June 15, 2011

No Reflection at All: Arch-era Fates Warning

arcanaawaitsyou

Flame is burning, centre of a fountain yearning,
Water spring eternal; spiritual water, physical fire.
Above the centre is sky: cold, cold neverness,
Just vastness filled with stars upon stars.

Introduction

‘The Spectre Within’ and ‘Awaken the Guardian’ are in many ways inseparable. While it is true that they are divergent in style, the overall sentiment behind them nonetheless forms a point of unity, and indeed we shall argue here that the latter can be seen almost as a response to the former. Given this connection, each album is equally integral to identifying the overall ethos expressed, despite them presenting it from different viewpoints, or rather in different aspects.  As such, an analysis of the two albums based on the tracing out of points of both connection and contrast between them may be able to shed light upon their overall significance, as well as to enrich our understanding of the music on each album through seeing it in terms of its place in the overall message of both albums.

The Spectre Within

And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’.

If ‘The Spectre Within’ were to have a motto, it would probably be, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The album predominantly expresses a sense of life’s futility, and the general atmosphere built is ultimately rather bleak. There is a deep concern with finitude, and the limited nature of life; in other words, with the consequences of the inevitability of death upon life. We shall begin by inspecting this aspect of the album, namely its presentation of finitude, and then connect it with other themes dealing with this side of the grave.

This aspect of the album is present from the very beginning, with the use of a clock striking in the introduction to ‘Traveler in Time’. The accompaniment of this with a deep, vaguely sinister riff creates the effect of time closing in, or, to use an opposite idiom, running out. The guitar doesn’t do anything particularly fancy, but rather simply repeats, along with a repeated drum pattern and the constant clock striking, with the effect of the repetition being essentially to create a vague sense of foreboding rather than anything particularly defined or malicious; what it expresses is not so much evil or darkness as simply a form of expectation, the sense that something is going to happen, but not due to any ill will but rather simply inevitability. It expresses not fear, which is more dynamic, but futility.

What impresses us about this passage is that its nature as an introduction to the song and album is in fact used in its favour, as its being an introductory section means that it contains some sense of expectation already, of a build-up and inevitability, and Fates Warning here simply build upon this already present nature to create atmosphere in a way which couldn’t have been done without the use of the introductory section. It would be interesting to compare this to the vast majority of introductions to first tracks (and, even worse, introductory tracks) in heavy metal, which are at best simply thrown in because it seems obligatory, without any real thought into the fact that it is the only chance that one will get to write an introduction to one’s album. Omnipresent bĂȘtes noires aside, what is essential here is precisely the lack of malice, the sense of almost coldness present in this introduction, which forms a major part of the album. There is no antagonist, and time itself is not evil but simply present.

This atmosphere is supported by the riffing on the album, which can often be relentless, in a manner akin to technothrash in intent if not in style. For example, one may look at the guitar under the verse of ‘Traveler in Time’, which is deep, fast, rough and aggressive, more or less imposing itself upon the listener. This serves to give the sense of inevitability already noted in the introduction a more concrete and ruthless form, achieved essentially through the fact that the riffs, although dark atmospherically, are more or less emotionless, not angry or sad but simply there, which creates an effect which is not so much malicious as mocking. A cleaner production would probably harm this section, as it gains from the harsh edge granted by its production as it is.

John Arch’s vocals, which in this track essentially represent his usual style of vocal melodies speeded up a notch, compound this impression, with the speed of his vocals (‘Seeker of reea-son, reaperoftime’), along with their variance,  serving essentially to belittle, in a sense, the man who is a subject of the song. This is not so much belittling in the sense of making fun of somebody as the kind of belittling that one may find in weird fiction, where the size of the human body is compared to the universe and its life with eternity. John Arch is not laughing, but the universe may very well be. 

Through the speed with which Arch goes through his lines, he does not leave much space for the blatant expression of emotion in the vocals, and through this emphasizes the man’s weakness, rather than giving them time for sentiment. Rather than simply passing by in haste, the vocals express the same relentlessness which the riffs do, the same sense of time and hence life simply rushing by uncaring. Another technique used by Arch to achieve this effect is the following of high notes with a sudden shift to a lower one, for example in, ‘Rusty shackes of time / Burden his mind’. The high notes are cut short before they can express emotion, and finish with the almost mocking tone of the fast, lower vocals, reducing the emotion to one of emptiness.

The concern of ‘Traveler in Time’ is the extension of bodily life, and the obsession with the extension of physical existence as an end in itself. This obsession necessarily entails a one-sided focus on the physical, insofar as life is regarded only in its physical aspect and the extension of the body’s life seen as the confirmation and purpose of the man. Although man is in any case a physical being, and this allows him to act upon the world, in this case this physicality is taken one-sidedly; rather than featuring as the power which allows him to enact his will upon the world, it features as an end in itself. This theme, of the purely physical functioning as an end, and its consequences, is one which is quite prevalent in ‘The Spectre Within’ in its various forms.

However, the various forms of fixation upon the physical are not disconnected, as expressed in Seneca’s comment that, “when astray, your wanderings are limitless.” The aforementioned fear of death, for example, is inherent in what Socrates called the appetites, one major form of reduction of life to the physical, in which uncontrolled bodily desire by itself appears as the principle of life. We shall elaborate upon this, as the theme of fixation upon the physical is quite prevalent within the two albums, as for example in ‘Prelude to Ruin’.

The appetites essentially constitute impulses which find the use and consumption of other objects as their target and end. They take the form of a lack of their object as soon as they are unsatisfied; hunger, thirst, lust and so on. Without the object, there is a need for the object, and this is expressed in the form of suffering or lack, the feeling of need for the object which forms the actual impulse for the consumption of the object, as in addiction, hunger and so on.Without this suffering, or hunger, the appetites could not take the form of an impulsive need, as only because the lack of the object appears as suffering,  that is, is felt as a lack which must be escaped from, is there motivation to consume it in the realm of appetites. The lack of the object appears as suffering, and this creates the need to appropriate it.

Once the object is consumed, it gives physical pleasure; however, this pleasure is dependent upon the initial hunger, which constituted the appetite. It is pleasure from the satisfaction of the appetite, and hence presupposes that there was already a hunger for the object consumed. Given this, it is only relative pleasure, insofar as it is pleasure which exists only as the end of hunger, and which hence presupposes it. Likewise, with the object consumed or the use of it completed, the need resumes as well, and hence we go from a filled void to an empty void, and so on. Insofar as the appetite is an instinct, and caused simply by the lack of the object, it reappears again once the object is used. That is, hunger arises again, and this hunger, which constitutes the appetite, forms a prerequisite for the pleasure, giving it a cyclical character of continual external dependence. Without the initial suffering, there would be no appetite to satisfy, and hence no pleasure could arise. This forms a continual process of transient pleasure.

As such, the human body and its instinctive pleasures appear as the aim of life. The result of this form of pleasure’s transience is a sense of emptiness, that is , a futile search for pleasure which simply goes around in constant circles from pleasure to lack due to the purely relative nature of the pleasure, which requires emptiness before it may be filled. Insofar as one is in a state of lack, one needs the object for satisfaction; this, however, is only short-term and recreates the emptiness. As it were, the search is for absolute pleasure, as insofar as man seeks pleasure he does not seek its erosion, but rather its persistence; however, the pleasure attained is only relative, and exists only in a constant cycle. The result of this is that the search for absolute pleasure is carried out with a conception of pleasure which is in fact an inherently relative form, and therefore while on the one hand the search remains unfulfilled, nonetheless its apparent fulfillment remains always a mirage in the future in the form of absolute pleasure. One races on a treadmill.

This is reflected in a division between thought and the body, or mind and body to use the more famous phrase. The body is represented through impulses, through physical pain and pleasure, and indeed the demand of the appetites is solely the appropriation of the object into the body. This is inherently relative, and has no inherent telos or conscious intention, but rather merely impulses which switch on and off, as it were. Thought, by contrast, works towards conscious ends, and in that sense is teleological. The issue here is the mixture of teleology with a life that does not function towards conscious ends. Insofar as the appetites dominate the person, the person’s thought is reduced to simply giving these appetites rationalization in thought, precisely because thought does not by itself serve as a motive for action.

Insofar as practice is made up simply of seeking the relative pleasure of the appetites, this is translated in thought into teleological form through positing pleasure as one’s aim. However, by doing this the aim is fixed as absolute pleasure, or rather pleasure is given the role of absolute aim; one attempts to find pleasure, not suffering and lack, so that pleasure as such, as something absolute rather than only relative, and excluding suffering, comes into existence as one’s apparent motive in thought. On the other hand, this is in fact merely an illusory reflection of one’s actual existence, and serves merely as a teleological rationalization of something which is not rationally teleological. Its illusory character exists insofar as it represents oneself as pursuing absolute pleasure when, in practice, one is not doing so at all. Hence, thought and existence appear in conflict rather than unity, and as a result thought is excluded from practical life and merely reflects it in illusory form, hence in reality representing the appetites and transient pleasure despite its best intentions.

