So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
The black bird sits atop my guts and spreads its wings for flight
My shoulders back, my jaw pushed out, my stomach sucked in
Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers
But the brushstrokes feel like hearth pokes into my skin
The black bird feasts upon my guts and bears its beak to fight
My shoulders back, my jaw pushed out, my stomach sucked in
Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers
Now they poke between my teeth and that's why I thirst
When he flies me to the top there's nothing but the fog
A heart of stone, egg shell for bones, they lead you to be lost
The dark slope drags you down
The black bird is a part of me, so sad to see
So sad to be me
I ask before I go for you to drop a lit match down my throat
And smoke the bastard out or burn him to a crisp
Cause I'm already carrion, been eaten from the inside too long
This black bird wants to rip me limb from limb
The black bird dips its beak in blood and writes its thoughts in cursive 'cross
The bones that are its jailer and my ribcage
And when you turn me inside out, believe in me without a doubt
The words were all of his and none of mine
When he flies me to the top there's nothing but the fog
A heart of stone, egg shell for bones, they lead you to be lost
The dark slope drags you down
The black bird is a part of me, so sad to see
So sad to be me
My shoulders back, my jaw pushed out, my stomach sucked in
Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers
But the brushstrokes feel like hearth pokes into my skin
The black bird feasts upon my guts and bears its beak to fight
My shoulders back, my jaw pushed out, my stomach sucked in
Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers
Now they poke between my teeth and that's why I thirst
When he flies me to the top there's nothing but the fog
A heart of stone, egg shell for bones, they lead you to be lost
The dark slope drags you down
The black bird is a part of me, so sad to see
So sad to be me
I ask before I go for you to drop a lit match down my throat
And smoke the bastard out or burn him to a crisp
Cause I'm already carrion, been eaten from the inside too long
This black bird wants to rip me limb from limb
The black bird dips its beak in blood and writes its thoughts in cursive 'cross
The bones that are its jailer and my ribcage
And when you turn me inside out, believe in me without a doubt
The words were all of his and none of mine
When he flies me to the top there's nothing but the fog
A heart of stone, egg shell for bones, they lead you to be lost
The dark slope drags you down
The black bird is a part of me, so sad to see
So sad to be me
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I think it's pretty evident the blackbird is a metaphor for depression, sitting inside his chest and causing great pain. He's trying to bear it, but eventually it starts to show through (Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers/Now they poke between my teeth and that's why I thirst).
Finally, when he's just given up, he asks that at least the bird be killed or driven out, regardless of how it may harm him, as the bird has just been destroying him and his life for so long at this point that he doesn't care anymore. But then he's also acknowledging that he has said some things during this depression, or maybe will later, or possibly is referring to something he wrote (a suicide note?) when talking about the bird writing. He's saying that it wasn't really him saying any of those things, it was all the bird, the depression.