This song is about delving too deeply into your mind. Earlier in the album, ambition is established as a positive trait; it's what allows the journeyer to "wade in the water"
and "fill your lungs" with oxygen instead of wading in doubt and floating like concrete.
Ambition however, can lead to tragedy, because of the paradoxical dual-nature of it; it will lead you out of the quagmire of pretense and pre-conceived notions laid out by
religion, mass media, and other forms of hegemony, but once you're out of those woods and into the wilds of the human mind, hyper-analyzing every single piece of information
available to you, analyzing the analysis, the ambition becomes an enemy. At first you don't want to believe that it could have led you astray, so you push yourself further and
further, convinced that there will be another breakthrough....but it doesn't come.
This song begins at the beginning of the end of the journeyer's rope....they are beaten down by the prospect of a lack of understanding, trapped between the ambitious drive and
the complexity of the information being derived. The mind, knowing its predicament quips "ignorance is bliss", and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection
(conventional wisdom, which was once only a hindrance has now become sage advice....but the ambition won't allow you to take it).
The journeyer feels isolated, having separated his mind from his culture, his people, and the more he turns away from them, the greater his temptation to just end it all, end
the rush of information that won't let him sleep. A knife of relief, from all the petty insight (the wisdom that ambition provided him is now rendered meaningless, because
there's too much to handle), and finally I'll sleep....
The journeyer's thoughts have exploded into unchanneled anger. Bored as fuck on a street corner, watching people as a front to hide his inner thoughts, while surveying language
(the medium through which thoughts are received) as a plague (human language simply is not powerful enough to accurately transmit the volume of information). The dimension of
persistance condemns (again, the ambition is his downfall).
This portrait of karma, crafted in accident (From the journeyers subjective perspective, the true vision of karma is crafted; not of a positive correlation between
effort[ambition] and reward, but a vision of futility which breeds feelings of injustice, which is even more maddening to the journeyer because there was NO way to predict
it[crafted in accident]). Textbook seduction, minus the text in the language of ghosts (he's been lead here by information, only he's ignored any information not derived from
his own mind, again adding to his isolation).
And so we ran, like the wolves were biting (reaching the end of the rope), the inhibitions of their prey kept them from screaming "scratch my back and I will stab you in yours!"
(Fear of the rush of information at his back combines with self-righteous rage, but ultimately fear wins, his inhibitions prevent him from fighting against it).
So I choose to live this life alone (acceptance of the isolation), without the teethmarks (constantly running from the information rush), but I predict, I'll have to sink my
fangs in someone else's heart to heal my own, just a victim's split, one part for the wolves, one part for you (the mind is beginning to split; the journeyer is realizing that
he is going to need to begin again to rely on the information of people in order to fix his mess, but won't open himself up to them enough to allow them to help him against the
wolves[information], his ambition still relentless, wanting to defeat the wolves, retain self-pride).
But I'll grow weary soon, weary of this fractal code, weary of this hallway lined with ghosts (journeyer is getting tired of running from the information [fractal in nature],
and also of running from the ways of the past; weary of having to wade in the water [hallway lined with ghosts].
The journeyer's anger is turning to despair, as his mind slowly begins to break (just a scratch upon the skin, a drop of blood to let them in, these words will cause the sweetest fracture from a stone's throw). Even as the building blocks of his mind-state are crumbling under the weight of doubt (spirits mingling in the mist that we crafted), his ambition still provides the energy for a last gasp of defiance against the parasitic ghosts; though they've breached his walls, and are ready to feast, he won't give in to the old way (let them eat shit from our trembling hands).
The journeyer hits rock bottom as the despair fades, leaving the willpower only for physical sustenance (The heat for heat's sake, on this Barnard block of Congress[Barnard and Congress are streets that intersect in Savannah; the journeyer hasn't left the street corner]) and unbiased contemplation, at first just to make light of the situation (deductively speaking, the polar of progress[a self-deprecating joke about congress, one of the street names in view being the opposite of progress, which perfectly fits his mental situation), and then a sort of anti-climactic epiphany: his ambition blinded him to the fact that the information he was running to was not a polar opposite of the information he was running from (another allusion to progress vs congress), in fact they were the same, only separated by context (the old information was kept alive by the faithful, and it was only his faith that the old information was wrong that lead him to the new information; both based on faith). [Well maybe I placed too much faith in the accident. Entranced, we dance towards the ripest display of escape].
Upon this discovery, the journeyer ceases to care about anything (let them all feast, from these flesh and these bones). He's left now feeling smaller, more isolated and even more curious and overwhelmed at what this reality has got to offer, and has to relinquish control and simply watch it all in motion (In this chess game of language, forced to sit so I play all alone), which is how he'll ultimately learn from his mistakes and begin the journey anew (watch the bathos drift forth like the petals from a wild crafted rose )
This song is about delving too deeply into your mind. Earlier in the album, ambition is established as a positive trait; it's what allows the journeyer to "wade in the water"
and "fill your lungs" with oxygen instead of wading in doubt and floating like concrete.