As such, as soon as age catches up, as soon as one becomes older and time begins to run out, time becomes one’s foe, because one has not achieved one’s purpose and it now becomes too late. This creates the basis for an increasingly aggressive struggle for pleasure as time comes to exert pressure, while on the other side of things this creates a desire for one’s own bodily immortality (or, what is the same, the fear of death) so that one may continue to seek pleasure in such action. In a sense, this wish for more time results from the fact that one becomes dependent upon one’s own, finite body and physical life for purpose, but death appears to end this completely; however, this life is already lived, and time travel is in contradiction with modern physics anyway.

This culminates at death, with the realization of one’s purposelessness taking perceptible form, as represented here through Arch singing that the old man of ‘Traveler in Time’ ‘realizes’, and cries before death, as well as in Faustus’ final speech in Marlowe’s play (which contains just about the most dark Ovid reference possible). As ‘Prelude to Ruin’ puts it, “Regrets illuminate.” An acute summation of this character of the appetites is found from the dying person of ‘Epitaph’:

So intense the pain that has crawled
From the bleeding corpse of pleasure,
That feeds the worm that writhes
Inside my brain.

As such, the characterization of the man in ‘Traveler in Time’ does not describe only a small subset of cases where people seek to live as long as possible, but may also serve to describe the condition of people who take the body as an end in general. The characteristic basis of the appetites is that on the one hand the human being appears only in the form of a body, and on the other hand the objects which they interact with appear only as external objects, whose externality is to be overcome only by incorporating them into the body. The conflict between thought and being, mind and body, means that thought takes on the role of simply trying to prolong and serve the body as much as possible, seeking its own satisfaction but only going round in circles. This situation is what prompted Socrates to argue that only when reason ruled over the appetites could reason take on real existence rather than that of illusions.

It is on this backdrop that the themes of futility and finitude are developed. The old man seeks the extension of bodily life as his end, and hence takes a merely physical aspect of life as his end, and yet ultimately the physical is only transient. In other words, he lives his life for more life, for the physical and finite, and the presence of finitude therefore looms before him as the trivialization of everything which he does, just as in the appetites the finitude of pleasure turns the search for pleasure into a pointless spiral until death. In Arch’s succint formulation, he, “sacrifice[s] living for life,” until he dies.

Once on his side, time turns to defy.

Time, which used to represent opportunity and life, now reduces to a foe; not a malicious one, however, or at the least one which is only malicious in its indifference. The passage of time appears as an imposition, precisely because life is seen as simply a static state which nonetheless is eroded inevitably by time, rather than as something actively lived. Thought under the appetites seeks a static state of pleasure, brought passively through the object rather than through action, but the body exists in time and so do the pleasures. Not only do the appetites constitute a cyclical path, but in fact a spiral towards death, with aging being an inevitable form of development as a physical being. This is also brought out by the comparisons between the man and clock, brought up again in ‘The Apparition’.

This sense of trivialization of physical ends by time’s passage is what is represented by the aggressive riffing, in this song and in ‘Kyrie Eleison’, and other aspects noted above which contribute towards the sense of a cold hostility. This is not, however, direct malice. The point is precisely that nobody is malicious towards the man, nobody seeks his undoing, but rather he brings it upon himself, turns it into an inevitability. It is his own flaw which comes to stand over him as an imposition, his own search for more time as an end in itself which elevates time’s passage into a force trivializing him. If time takes the form of an all-powerful force, a spectre, acting against him, this is not purely due to its own nature, but rather his life. This is not, of course, a matter of passing blame on him, but rather the purpose of the song is directed at the listener’s own life; that is, the song is not focused on criticizing the man, but rather in simply portraying his condition as a warning.

The song ends with a powerful image of mortality: the man suddenly gives way to emotion, as everything begins to become clear and his efforts come to nothing, and cries; his tears rust the clock, a reminder that, “Nothing's forever,” and he dies. Something very interesting about the this verse is the presentation of his death, which, rather than being focal, is presented at the end as simply, “And he died as well.” ‘Oh yes, and that happened too.’ In the first place, it establishes a direct connection between him and the rusting clock (The full line is: ‘The tears rust the clock, and he died as well’), both being assertions of finitude, and hence equalizes the rusting of the clock and his death as manifestations of time.

On the other hand, the brevity of its mention, despite it being essentially the consummation of the whole song thus far, serves to make it so that not only is his death compared with the rusting clock, but it is in fact put on the same level; that is, the man is reduced to a mere physical thing by his own obsession with physical life, in his own eyes and in his actions, and therefore his passing is simply the inevitable exercise of time upon objects, essentially equal in significance to the clock’s rusting. This epitomizes the coldness of the song, and the triviality to which his life is reduced. However, the darkness and power of time is a creation of his own making. Time and finitude appear as invincible, powerful antagonists to the man, but this is because he does not accept them but rather struggles to gain more life as an end in itself, in other words he makes them antagonists when they are not by nature malicious, but rather simply present.

The general portrayal of flaws working out inevitably towards a person’s downfall is very reminiscent of the concept of the ‘tragic flaw’ in theatre and literature. In fact, this album, especially on the first and last songs, can be compared in many ways to Marlowe’s ‘Dr. Faustus’, a comparison which we may explore in a later post.  The sense of powers of one’s own creation ruling over oneself is perhaps what is expressed by the album title, ‘The Spectre Within’, probably a reference to the Brocken spectre (this is stated quite clearly on the Fates Warning website’s FAQ); the Brocken Spectre describes a phenomenon in which mountaineers on the Brocken have been known to see a strange, tall and shadowy apparition in the mist, which in actual fact is simply their own shadow projected into the mist, within which it comes to appear huge due to confusions of depth perception and a lack of reference points within the mist for judging size.

Indeed, ‘The Spectre Within’, unlike the previous album, contains no ghosts or powers outside of people’s own creation; it is still dark, which forms the basis of its stylistic continuity with the first album, but here the spectres which used to be without are now within, now one’s own product. While the changes in style from this album to ‘Awaken the Guardian’ may to some extent represent maturation, and the completion of the passing out of the simpler style of ‘Night on Brocken’ begun in this album, on the other hand it may well be that on some level the retaining of the more ‘immature’ style of ‘Night on Brocken’  is in fact quite intentional. This album is transitional, but this transition may be not simply one of growth as musicians, but also of thematic development; it represents the fact of the spectres being within through taking the same dark atmosphere as the previous album, but on the other hand developing it as something within.

Extract from Paul Tillich’s ‘The Courage to Be’

“What conflicts with the courage of wisdom is desires and fears. The Stoics developed a profound doctrine of anxiety which also reminds us of recent analyses. They discovered that the object of fear is fear itself. “Nothing,” says Seneca, “is terrible in things except fear itself.” And Epictetus says, “For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.” Our anxiety puts frightening masks over all men and things. If we strip them of these masks their own countenance appears and the fear they produce disappears. This true even of death. Since every day a little of our life is taken from us – since we are dying every day – the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death, it merely completes the process. The horrors connected with it are a matter of imagination. They vanish when the mask is taken from the image of death.

“It is uncontrolled desires that create masks and put them over men and things. […] [M]an’s distorted imagination transcends the objective needs (“When astray, your wanderings are limitless”) and with them any possible satisfaction. And this, not the desire as such, produces an “unwise tendency towards death.” ”

The Apparition

Having mentioned the album title, the next track to cover will be one which is also perhaps the album’s highlight, namely ‘The Apparition’, where the title’s imagery is perhaps most explicitly alluded to. In the first place, this is the point in the album where it becomes clear that John Arch should really be a poet. This thought raises the further question of whether he in fact reads poetry like he sings lyrics. To conclude this section of the investigation, Arch/Matheos really ought to make a concept album which consists of simply a Shakespeare play with Arch playing all of the parts.

That clarified, we may further examine the song in this light. The lyrics begin with the suggestion to, “Lock the world up tight, out of your mind.” (Well, alright, they really begin with, ‘Ahh ahhh ahh ahhh-ahhhhh’)  In other words, shut out the physical world for a moment and look at what is ‘deep within’. While the lyrics of ‘The Apparition’ take the form of a journey in space, it is really a description of a journey within oneself. If one is not to be absorbed wholly in the world of physical, finite things, one must look inside oneself to get a sense of perspective. If thought directed purely towards the physical succumbs to illusions about the nature of the physical, and imparts infinitude to what is finite,  then these illusions cannot be shattered without thought returning to itself and taking a critical look at itself, actually thinking, and seeing these illusions as in fact illusions. This can only be done by turning aside from a complete absorption with physical things, and rather thought functioning by itself and considering the nature and significance of these things with the aim of truth, rather than pure practical need.

In other words, thought must walk its own path, must shut out the world to find the world of truth. Only through this can the world’s real significance be grasped, and can thought come to exist as a power in and of itself, rather than as a mere rationalization of the appetites; one may compare this process to the famous Platonic analogy of leaving the cave, hence turning one’s gaze towards truth and the conceptual, the intellectual world, rather than the physical world by itself. Indeed, even in Plato’s cave analogy this is compared to a journey, to getting up and leaving the cave to see the sun-lit world; the journey analogy is appropriate precisely because it is not simply a matter of accepting certain algorithms or theories, but of really altering one’s thoughts and hence one’s real way of thinking and acting within the world, one’s whole perspective, and this cannot be achieved immediately.

