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.
I have this recurring nightmare:
Flailing pigeon, her broken feet
Frozen solid to the freezing pavement.
I turn away as if I do not see.
I have this childhood memory
Of my old man screaming from the driver's seat
To turn away from an unfolding horror,
But he could not undo what I had seen.
We never spoke of it again.
Two more hapless citizens of
The new post-traumatic stress worldwide disorder.
A stockholm syndrome fifth estate,
Desperate to batten down the mounting horrors
And shuffle on in a global lotus gait.
Content to marinate in the plasma glow of the
Home entertainment prisons we
Commune before like dime-store shrines.
Are these but votive lives?
It's a strangled, twisted truss
That shores-up each of us.
Anything to dull the pain
Of a splintered lotus gait.
As for me a filigree of psychic police tape
Tends to cordon-off the darker scenes.
But the wandering mind stumbles through it
And relives them all eventually.
Pries open wide your eyes and shines a painful light
On the guilt, the fear, the shame.
The courage never came
From the plasma glow of the
Home entertainment prisons we
Cling to like dime-store shrines.
Are these but votive lives?
Conservative at heart.
A conformist from the start.
A stockholm syndrome fifth estate.
A staggering lotus gait.
It's a strangled, twisted truss
That shores-up each of us.
Anything to dull the pain
Of a self-inflicted, crippling lotus gait.
Flailing pigeon, her broken feet
Frozen solid to the freezing pavement.
I turn away as if I do not see.
I have this childhood memory
Of my old man screaming from the driver's seat
To turn away from an unfolding horror,
But he could not undo what I had seen.
We never spoke of it again.
Two more hapless citizens of
The new post-traumatic stress worldwide disorder.
A stockholm syndrome fifth estate,
Desperate to batten down the mounting horrors
And shuffle on in a global lotus gait.
Content to marinate in the plasma glow of the
Home entertainment prisons we
Commune before like dime-store shrines.
Are these but votive lives?
It's a strangled, twisted truss
That shores-up each of us.
Anything to dull the pain
Of a splintered lotus gait.
As for me a filigree of psychic police tape
Tends to cordon-off the darker scenes.
But the wandering mind stumbles through it
And relives them all eventually.
Pries open wide your eyes and shines a painful light
On the guilt, the fear, the shame.
The courage never came
From the plasma glow of the
Home entertainment prisons we
Cling to like dime-store shrines.
Are these but votive lives?
Conservative at heart.
A conformist from the start.
A stockholm syndrome fifth estate.
A staggering lotus gait.
It's a strangled, twisted truss
That shores-up each of us.
Anything to dull the pain
Of a self-inflicted, crippling lotus gait.
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Todd Kowalski: This one is sort of similar to “Note to Self.” It’s about the things that might be haunting us from our past, if we’re trying to avoid them with TV or drugs or music or whatever our own personal lotus gait is. Lotus gait are the little shoes they put on people so their feet won’t grow. So, it’s like our own personal shackles that keep us from growing as people or individuals.
The song is based around memories that haunt you. Chris and his family saw a big car accident when he was a kid and they’d never talked about it again until a year ago. Chris asked his dad if it was actually true and if he’d really seen it and his dad couldn’t believe that he remembered it. So it’s about the dark corners of your mind that you’re trying to hide and really, there’s no way to hide those dark corners.
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