Ambition however, can lead to tragedy, because of the paradoxical dual-nature of it; it will lead you out of the quagmire of pretense and pre-conceived notions laid out by
religion, mass media, and other forms of hegemony, but once you're out of those woods and into the wilds of the human mind, hyper-analyzing every single piece of information
available to you, analyzing the analysis, the ambition becomes an enemy. At first you don't want to believe that it could have led you astray, so you push yourself further and
further, convinced that there will be another breakthrough....but it doesn't come.
This song begins at the beginning of the end of the journeyer's rope....they are beaten down by the prospect of a lack of understanding, trapped between the ambitious drive and
the complexity of the information being derived. The mind, knowing its predicament quips "ignorance is bliss", and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection
(conventional wisdom, which was once only a hindrance has now become sage advice....but the ambition won't allow you to take it).
The journeyer feels isolated, having separated his mind from his culture, his people, and the more he turns away from them, the greater his temptation to just end it all, end
the rush of information that won't let him sleep. A knife of relief, from all the petty insight (the wisdom that ambition provided him is now rendered meaningless, because
there's too much to handle), and finally I'll sleep....
The journeyer's thoughts have exploded into unchanneled anger. Bored as fuck on a street corner, watching people as a front to hide his inner thoughts, while surveying language
(the medium through which thoughts are received) as a plague (human language simply is not powerful enough to accurately transmit the volume of information). The dimension of
persistance condemns (again, the ambition is his downfall).
This portrait of karma, crafted in accident (From the journeyers subjective perspective, the true vision of karma is crafted; not of a positive correlation between
effort[ambition] and reward, but a vision of futility which breeds feelings of injustice, which is even more maddening to the journeyer because there was NO way to predict
it[crafted in accident]). Textbook seduction, minus the text in the language of ghosts (he's been lead here by information, only he's ignored any information not derived from
his own mind, again adding to his isolation).
And so we ran, like the wolves were biting (reaching the end of the rope), the inhibitions of their prey kept them from screaming "scratch my back and I will stab you in yours!"
(Fear of the rush of information at his back combines with self-righteous rage, but ultimately fear wins, his inhibitions prevent him from fighting against it).
So I choose to live this life alone (acceptance of the isolation), without the teethmarks (constantly running from the information rush), but I predict, I'll have to sink my
fangs in someone else's heart to heal my own, just a victim's split, one part for the wolves, one part for you (the mind is beginning to split; the journeyer is realizing that
he is going to need to begin again to rely on the information of people in order to fix his mess, but won't open himself up to them enough to allow them to help him against the
wolves[information], his ambition still relentless, wanting to defeat the wolves, retain self-pride).
But I'll grow weary soon, weary of this fractal code, weary of this hallway lined with ghosts (journeyer is getting tired of running from the information [fractal in nature],
and also of running from the ways of the past; weary of having to wade in the water [hallway lined with ghosts].
The journeyer's anger is turning to despair, as his mind slowly begins to break (just a scratch upon the skin, a drop of blood to let them in, these words will cause the sweetest fracture from a stone's throw). Even as the building blocks of his mind-state are crumbling under the weight of doubt (spirits mingling in the mist that we crafted), his ambition still provides the energy for a last gasp of defiance against the parasitic ghosts; though they've breached his walls, and are ready to feast, he won't give in to the old way (let them eat shit from our trembling hands).
The journeyer hits rock bottom as the despair fades, leaving the willpower only for physical sustenance (The heat for heat's sake, on this Barnard block of Congress[Barnard and Congress are streets that intersect in Savannah; the journeyer hasn't left the street corner]) and unbiased contemplation, at first just to make light of the situation (deductively speaking, the polar of progress[a self-deprecating joke about congress, one of the street names in view being the opposite of progress, which perfectly fits his mental situation), and then a sort of anti-climactic epiphany: his ambition blinded him to the fact that the information he was running to was not a polar opposite of the information he was running from (another allusion to progress vs congress), in fact they were the same, only separated by context (the old information was kept alive by the faithful, and it was only his faith that the old information was wrong that lead him to the new information; both based on faith). [Well maybe I placed too much faith in the accident. Entranced, we dance towards the ripest display of escape].
Upon this discovery, the journeyer ceases to care about anything (let them all feast, from these flesh and these bones). He's left now feeling smaller, more isolated and even more curious and overwhelmed at what this reality has got to offer, and has to relinquish control and simply watch it all in motion (In this chess game of language, forced to sit so I play all alone), which is how he'll ultimately learn from his mistakes and begin the journey anew (watch the bathos drift forth like the petals from a wild crafted rose )