To put it another way, once thought has begun to return to itself and to think with truth as its aim, it nonetheless has been restrained thus far to merely a servant to the appetites, and as such cannot rule as it is, but must rather develop into an appropriate form to do so. To do this, it must leave behind all of its previous content, and face facts which completely undermine its prior views and outlook, if only to allow for new views; it must negate what used to be absolute for it, reduce it to nothing, and only in this process come to see the world and life anew.

In Plato (or Socrates, if you prefer), this takes the form of being blinded by the light of the world outside the cave, and having to adjust one’s eyes to it before one can see, which is itself a gradual process. As Socrates comments, when one’s eyes are adjusted to the dark, light is blinding, while when one’s eyes are adjusted to the light, darkness is likewise blinding, in that one cannot see clearly within it. In other words, adjusting to the light requires one’s eyes adjusting to a completely different form, in which one does not see what one used to see with ease, but can now see other things. This also expresses the fact that this journey is by no means a comfortable one, but rather one of great discomfort; one goes into it with a perspective based around one’s previous life, around the finite and physical, yet must look directly at that which shows that one’s previous perspective was wrong, and that what one thought was one’s purpose is but illusion.

On the one hand, thought is prompted to follow this journey by its own nature, insofar as it searches for absolute pleasure but cannot find it, and hence is encouraged to think in order to find real satisfaction; on the other hand, the journey is not a comfortable one, as is reflected by the reluctant nature of the chorus of ‘The Apparition', and the call to, “Take me away.” One has to be willing to go through with it, despite this, as nobody else can do it for one.

This background established, we may now return to our previous analysis of ‘The Spectre Within’. We have already suggested that this spectre may consist of enemies and powers over one produced by a life devoted to the appetites and the physical, such as finitude, fate and so on. They hence ultimately exist as enemies only within oneself, as one’s own product, rather than naturally; they are not in reality malicious, rather simply existent, but nonetheless appear effectively so, as a power constantly and uncaringly thwarting us. However, insofar as they take the form of foes, this is not a product of the body, which could not really hold any opinion of them, but rather of thought. This is because they deny the absoluteness of what thought, in its illusions, thinks to be absolute; indeed, they are only foes insofar as they are the denial of this absoluteness. The finitude of the physical constitutes the refutation of the absoluteness of the pleasure of the appetites, and the finitude of life condemns the search for more life, for effective immortality, to futility.

However, the journey above described consists precisely in the unmasking of our previous illusions, in thought seeking truth and hence doing away with illusions. As such, it functions as precisely the acceptance of finitude and hence as the denial of what it had previously held absolute; rather than finitude appearing a spectre, an external power not understood and contrary to thought, it must be accepted as being the truth if one is not to continually bang one’s head against it.

In that case, the path of our journey is strewn with these spectres, but one must overcome one’s fear and walk on. Insofar as one is still in the mindset of the appetites, which will be the case until the journey’s end, these things will indeed appear in the form of spectres above one, of malicious powers, but nonetheless one may only progress by ignoring this antagonistic form until one finally reaches the end of one’s journey. Or, to put things in more clear terms, in undergoing the journey within oneself one will have to face truths which appear to trivialize oneself, and hence the closer one gets to truth the more vague whispers will arise of things which seemed antagonistic, of the fact of time and finitude. This aspect of the journey is probably what is represented by the second verse of the song:

Drawing near
Someone passes through me,
A silent entity;
Never looking back,
I won't dare.
Evil eyes staring through the walls of stone;
I fear I travel not alone.
Laughter echoes with the blatant wind,
I have passed the threshold deep within me.

Of course, at this point, the fear is still vague and undefined, as indicated by the use of references to ‘entities’ and ‘echoes’, and the reference to fearing that one travels not alone, in the sense of fearing that one is being watched, which is still an undefined fear which does not indicate the nature of one’s company. An echo comes from no definite direction, but rather surrounds one, indicating a voice but not its source. It is clear that something is wrong, but not clear what. However, nonetheless he wishes to know the truth rather than turn back, as expressed by the exclamation, “I want to know.”

It is worth noting that a similar portrayal exists in ‘Epitaph’, with the realization of death’s closing in:

Inner voices haunt my numbered days
Darkness calls me with her laughs.

However, what prompts the person from ‘The Apparition’ to wish to escape even more is what he then goes on to discover, in what is perhaps the climax of the song (and quite a climax):

In the four corners of life are the golden mirrors,
Reflecting what you are and what you are to be:
In the first is a young boy,
White dove in his hand,
In the second is a warrior in armour;
In the third is an old man,
Gold watch in his hand,
Fourth and last,
No reflection at all.

The last mirror, of course, represents the finitude of life, the fact that after death our body is reduced to nonexistence, and that the progress of the previous mirrors of life was one towards death. The reason for the use of mirrors in this context is perhaps to represent the fact that it is a reflection of the singer’s own life (or, rather, the life of the person whose perspective the lyrics are from), and how it will go if he continues on his current path, in other words self-reflection. They represent the connection of the future with the past and present, in that they represent different stages of life as the reflection of one man.

However, the other mirrors are of interest as well. Notably, they represent the various stages of life through physical objects as well as the person’s body; the white dove, the armour and gold watch, all mentioned in a manner which couples them with the stage (that is, each description of the person is followed by the object, forming a pattern). The objects are therefore symbolic. With the old man, the object is fairly interesting in the light of ‘Traveler in Time’, insofar as we are once more presented an old man with a clock. Again, this represents the gathering concern with time and fear of death, the need to keep oneself alive through a clock and attempt to gain immortality. On therefore becomes essentially identified with the clock, insofar as, rather than living, one’s life consists only of ticking over the minutes and going on continually, like a clock. Hence, the relation of the old man and gold watch in the verse; the old man becomes essentially reduced to a clock, ticking onwards continually, and hence reduced to a physical object.

Likewise with the warrior. To quote ‘Prelude to Ruin’, “War and temper tantrums [note the juxtaposition] are the makeshifts of ignorance,” in other ways they are stopgap measures implemented in ignorance as a response to real needs and purpose. The warrior in armour, just like the old man chasing time,  is only an expression of the need for purpose, in this case expressed through armour and war rather than the attempt to scrape out time, but nonetheless constituting an attempt to find purpose without seeking truth, hence encompassed in illusion. It is, in other words, an attempt to find purpose in something wholly external to one, rather than searching within oneself; the hope that somehow, through one’s fighting, one will find one’s purpose at another’s expense.

This, however, constitutes one’s reduction to a suit of armour, insofar as one is reduced to simply fighting continually in an attempt to find purpose through this, and hence see one’s life simply in terms of a suit of armour fighting others, rather than anything within. More importantly, one relates to others only as a hostile suit of armour, not as a human. As such, one once again seeks purpose through the world outside by itself, and hence reduces oneself to an object.

This warrior may refer not only to literal warriors, but also to the aforementioned ‘temper tantrums’, to the manifestation of the need for purpose through conflict and aggressiveness. By itself, this is merely outward-directed, and hence does not yet involve thought as such. The old man represents the end of the warrior as soon as time begins to catch up, the reduction from battle to a golden watch, while the final mirror represents the futility of even this. In other words, it represents finitude in its most direct form, the representation of the fact that one will in fact cease to exist, and become nothing. The existence of any one thing is just a prelude to ruin. We shall examine the interconnection of all of these stages further after we have examined the rest of the song, as well as the role of the dove in this connection.

Another notable image in this song is that of ‘spiritual’ water and ‘physical’ fire. The use of these terms in introducing the two suggests, presumably, that fire is meant to represent the physical, and water the spiritual. In the last verse of the song, we find:

Waters rise towards physical fire,
Voice says, “Tabernackle is forbidden,”
Never looking back, I won't dare;
If the water touches the flame,
Forever in darkness yes I'll remain.

Here, the person’s initial association with the physical and the appetites comes into direct conflict with the progress of their inner journey, in which their focus must turn to the spiritual and mental rather than the purely physical side of life. Thus far, they have seen their purpose and existence by the light of the physical, and derived their purpose from it, but now this is being extinguished, and if they do not escape they fear being trapped in darkness with nowhere to turn and no direction. This is perhaps analogous to being blinded by the light from outside of the cave in Socrates’ cave analogy. This leaves them the opportunity either of giving up and going back to the physical, or remaining within themselves, continuing their journey, and being forced to find new purpose despite their old light fading. Finally:

White dove flies from the young boy's hand
Through the mirror of the old man, only way out.

These lines are fairly interesting, and I can’t say that I have a definite idea of how to take them, so I’d be interested if you could offer how you interpreted them yourself in the comments. Nonetheless, I can offer a few ideas about them which I do have. In the first place, the final reference to the ‘only way out’ seems to refer to the mirror of the old man, suggesting that the only way to escape from the journey is to ultimately reduce oneself to the situation of the man from ‘Traveler in Time’, which is here displayed as essentially the inevitable result of continuing to live in the light of the physical. In other words, in order to escape and prevent the water from consuming the fire, one must return to living according to the physical fire once more, and hence return to one’s path to the old man.

