’m going to give my point of vue on what the message could be, by taking elements from the text one by one.
The four first lines are a kind of introduction, iw which Fire expresses its regrets about the way it’s being used by Mankind, i.e for destruction. Man ‘has forced’ it into war. I feel a great feeling of melancholy in these lines, and guilt. During the whole song, these feelings are strengthened by the music, very strong and heavy, yet incredibly full of melancholy and regrets, even more when you take some time to see what the text is.
I think that the second and third verses can be analysed at the same time. In both there are many references to WWII and to the Bible. I’ll start with the war references. I see what could be the lexical field of planes and bombings. ‘Night was turned to day’ by the light of the explosions, destruction is ‘ferried above’, which I see simply as a bomber plane. Same thing about ‘waiting in the wings’. Guernica and Dresden are examples of dreadful bombings during WWII. Guernica was a small Basque town, and during the Spanish civil war (1937), Hitler sent planes to help Franco. But there was not a single soldier in Guernica, just civilians. Quite the same happenned in Dresden, in a much more bigger scale. Dresden is a city in Germany, which became a safe haven in the last months of the war. Hundreds of thousands of refugees went there, and not a single soldier. But still it’s been the aim of one of the most deadly bombings ever, under bombs from the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force.
Dustin Kensrue, the songwriter, is a Christian-influenced writer, and that can be felt in a lot of his texts, and ‘The Flame Deluge’ is no exeption. This is one of the main points on which fans don’t agree. Some of them see a Christian point of view in every word, and that tends to annoy non-believer fans. I’m not a Christian myself, but in some cases I find it obvious that Kensrue is refering to the Bible, and this text is, I think, directly related to Noah’s well known story about the Deluge and the Ark. The only difference is that there is no ark here. I don’t see any other explanation for the final words of the third verse, ‘the second flood’, the first being the one of Noah’s episode. Other words make me think of the Bible, in a less obvious way. First, ‘day was turned to night’ could be the simple opposite of the Biblical sentence ‘and night was turned into day’. Kensrue’s words here could express the end of the world. Moreover, the ‘fragile flesh’ reminds me of a Christian theme, the friability of Life.
In addition, there’s also a strong feeling of accusation in these verses. Twice Fire accuses Man by using the word ‘you’, and once more it’s explained that Man forced Fire in destruction (‘I hid’, ‘you found me’). There is a passage expressing the fragility of peace, and it is the ‘smallest thread’, as if the final bombing was about to fall, feverish. In this respect, as the accusation is getting more and more strong, the music itself is growing louder and even more melancholic, and eventually blasts on the last word, ‘flood’.
The final two lines are, in my opinion, the strongest of all. A litteral explanation could be a nuclear war, expressed by the blinding light and the fact that no one’s there anymore. This conclusion is heavily armed with regrets and morality. Likewise, the music is following this feeling, leaving all its violence behind, keeping just the sadness and the fragility. In the end, just a weak wind is left, and we can easily picture a post-apocalyptic world, covered in ashes.
On the Internet, I found another fan explanation. He said that the first verse could also be viewed as a complain from Man to his agressivity, as if Man didn’t want to destroy everything he destroyed. I found it interesting, and I pushed it further on, and I came up with the idea that we could understand the text as a complain from Man’s agressivity. And that is directly connected to ‘Human Aggression’ by Anthony Storr that we studied in class. Fire was supposed to warm us up, and yet we’re using it for self-destruction. Agressivity is one of the ‘qualities which have led to man’s extraordinary success’ (Storr). It could be mainly used for pulling ourselves higher and higher, but we keep using it to bring others lower and lower. Another interesting point is the opposition between the Water sonnet and ‘The Flame Deluge’. In the water sonnet, Water is described as uncontrollable and almighty, whereas water could be seen as the motionless, sleeping element. Fire, on the other hand, which can be seen as the unleashed element, wild and untameable, is in fact painted as a tool easily used by Man for destruction. Finally, that could be related to Pandora’s myth. In Greek mythology, Zeus punished men for stealing the secret of fire from the gods by giving them the Pandora’s Box, in which lay all the evils, ills and diseases of the world. Maybe we’re still not wise enough to use Fire.