In fact, in a sense, one would have taken another step along that road, as one has glimpsed one’s finitude, and as such the old man with the golden watch is simply the attempt to reconcile this pressing finitude with the continuance of the dominance of the finite by attempting to make the finite infinite. It could, in other words, be interpreted either as referring to the return to ‘normal’ life, which will eventually lead to the status of the old man, or becoming the old man already, regardless of physical age per se.

In addition, we could also make some guesses as to the white dove’s role here. The white dove, insofar as they are presented in contrast to the warrior in armour, could represent peace in some sense, perhaps the peace of childhood, where time is plentiful. However, insofar as one embarks upon the path of the physical as opposed to the mental (ie. spiritual),  this peace is eventually consigned to die out as time inevitably passes and one’s days for finding pleasure come to be numbered, leading in the first place to tensions manifested in the form of the warrior attempting to find purpose at the expense of others, in violence and sharp, unthinking emotion, as a manifestation precisely of the mind’s feeling preliminary pressures of time, sensing intuitively that time is catching up little by little; as this proves futile and time finally closes in, one is reduced to a form of submission, that of the old man, which is nonetheless mingled with denial insofar as one now tries to defeat time and struggle for infinitude. Time finally appears directly as the antagonist, but insofar as purpose is to be viewed as something physical, the physical must be seen as something absolute, and hence on the other hand time is denied, in practice if not in thought, through the attempt to scrape out as much life as possible.

Finally, one dies, and one’s finitude hence appears directly and perceptibly to one, so that there is no more hope of denial, and hence all that one has done thus far appears empty in this realization. Hence the realization on the part of the old man in ‘Traveler in Time’ when his time has come, and hence also his tears. This kind of death is associated with damnation throughout the album, from the reference to the path to hell in ‘Traveler in Time’ to the explicit references in ‘Kyrie Eleison’. Through the previous examination, we seem to have arrived at some form of explanation for the overall progress of the stages of life presented. As life goes on, we age, and hence finitude is asserted as a reality; as such, insofar as we live a life dedicated to the physical as such, finitude continually takes on a more clearly antagonistic form as time goes on and our remaining lifetime shortens. The spectre grows and becomes more visible.

However, while we are young and time appears nigh unlimited, this antagonism too is nearly nonexistent, and hence we live in some form of peace. As we grow, we become aware of time, although only as a spectre which haunts our thought insofar as it is not accepted by us (one could compare Faustus’ fear of God, or, in a way, even MacBeth’s degeneration as his end nears. As ‘Exodus’ puts it, it is a ‘dormant fear’). Our purpose remains unfulfilled, yet time slowly closes in as an unwelcome guest. This shatters the peace, and leads initially to the attempt to find purpose not through this no longer existent peace, but rather through war, that is, through acting not peacefully but in an increasingly desperate and aggressive manner towards the finding of purpose.

This encompasses ‘wars and temper tantrums’, as well as the search for pleasure at the expense of others in general. The essential point is that one could no longer live in peace, but must now seek purpose and pleasure aggressively under the pressure of time. Ultimately, however, this aggressiveness ends up dangerous and hence simply raises the risk of death more clearly, especially as one ages and becomes less capable of it. As such, we fall further into the state of the old man, simply accumulating time and living like a clock. The white dove hence flies into the mirror of the old man, and this path forms the only alternative to legitimately and honestly accepting finitude in thought, through seeking to find what is true rather than merely following the appetites. Finally, of course, one reaches death, and then one finally realizes, albeit a bit too late, and one accepts finitude.

In that case, escaping from this path requires facing death earlier than death, in other words seeing the finitude inherent in life, going into oneself and gazing upon the fourth mirror until the fire is consumed. Death must be seen as immanent in life, and only through viewing life through this lens can we see things as really finite and accept them as such. This seems at first to be the negation of life, its reduction to worthlessness, as it were a form of nihilism. Death is the negation of life, and hence insofar as life is seen in terms of death it would appear to be reduced to nothing. As such, it appears at first as simply darkness. However, this is only the annihilation of the physical fire. The point is to see that one’s current path leads to the dominance of time, and only through admitting this to face the issue with sober senses and attempt to transcend it.

Exodus, ascend the plane

We shall now move on to ‘Exodus’, due to the fact that its subject is quite similar to that of ‘The Apparition’. It again presents a journey, and one which is ultimately metaphorical rather than physical as such. However, it reflects the general difference between ‘Awaken the Guardian’ and ‘The Spectre Within’, in that if ‘The Spectre Within’ is more concerned with the assertion of death and the purposelessness of a life lived through objects, ‘Awaken the Guardian’ is concerned with transcendence, with seeing independently of the physical fire.

In the first place, the song sets up the general aim of the journey, namely to, “rise above the sands of time.” While ‘The Apparition’ consisted in the assertion of time, here we attempt to rise above it. This aspect may be understood in relation to the theme of fate already developed in ‘Prelude to Ruin’, namely that fate and time rule insofar as the existence of any one thing is but the prelude to ruin. The realm of time is the realm of the purely material, in a sense, where all things must die and hence meet their fate. Having seen this, the aim now becomes to transcend it, an aim represented through the location of Arcana.

It is worth noting that, in describing the journey to Arcana, Arch sings, “I travel starry spheres in trine.” Being ‘in trine’ is an astrological arrangement of planets signifying harmony, and represents powers innate to one in some sense, such as artistic and creative abilities; they are innate inasmuch as they deal with the individual in terms of their self-expression as such, rather than simply in the relation with the world, and hence are personal. Trines are also associated with inspiration in connection to the above. While I’m not how many of these aspects are being referred to in the song, nonetheless it is perhaps of significance that the act of ‘rising above the sands of time’ is represented through travelling through astral spheres which are in trine.

The desert is presented as essentially dry, devoid of all fruits. There are mirages, such as that of water, but ultimately the water is just sand, and one must, “Spit out the sand, [and] be on your way.” This may perhaps refer to visions of pleasure through earthly things as such, which are ultimately illusory, and whose following ultimately leads one to be further submerged in the depths of subjection to time rather than transcending it. It is interesting that once again the physical is represented through heat and fire, with the ‘blazing’ sun, desert setting and such, seemingly a reference back to the imagery of ‘The Apparition’. The mirages could in this case reference the fact that this heat itself produces illusions as a way to avoid the fear of fate and finitude, the fact that in avoiding the truth one must continue to live through continually seeking illusory pleasures, which appear as relief and purpose, water, but are not in fact so.

This could tie back to the use of water to represent the spiritual in ‘The Apparition’; in a sense, water represents salvation from the heat and the barren reality of the desert and time, and hence a sense of purpose in the purposelessness of time. However, this water is merely illusory, and reduces to sand as soon as one drinks it; it is an illusion, a product of the heat itself and a transient means of escape from its reality, and so long as one continues chasing these illusions one cannot follow one’s own path. Having noted this connection, however, it is also worth noting the difference between the imagery of the two songs as well. In ‘The Apparition’, the fire represented the source of light, and the victory of the water over it seemed a prelude to darkness. However, in ‘Exodus’ the fire appears in the form of oppressive heat, and water as a salvation from it; in other words, it represents the other side of the coin, the fact that the fire is not simply a light, but also heat, and that in actual fact water would not be condemnation but salvation.

The rather cold irony of the mirage is seen when the person who is the subject of this song sees reflected in the water the “blazing desert sun,” followed by the vulture of fear (more on him later) laughing at him. Of course, in reality there is no water precisely because of the blazing desert sun, so that the sun’s reflection in fact functions as a sign that the water is not in fact real. The function of this is to display the fact that salvation cannot be found in this desert, but rather only by transcending it, that is, in Arcana; given this, the apparent salvation of the desert is revealed to be illusory by its location.

An effect used quite interestingly in this song, and a fairly rare one in music, at least to my knowledge, is the alternation of first- and second-person perspectives through the verses. This alteration takes quite a prominent part in the song, with Arch on the one hand taking the part of the person on the journey, and on the other hand representing somebody essentially guiding and advising them on their path, perhaps a ‘guardian’. When Arch is voicing the traveler, his voice is less assured, and often oscillates widely, while on the other hand when advising his voice is more assured and controlled; for example, compare the earlier portion of the second verse (in which the traveler sees the mirage) to its end on ‘Spit out the sand, be on your way’ and the soaring chorus. It’s quite notable how Arch seems to be more effective at this character changing than, for example, Geoff Tate on ‘Mindcrime’, and this is perhaps because Arch’s vocals are more oriented towards involved vocal melodies, which means that he can change ‘characters’ simply by changing the pattern of his singing.

The reluctant and inconstant nature of the traveler’s vocals may be representative of the challenges of their journey, and their fear. In the second verse, fear is presented in the form of a vulture. Now, vultures are not a novel image in this album, and in ‘Prelude to Ruin’ we can find a reference to how, “Vultures scavenge the subconscious of our wandering minds,” to make us fall and yield our minds. In ‘Exodus’, there is a reference to the ‘vulture of fear’, while in ‘Pirates of the Underground’ we find:

Tuned out in neutral vegetation, prime time
Bleeding hearts howl at the moon.
Foul temptress, oh she sings seduction,
As vultures feast forbidden fruit.

It is clear that vultures here have a metaphorical significance, and also that they are represented negatively, to get the more obvious facts out of the way. The vultures here seem to represent emotions and feelings which feed upon our minds subconsciously, and lead to the further degeneration of our mind, hence ‘feasting forbidden fruit’ in the sense of promoting the negative tendencies of our mind. The vulture of fear is represented as laughing at the traveler in ‘Exodus’ when he tries to drink the illusory water, raising the traveler’s resentment. There is also a reference to fear in the book of the dead of the ‘false guardian’, which states not to bear children because, “they will inhere the dormant fear in man,” so that the theme of fear is linked here with that of predestination.

Given that the vulture of fear arises to laugh at the man after they attempt to drink the water, it could represent two aspects of fear. On the one hand, the traveler followed the mirage due to fear occasioned by the thirst, as reflected in their statement that they are going to, “drink it dry.” In other words, the fear of being unable to quench their thirst and hence dying out. On the other, the fall of the illusion will have simply replenished this fear due to the apparent hopelessness of finding salvation and purpose, which could be what occasions the laughter of the vulture; the traveler attempts to escape from the fear by alleviating their thirst, but ultimately this is futile. In a sense, then, insofar as  the water represents the finding of purpose to some extent, or at least the illusion of it, the vulture represents fear of purposelessness, or indeed fear of time and fate. This forms a motivation for following mirages aggressively in search of fulfillment, and hence feeds forbidden fruits.

However, as we have seen, this fear is ultimately inherent to life within the desert, life insofar as it resides purely in the finite. The attempts of the warrior and old man for purpose and immortality represent merely attempts at conquering this ‘dormant fear’ within the desert itself, but ultimately simply work to sustain it. Ultimately, they cannot end it, but rather merely hide it and pretend that it does not exist, rather than facing it head-on; in other words, they do not admit its existence in practice, but rather continue seeking their mirages, while ignoring the fear that they must pass. The fear existed, for example, as a necessary result of the journey of ‘The Apparition’, and they escape the fear only by avoiding this journey and hence not facing it explicitly. The solution to this fear is ultimately not to seek to hide or get rid of it, but rather to admit to it and resist its temptations towards mirages (in ‘The Apparition’, represented through the person’s will to be taken away from the journey due to the fear occasioned by it) until one is able to finally transcend it and enter Arcana. As such, when the traveler shouts to the vulture, “You’re mine one day!” the ‘guiding’ voice is forced to intervene, in a calm and advisory tone, and state:

Spit out the sand,
Be on your way.

In other words, rather than being preoccupied with trying to stave off the fear, resume one’s path towards Arcana (we shall investigate another instance of this view in the next paragraph). The fact that this is spoken by somebody other than the main character is made quite clear here by not only the shift in tone from anger to a more calming tone, as if addressing somebody to calm them down, but also more explicitly by the use of the word ‘your’, so that it becomes clear that it is somebody addressing the traveler. This then segues into the chorus, which is also addressed to the traveler and urges them to follow the path to Arcana, hence implying that the chorus and ‘Spit out the sand’ line are delivered from the same perspective, and from one addressed to the main character rather than this character themselves.

The treatment of fear above described is brought out more explicitly in the lines:

The power of good will not be shown by
conquering fear;
Let it be known, its a constant resist
Til your transformation

Here, arrival at Arcana is compared to a transformation, bringing out more clearly that the journey through the space of the desert is metaphorical, and that Arcana in fact represents a change in life rather than a location in space as such. It is also identified with seeing the power of good (akin to grasping the ‘form of the good’ in Socrates), so that arrival at Arcana is essentially being shown the power of good and the resulting transformation. In order to arrive at Arcana, however, we cannot simply try to ‘conquer fear’, which will not show the power of good, but rather to simply resist it, that is, not to run away from the journey, until the power of good is shown precisely through its ability to give one a new light. During the journey itself, the spectre of fear cannot be escaped from, but rather it’s a ‘constant resist’ (as in ‘The Apparition’, where the character continually feels the urge to escape but nonetheless continues on their path) until one finally reaches one’s destination, Arcana, and the spectres dissolve due to one’s own complete transformation rather than any attempt at conquering fears; the fears are not conquered, they simply cease to have sense for our transformed selves (or, to be facetious, the fear is not abolished, it withers away).

This leaves us with two important questions: on the one hand, what exactly Arcana represents, and on the other hand what the guardians represent. To do this, we must turn to the song ‘Guardian’ itself, to shed light on the further meaning of ‘Exodus’.

Guardian: Sovereign servitor.

The main theme of ‘Guardian’ is probably seeking salvation through others, as perhaps noted most clearly in the final line of the chorus, “Answer me, save my will.” This theme is also present in ‘Giant’s Lore’, which we shall discuss in good time. One of the first things done in this song is to get rid of the boundaries between reality and the world of guardians:

Entities pass in the night; Guardians and the
Reaper fight, the will to live shall win;
Mares of hope ride through their dreams,
Blinding light awakens sleeping dawn, it seems
It was all a dream, an endless dream.

The last line at first seems to establish that the guardians and such were simply a dream divorced from a colder reality, mere fantasy as it were, an impression strengthened by Arch’s delivery of the first part of the line. ‘It seems it was all a dream’ seems to represent essentially a sad realization through Arch’s restrained and somewhat melancholy vocals, as if the wake of light has ended the dreams of night. However, this is then countered by the last part of the line, ‘An endless dream’, a fairly subversive phrasing which in fact implies that this dream does not in fact end with daylight, and is not merely a form of escapism and an illusion, but rather constitutes reality. Early Fates Warning are known for their fantasy lyrics, as opposed to ‘realistic’ ones, and this perhaps constitutes a statement that in actual fact the boundary here is not as sharp as one could think.

In that case, Fates Warning, through describing their guardians, journeys and so on, describe phenomena which in fact exist for us, albeit spiritually rather than physically. Fates Warning’s intention here is to undermine the view of the spiritual as merely fictional and fantastical, and to rather display that it exists as a part of our lives just as much as the physical. For example, it is clear that, if we appreciate music, we do not see it as simply a succession of  sound wavelengths, but rather view it as having a greater significance which cannot be summed up simply through physical description.

If something is beautiful, this is not a purely natural characteristic, but has a subjective element; on the other hand, one may hardly some up our experience of a moving piece by simply describing the key it was written in. Indeed, to some extent most music, even that which portrays reality, must bring in this subjective element; for example, while ‘A Pleasant Shade of Grey’ is more or less down-to-earth, nonetheless its purpose is not simply to describe a situation, but rather it portrays this situation through certain emotions, and hence through a certain, human perspective. In a sense, it cannot be reduced to simply describing physical things, but rather it portrays this situation through a certain coloured lens, and hence gives not only reality but also reality as it is interpreted and coloured subjectively.

Ultimately, humans may only discuss human reality, as our language is a reflection of our reality. However, this subjective element, which gives a certain shade to the world, is just as much a part of our world as the physical objects; one may compare this to the fact that a certain piece of wood may represent a chess piece for us, in our world, but this is not a physical characteristic as such. The subjective character of the world is therefore what may be described, in some cases, as its spiritual side. For example, if an art piece inspires one, then this takes on not only a physical, but also a spiritual character, and hence changes the shades by which you see the world in general (for example, through reading Lord Dunsany one may learn to see nature in a different way, reflecting his own affection for it). As such, it takes on a spiritual existence for one, and may come to act as a guide or advisor in one’s general life rather than merely a physical thing which stimulates limited pleasures and which one relates to only physically. The same, of course, applies to one’s relations to people.

To return to the song, the chorus seems to essentially express a wish for salvation through helping another and being remembered by them, expressing the duty to the person as being a “penance.” However, more interesting in relation to our current focus are the references to the ‘silent black’ and guardians later in the song.

I'm a fire without a flame, helpless child without a name,
With broken wings; catch me, I'm falling.
I'm a question with no answer, who are
You that takes my life away from me?
Unveil the boundaries of the black.

I had a dream I was you, strong as the fire
In my veins, and when I called out your
Name, I would remain to witness the pain;
I am beyond silent black, I will be back
As your guardian.

The first reference to the ‘black’, in the first verse above, occurs within a context of helplessness. The verse deals with the sense of having “broken wings” and falling, being helpless in resisting the force of gravity. A sense of purposelessness is expressed through the image of being a ‘question without an answer’, and hence incomplete, unable to answer the question of life with a purpose. The image of broken wings is used to suggest an inability to work against a stronger force by oneself, and is quite reminiscent of the following section from ‘Exodus’:

Sovereign the force, more than emotion,
It controls your destiny at hand.

Here, it is a reference to “predestination,” and fate. Insofar as one lives similarly to the man in ‘Traveler in Time’, there is no real question of freedom, because one’s aim is merely one’s own life being extended, so that ultimately it is governed simply by fate; as Arch puts it, the thread of life is sensitive, and in any case gets cut eventually. As such, it appears that one is ruled over, predestined, by the fates, precisely because one’s aim consists in something simply material, rather than spiritual, and hence one which is inherently finite and passes away by its own nature. It is ultimately not due to any external imposition, but due to the workings of and development of the body over time that it dies.