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smallest thread = social tension of the times.
the flame deluge is waiting in the wings
the smallest thread holds back the second flood
i don't want too much on biblical allusions; christian or not, people will continue to make biblical references because of how deeply the bible is engrained in american culture. i feel dustin's lyrics transcend christianity and are therefore more human. the study of faith/myth and history should bring us closer to our reality rather than serve as the escape from. so, with further ado ...
the album was written during a very unstable time, bush was talking about taking iran, israel did its thing on lebanon, and europe developed a profound hatred for the united states to white bush responded by attempting to build military instalations in central europe (poland, lithuania, czech republic) -- so here's your smallest thread holding back the second flood. we were damn close to a major war and few of us even took heed.
the first flood being the assassination of franz ferdinand, which spawned ww1, and continued through to the bolshevic revolution in russia and later ww2. i love the last two lines, its a beautiful slap in the face to our world leaders revealing their true megalomanic nature
appologies for placing this initial comment in the wrong section
My curse, this aweful power to unmake.
And ever since you found your taste for war,
You've forced me onto those whose lives you'd take.
It obviously about fire and its destruction capabilities, and how it is abused for them insted of being used for better things.
While Guernica in peaceful valley lay,
And Dresden dreamed of anything but death,
The day was turned to night, and night to day;
You let me loose upon their fragile flesh.
Is about a great fire being set upon a town, killing all and making the days so dreadful and smokey that they seem like night and nights so bright from fire they seem like day.
And so I hid among the smallest things;
You found me there and ferried me above.
The flame deluge is waiting in the wings;
The smallest thread holds back the second flood.
Heres where I disagree, I don't think it's about atomic bombs, I still think it is about the fire and the city. "And so I hid among the smallest things; You found me there and ferried me above." Fire can be made from something as small as a match, and grow 'above' to tremendous sizes.
"The flame deluge is waiting in the wings;
The smallest thread holds back the second flood." Is about how fire can strike anytime, and the 'second flood' of fire could be unleashed by something as small as the smallest thread catching fire.
If i make anyone what an idiot""sorry i just cant picture flood rhyming with above.
cheers for any responses
Fire, which can be used for such beneficial things, is used more for destruction than other purposes. It has been utilized by man for his own selfish purposes, as seen here:
"And ever since you found your taste for war
You forced me onto those whose life you'd take"
Note "forced". The whole theme of it seems to be rather pacific. Fire doesn't *want* to be used as it is, but has no choice. Once unleashed, it is hard to stop. Hence,
"My curse, this awful power to unmake"
The rest describes the use for war...
1 "And so I hid among the smaller things
2 You found me there and ferried me above
3 The flame deluge is waiting in the wings
4 The smallest thread holds back the second flood"
1 Bombs
2 Bombers
3 Bombs in bombers in the air
4 I think that's in reference to the sermon knocloo27 mentioned.
As for
"And who will stand to greet the blinding light
It's lonely when there's no one left to fight"
Basically fire will be used eventually to destroy everything. After consuming all material in its deluge of fire, there will be nothing left, and will thus be unusable by anything or anyone. Hence the loneliness.
ccel.org/ccel/edwards/…
I do believe the "smallest thread" and flood lines may be from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It was a sermon given by John Edwards in 1741.
Alluding to the THREAD:
"You hang by a SLENDER THREAD, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment."
And the SECOND FLOOD:
"It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the FLOODS of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that HOLDS THE WATER BACK, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the FLOOD-GATE, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power"
Not sure how I personally feel about that sermon yet but I thought the thread and second flood may allude to those.
Hope that helps.
In His grace,
~b