Of course, insofar as one sees it as an end in itself, one sees it independently of this finite nature, just as the pleasure of the appetites may only be made an aim through giving such pleasure an illusory, absolute character. However, insofar as this nature is ignored, it appears as an external imposition upon one, hence an act of the three fates or predestination, for example; in other words, as a sovereign force which is unconcerned about one’s emotions. While the body may die, however, this does not translate into predestination of our lives on the whole unless they are dedicated towards chasing more time, in which case the outcome is indeed already given. The fates sing only to the ‘reapers of reality’ (‘reaper’ presumably in the sense of people who gather crops from a field, which would be appropriate given the reference elsewhere in the song to ‘Walking in the devil’s field, sowing his seed.’ The word was also used in referring to the ‘Traveler in Time’ as a ‘reaper of time’. It seems to essentially represent covetousness).

As such, in ‘Exodus’ Fates Warning reject the ‘prophecies of tyrant guardians’, and call to ‘traject the esoteric sisters’, because they are ultimately ‘mythical’ (compare Seneca’s statement: “Undisturbed by fears and unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor of the gods.” As Paul Tillich comments, “In this sentence the gods stand for fate.” The esoteric sisters may perform a similar role here). Now, the verses in question deal with the ‘black’, and more specifically with escaping it, or rather going beyond it (as such, the person wishes for the boundaries to be unveiled, so that he is able to see them and hence move beyond this black). This connects into the overall theme of transcension in this album. In the first place, the imagery of a ‘silent black’, as well as the statement that ‘I will be back’ have connotations of death. The ‘silent black’ here could represent death, seen as fading into nothing and absolute darkness; this calls back the imagery of ‘Epitaph’, where the dead man is said to be, “lost in silence [and] swallowed in vastness,” a similar image to that of a person submerged in a ‘silent black’ which appears boundless and hence to swallow them (so that they request for its boundaries to be revealed.) This passage could, then, refer to the feeling of falling helplessly towards death.

This section of the song may be taken to represent death, or at least the threat of it. In that case, the next verse represents its transcendence. It begins with the recounting of a dream, in which the person singing the song presumably takes the place of the person whom the chorus is sung to, and they hence cease to see them as merely external, an acquaintance whom they see for some time and then leave, but rather ‘remain to witness the pain’.

I had a dream I was you strong as the fire
In my veins and when I called out your
Name I would remain to witness the pain
I am beyond silent black I will be back
As your guardian

The reference to remaining after calling out their name may perhaps refer to their calling out the person’s name on leaving them. In that case, this would represent a sense of empathy, that is, of a concern for the other person in themselves, rather than simply a concern about one’s interaction with them (essentially, caring about another person for their own sake rather than simply in terms of their effect on oneself; as such, caring for their condition even after one leaves them). This sense of empathy, however, provides an avenue to escape from the ‘black’, namely becoming a guardian. In that case, transcendence is associated with guardianship. The person returns from death, in some sense, as the other person’s guardian.

This could be compared with the guiding voice of ‘Exodus’, which exists for the traveler as a voice of guidance. In a sense, perhaps in aiding another to overcome their problems, one also takes the form of a guardian for them, in other words they remember one, and one’s guidance continues to exist for them in their own journey. One therefore takes on a spiritual existence for them, as a part of their life independent of one’s own physical form as such, and hence continue to exist as an active guardian for them. This may also apply in the case of art, for example, insofar as it is a form of self-expression through which the artist expresses themselves and gives their subjective views and feelings a physical form, through which it may be transmitted to others and form a part of their own view of life.  As such, rather than having simply physical existence for others, and hence a passing existence only as an acquaintance, one gains spiritual existence, and therefore an existence which plays a part throughout their life as a guide.

To some degree, it could be said that most major artists and such play the role of guardians for humanity, insofar as their art serves to inspire people to transcend ordinary existence and reach for Arcana. Of course, in order to help or guide another, one must of course have physical existence; one may not talk without a vocal organ, listen without ears, and so on. In the case of art and such, this physical prerequisite is extended to the necessary materials, such as pens, paper, paints, and so on. Likewise, we must act in accordance with physical necessity; for example, we must have black paint if we are to paint something black, although on the other hand it is only because we know of this natural necessity that we are able to express ourselves through it (for example, only because we know that certain chemicals combine naturally to give a certain paint can we freely make the paint to use).

Nonetheless, here the physical does not appear as the alpha and omega of action, but rather simply as a basis for the spiritual, for self-expression and free action. One is not struggling for more life, but rather living the life that one has; not against nature, but rather in tune with it and working with it to express oneself. Or, as a certain text which walks a very thin line between having a point and being unintentionally hilarious puts it, “life is really capable of producing and reproducing itself according to a plan, not as and end in itself but as an actual way of living.” Guardianship is therefore one aspect of the transcendence represented by Arcana.

The spiritual nature of guardianship is expressed also through referring to ‘guardian angels’ in ‘Prelude to Ruin’, a parallel also brought up here:

Angels in white, you have sacrificed, you witness
and bury the pain,
You walk hand and hand with the fear stricken child,
Strengthen the weak and the lame;
Have you seen beyond the unborn, the
pillars of penance and lore?
Perpetual journey into the realm, the
sovereign servitor.

Significant here is the reference to the ‘unborn’. The word is also used in ‘Prelude to Ruin’:

Time, Time, Time, an imaginary line; mine, not
Yours, nor yours, mine;
They lead the blind back to mothers womb,
Tomb of the unborn child

The ‘unborn’ here seems to refer to the ‘blind’, the nature of which could perhaps be illuminated through another line from ‘Guardian’:

Pace the hallway, blind man, for a million miles of stars
His mind has seen. Think you may he lives in darkness;
We're the dark, he's seen the light of dream.

This blindness is not literal blindness, but rather blindness to the light of dream, hence blindness to the spiritual and imaginative side of life and a fixation on the physical by itself. The point about leading the tomb of the unborn child could again be a reference to the sacrifice of living for life, and connected to the fact that after death one essentially returns to the same state of non-existence as one was at before one was born, so that insofar as one’s life is not lived, but rather one simply covets time, one simply gets lead back to where one was, and are in that sense ‘unborn’. As such, the aim of the journey to Arcana is to see beyond this. The connection of these ‘angels’ with the journey to Arcana in ‘Exodus’ is established further with the reference to the ‘Perpetual journey into the realm’. The nature of the guardian is summed up through the phrase ‘sovereign servitor’; through helping others, they gain sovereignty. Hence, becoming a guardian is one part of journeying to Arcana, and on the other hand makes one part of another’s journey likewise.

Giant’s Lore: I will remember knocking on the cold side of your door

Isolation forms a common theme in the two albums, from when the man is ‘Traveler in Time’ is said to, “Waste in seclusion,” despite the writing on the wall, to the statement in ‘Orphan Gypsy’ that:

In this lease of life I entered as one
In the end I leave as one.

There is also the beginning of ‘Epitaph’, in which it is declared that, “Isolation freezes my life.” In ‘Without a Trace’, a contrast is drawn between the social aspects of the boy’s existence in the day, represented through their dreaming of the girl whom they killed, suggesting some form of social relationship prior to the act, and the anti-social aspects of their existence, represented by nighttime, in which impulse is given full sway and hence they end up killing the girl. This impulsive nature  is represented through the comparison of the boy with a machine, for example the reference to him as a, “defective unit,” and the description of the murder with the statement that, “The switch is triggered once again.” The boy is ultimately empty of life, or at least of spirit, and hence mechanical; a similar comparison is made for the man of ‘Traveler in Time’. This is also expressed by the reference to them as an “empty soul,” one with no real affection or thought. A similar theme is brought up in both ‘Orphan Gypsy’ and ‘Epitaph’, where the subjects of the song are compared to stone (the person in ‘Epitaph’ is also referred to as a ‘barren soul’).

They are capable of following social mores in their usual life in the day, and indeed of acting normally, as represented by the statement that, “The hawk in the sky hides in the sun.” However, under this surface lurks a soul given to  impulses, which in the night ends up, “running wild.” This side of their existence is, however, hidden, as noted by the fact that the murder is done without leaving a trace. However, these actions do not bring satisfaction, but rather disgrace, and the sadness implied in the statement of his dreaming about the girl which he killed.

The theme of isolation is probably dealt with most completely in ‘Giant’s Lore’ off ‘Awaken the Guardian’. The song is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s story of the lonely giant, in which a giant builds a wall to keep children out of his garden, and hence causes summer to leave it, until one day children enter through a crack in the wall. The beauty of the garden is expressed very well through Arch’s delicate vocals when singing, “The dawn of autumn playing in the garden of the rising sun.” When the giant aids a child who was having trouble climbing a tree, he redeems himself, and eventually the child returns with injuries on their hands and feet to take him off to paradise (the allegorical content of this last bit is probably clear enough not to require elaboration. In this connection, it’s probably worth noting that Christian themes are also quite common on ‘The Spectre Within’, although John Arch has mentioned in interviews that he’s not Christian.)  Of course, the theme of locking others out is also quite present in ‘Orphan Gypsy’, where the title character says quite explicitly, “I can lock you out.”

Here, the more general moral of the story is noted through the chorus:

Kings, Queens, pirates, giants,
Castle walls and dungeon doors;
Bound to earthen treasures, sunken heart
To the ocean floor -- I will remember knocking
On the cold side of your door.

There are two things condemned here; on the one hand, being bound to earthly treasures, and on the other selfishness, or the lack of emotion and feeling. The first aspect has already been touched upon, insofar as it constitutes the desire for one’s own pleasure through external objects, ultimately leading to a pointless quest which ends with one’s own death. On the other hand, the corollary of this quest for pleasure through worldly possessions is that one’s heart ‘sinks’, that is, one becomes fixed upon one’s own pleasure through the world and hence set off on a quest from pleasure excluding others or treating them only as means. One’s conception of pleasure becomes merely personal, one based upon the interaction of objects with oneself, and hence akin to the giant’s garden when the children are walled off.

The giant is not concerned only with his own pleasure, but not with bringing about what is good in others. However, as Socrates pointed out, if one’s aim is what is good, then this must be one’s aim in interacting with others as well, namely to lead them towards being good, to spread the good as it were. On the other side of things, one may only be a good person through acting upon the world, and hence through acting upon others well. As such, one is good through others insofar as one makes them good, or becomes a guardian for them, although on the other hand one may do so only by encouraging them upon their own journey. Insofar as one is to have purpose here, this can only have to do with one’s own transformation into a good person, to bringing about what is good, and hence interacting with others rather than keeping one’s garden for oneself.

However, it is just as much the case that, in order to share anything with others, one must have something to share. This could be the significance of fantasy here. In fantasy, one may see the world through a different, more profound and striking lens, and hence see a degree of beauty in it; it constitutes a way of seeing the world. Only once one sees this world of fantasy can one share it with others, and hence guide them towards it. On the other hand, if one is to see the world aesthetically in reality, this means that one feels the need to act in accordance with this, in other words to act well, or be a good person, and hence to bring oneself in unity with nature insofar as it is seen in its spiritual and beautiful aspects. An ‘aesthetic’ world-view is not separate from things such as sympathy and empathy; one is not in reality another person, so that the singer’s identification with the other takes the form of a dream in ‘Guardian’, but on the other hand the point of ‘Guardian’ is to undermine the gap between dreams and reality, so as to show the ‘light of dreams’.  Just as an artist seeks to make a good painting, so does one aim to paint a good person, and hence to awaken the guardian within oneself. “You’ve got to let your spirit go.”

“I guess my religious beliefs lean pretty close to what the Native American Indians believe in. Just being in tune with nature and god’s name is nature and the powerful force...and there’s a higher force that created it and, to me, just being kind to people. Just being a good person. To me, those are my beliefs.”

- John Arch.

Your force is ours, there are no hidden lies

‘Pirates of the Underground’ is about heavy metal and its stigmatization. It is addressed to the ‘endangered species of the megahertz’, and attacks the attempt to find hidden, backwards messages in music and such, and the whole conception behind them. Heavy metal is not a means of lying, or of trying to manipulate people into evil cults. Rather, we have a pretty interesting portrayal of heavy metal in general:

Pirates of the underground, mutiny is in the air.
You're the wind in the sails mother ship.
Drifters at sea remain to be, till
Land which speaks our tongue is found
On our way cut the tongues of dragons
Breathing fire!
Ride the waves through the air down below
The mire.

We’re not evil, we’re just seeking what there is to be found. Drifting underground, searching for land which speaks our tongue, a land where fantasy is present and not exiled from reality. The sentiment here seems quite similar to that of Manilla Road’s ‘Metal’, probably one of the best of the many ‘metal anthems’ that seem to sprout like weeds in the metal scene. As Manilla Road put it:

We praise the blood that metal brings,
The essence of creative quality,
Is life so pure we cannot seek
Our hopes, our dreams to make our fantasies reality

‘The essence of creative quality’? But this is heavy metal; it isn’t serious music, it’s just people screaming about Satan! Well, yes.

I consider Geoff Tate very good at screaming about Satan.

In this song, we have a depiction of present society in a manner fairly similar to that of ‘Prelude to Ruin’:

Tuned out in neutral vegetation, prime time
Bleeding hearts howl at the moon.
Foul temptress, oh she sings seduction,
As vultures feast forbidden fruit.
Live an abstract life in your hibernation.

One could also compare this to the following:

Red, white, black, in city masses,
corporate buildings spread like rashes,
stacked upon each other forty high.
Stabbed each other in the back,
you money-hungry maniacs,
dig up the earth and spit it in your eye.

So, what to do?

Climb aboard this man of war
She'll take you far away
To a land of fantasy in your imagination.

Transcendence through heavy metal, that’s where we’re at.

- Zero.

12 comments:

Helm said...

Went through this once. There'll be a need for more. But for now, congratulations on exploring rather deep waters. I have some problems with your writing voice but I will not phrase them as critique, I'll instead just get used to how you write.

I could go on and on in reply to many of the points you illustrate in your piece, but I shouldn't, as I intend to eventually write on these albums as well. It is surprising to me not so much how close some of your conclusions are (which is inescapable with this subject matter, I find) but how different others are. It's gratifying to see that my favorite Heavy Metal music can result in this span of experience between two people that have paid real attention, and also love it.

Since you're entertaining positions on the issue of the white dove flying through the mirror of the old man though, my reading of this has been for many years that one must go through adult life with not just external equilibrium (no more 'war and temper tantrums') but inner stoicism. A reevaluation of what it means to die, what time means and what a person can do with the life that they have when they know it in them that death is absolute. I do not think it suggest a regress into a childlike mind later in life. The trajectory (the fates are not to be discarded, they are to be trajected, reconsider that point!) between life and death is assuaged by the discovery of what it means to be a guardian, i.e. to live in grace, to discover goodness, to be of use to others. There is much more in Guardian (the song), a simultaneously more literal and more spiritual reading than yours which I wonder if you're realized and didn't deem worth to 'explain' or if it hasn't clicked yet.

Zero said...

Thanks for the comment. I also have problems with my writing voice in this piece, and it probably comes to some extent because I'm somewhat new to writing like this about this subject (I mean, I have written fairly long things about heavy metal prior to this, but generally as a response to something and such, rather than in this form). One can probably also notice that there's more focus given to the lyrics and vocals than the rest of the music to some degree, and that's probably just because I'm more used to writing about literature, and as such default to the closest equivalent. Hopefully that will develop somewhat over time as I write some more of these, and maybe I'll come back to this and see if I can better express what I am trying to say in the future.

When it comes to the white dove, I wasn't trying to imply that it suggests a regress to a childlike mind, and I don't think that I said that. It seems that our readings of the matter are at least related, however. When it comes to the fates in 'Exodus', yes, I was quite doubtful of the reading put forward in the piece as well, but felt like throwing it out there could be a useful starting point for discussion. In that connection, it does seem fairly interesting that heaven and hell are also brought up in 'Exodus' as regards predestination, being themes quite present in 'The Spectre Within'.

I may have missed something in Guardian, and I do see some places where a more literal interpretation could be given (of course, I also don't believe that I mentioned the connection with Arch's brother and such). I'd be interested if you could elaborate on that.

It's quite clear that you've listened to this album for quite some time, and formed your own impression of it, so I'd be interested in any further comments you may have, as well as your own writing on the subject when it comes up. I did plunge into the deep end a bit with these albums, but I suppose that this depth also did form something of a motivation for writing on them. I may be taking up sturdier ground in the next few posts, as in any case there aren't that many albums that can be looked through in the same way as these two.

Helm said...

I didn't mean that you said the white dove is a regression, there was no such mention by you. It was more an inner dialogue, I'm sorry to have caused confusion there.

If I were to suggest anything to how you write about these things, it'd be on a contentious point: I don't like the overuse of the theoretical third person ("one might find themselves..."). I do it too, but I do think that you should either speak about yourself, or about the reader directly and assume the respective burdens.

I'm hesitant to talk too much about how I read Guardian (and much of the record) because if I start I fear I may never stop and I'm not emotionally ready to do that Poetry of Subculture piece, really. I do think that a more literal reading is useful to consider, though:

"These walls are stained, engraved with pain -You will find them under shadows casting shame"

The talk is of a place where the invalid and infirm are kept. Sanatorium or hospital or something of that type.

"Some it's all they've ever known"

Some of the patients have been there for as long as they remember.

"Angels of the fortunate sons come and go, You may not"

The keepers or family of those that are kept there leave but the patient in question stays.

"Entities pass in the night Guardians and the Reaper fight"

If you've ever been to a hospital for some time, if you've slept in a room with old people that are soon to be passing, there is no high ontology here, the lyric is very literal.

"The will to live shall win"

The certainty of this line, the strength to not just mutter it under your breath but to make a Heavy Metal record and write it down and have it be sang forever.

"Mares of hope ride through their dreams
Blinding light awakens sleeping dawn
It seems It was all a dream
An endless dream"

Have you ever watched this movie, "The Sea in Me"? In it, the protagonist listens to a record and closes his eyes for a time.

"I will wish upon a star I believe in you
And if my will has strayed afar
I rememebered you
Will you remember me?
I'm the one you sentenced
Penance unabsolved
Answer me
Save my will
Have you forgotten me?"

This is a very curious chorus for me, as to whom is the one speaking. More on this later.

"Pace the hallway blindman
For a million miles of stars his mind has seen
Think you may, he lives in darkness
We're the dark
He's seen the light of dream"

You may think the blind man lives in darkness, but he's seen the light of dream. He's still alive, the will to live shall win. There should be no pity for the blind man.

Helm said...

"Karen, she's been asleep forever
I know she hears me
She has so much to say
The machine that sparks
Through her egg shell mind
The tear streams from her face
Into my hand, to my heart"

I've always felt this is about a person who can no longer move or speak, in a vegetable state, yet still alive, still feeling and dreaming.

Shift of music, shift of point of view, the person trapped in themselves is speaking, they have something different to offer than "I gave my soul to read your mind, I am made of stone now" this time.


"I'm a fire without a flame
Helpless child without a name
With broken wings
Catch me, I'm falling
I'm a question with no answer
Who are you that takes my life away from me?
Unveil the boundaries of the black"

Here's the thing, try to read the following from both points of view, of the child and the keeper also:

"I had a dream I was you
Strong as the fire in my veins"

The thing that made me consider this in the first place is "I was you" but "the fire in MY veins". The two become one. I feel as if this speaks of the potential for life inside the immobile, the weak, the lame person.

Not to say that it can't be read 'straight' too. But it's worth considering.

"And when I called out your name
I would remain to witness the pain"

Who is he who remains?

"I am beyond silent black
I will be back as your Guardian"

The keeper of the patient is already their guardian. It's a beautiful image to consider, that after the patient passes away their strong memory will remain, a guiding light. A strong theme of "Awaken the Guardian" is finding what being a good person could be. Finding existential despair inside (in Spectre Within) one might turn to a quest for externalization (not an external quest) where they allow themselves to find strength in others. To become a guardian is not to become a christian martyr, as the suffering is not the purpose. Through servitude one unfolds aspects of themselves they never considered, through risk and exposition they reassess not only loneliness but personal philosophy.

The credo follows:

"Angels in white you have sacrificed
You witnessed and buried the pain
You walk hand and hand with the fear stricken child
Strengthen the weak and the lame

Have you seen beyond the unborn?
The pillars of pennance and lore
Perpetual journey into the realm
The Sovereign Servitor"

The unborn is a symbol of living death, the testament to wasted potentiality. The fear of death makes one be akin to one never born. To live one must look outside, they must accept death and suffering and try to help others as they help themselves. What one seemed a burden becomes strength. Death only at the end, not at the beginning. White dove flies through the mirror of the old man, so on.

Zero said...

I'll have to say that I more or less agree with all of that. I think that you also managed to present things a lot clearer than I did in my post.

When it comes to the 'strong as the fire in my veins' point, I also noticed that when I was listening to it, although I think that I may have forgotten to include it in the article. I think that my interpretation was at least quite similar to yours, namely of the two becoming one and such. I remember this because I had actually found it somewhat jarring in a sense, with the sudden shift from 'I was you' to 'strong as the fire in my veins', an effect accentuated somewhat by the previous verse as well ('I'm a fire without a flame'). The effect seemed to be more or less that in becoming united with the other their flame is replenished, and hence this seeming externalization of themselves is just as much internalization; or, to put it otherwise, in becoming the other they incorporate a new aspect into themselves.

I suppose that I may have been a bit unclear in referring to spirituality, but yes, I would agree that the lyric on the guardians is very real; the point, I think, is to some extent the transcension of physical existence, and constitution of life as an endless dream. The abolition of the boundaries between fantasy and reality, in a sense.

I agree that a Guardian is not a matter of self-sacrifice in the abstract, and I'm not sure that the whole altruism-egoism division beloved of ethics has any real place in describing it (or, well, in ethics, but that's another story for another time.) One could compare it to a work of art. In art, is one externalizing oneself, putting oneself into an object as it were? Yes, to some extent, both in creating and in listening. You can do the same with a person. Nonetheless, this is just as much self-creation, and in externalizing oneself, so to speak, one returns to oneself (sorry about that, bad habits and all).

I think that I can understand your point about the trajecting of the esoteric sisters now, and I might add that to the original post with credit.

When it comes to the use of 'one', one is probably suffering from the habits inherited from writing about theory and literature in a formal context. Thanks for pointing that out, though, I'm quite used to it, and may not have noticed it otherwise. I think that you may be right when it comes to being inappropriate here, and I'll see if I can temper my instincts on this matter in the future. Problem is that I'm always dreaming of the beautiful number one, but we'll see if that can be fixed.

Zero said...

To clarify, is your point about the 'traject' line something along the lines of the idea that death is not eliminated, but, rather than haunting the present, is transported into the future, while in the meantime we have space to live? ('Death only at the end'). I just wanted to be somewhat clearer on that.

Helm said...

An acceptance of death at the end (and of its various reflections in the middle) doesn't and shouldn't mean a life in constant fear of it. The analogy of the apportioners, or the Fates, is a useful one. Atropos cuts the thread with her sears... how this lyric frightened me and for how long. I think I understand her now, the necessity of this, I think I may have fallen in love with her too. I am given to extremes, sadly, from fear of death to adoration of it, but the concept still stands.

It's not like it's a small matter, confronting the certainty of finitude as you say. I'm sure John Arch, were he to chime in would also admit to be still working on it. I also suspect that if and when you or I have children, we'll understand what it means to be a guardian much better.

That the fates are warning should not mean that their warning is a curse, but a reminder. The child heeds no warnings because he thinks he will live forever. The warrior in armor suspects that he will die so he inflicts death on others as an oblation to the gods. And the old man, obsessed with trinkets that will never turn back time... What is trajected (and not rejected) is the vector of life, from birth to death. To live in death while still alive... a tomb for the unborn child, yes? To travel on that vector to its logical conclusion in your imagination (as Exodus calls) is to meet your death and make peace with it and, *having achieved this rest* look outward, outside yourself, learn to be good, serve in pride and not humility. You were not defeated. You were transformed.

It is the struggle of the weaker hearts to wish death would die. My heart was weak as well, I don't say this to condemn anyone. But so, though death is certain, the realization is that the experience of death is but a theory. This is a powerful realization for those that fear death in life: they will never really know it. I feel - and hope - at some point in the trajectory, it becomes increasingly a non-issue. Not forgotten, death, just an non-issue.

You should not credit me for any alterations you make on your texts because of our discussion. We are not academics and the reference trail of our musings on a US Power record from the '80s is not important. But the text on the whole is! Someone is going to have a hard time with Awaken the Guardian in the future and they might google it, it will be nice to see all this and wonder just how much of it they should read. It reminds me of when I stumbled first on that Jeff Wagner interview with John Arch.

Zero said...

Ah yes, the Wagner interview. I'm also quite a fan of that, it was probably one the first times I saw the interview format being used that well in music. Arch's speech was also quite nice, as it was quite down-to-earth in an honest manner, which was helped by the accent as well.

I agree with the general thrust of your comment when it comes to the representation of death in the Fates albums, and I'm sure that it would be quite useful for this hypothetical reader you mention to have the matter put forward from two different perspectives. I try to contribute towards others' journeys by trying to perhaps clarify a couple of things, but it's always nice to have some help.

Nekromantis said...

Thank you for this piece. I've always had some problems with the lyrics and their symbolism in Spectre Within and this piece and the dialogue after it helped me a bit with that.

I'd also liked to point out that symbols are often used to repressent multiple things at the same time and not even the artist can predict their full potential and meaning. This goes especially for the use of symbolism in romantic art I might add. I'm not saying that Arch didn't have ANY clue what he was doing or that you shouldn't follow his way of thinking but rather point out that while there is a logic and a red line to these lyrics it is in the nature of the language to mean various and even different things to each individual. The world operates not solely on reality but the perception of reality. When I listen to Fates Warning (or almost any great Heavy Metal for that matter) I will dream and my brain sometimes cook up so many threads of thought that it reminds me of a giant spider web in which each thread can be followed to a some kind of conclusion or reward. Thus the music comes to mean me something more than just what is immediately evident. It inspires thought, hope and imagination. It transcends me and everything that comes from it becomes what it is and so almost each time I listen to the music it reveals something different, something more. It's almost as if I complete the piece of art that the band/artist created! I guess this ties up quite nice with the "two becoming one" thing in Guardian and also gives me as a listener, not an artist a some sort of self-satisfaction.

Quite recently I revisited a chinese Heavy Metal band Tang Dynasty which I always kind of liked but this time I had english translations to few of their songs and suddently everything started to make more sense and it led me to not only understand their music and why I like it better but also to better understanding of the surrounding world and it actually changed the way I think about some things. So now and forever their music represents not only what it whispered to me but also the change in me and in this light I can read more into it. Perhaps more than there was supposed to be.

I'm sorry for my limitations in english and also if I seem to repeat myself too much. I'm sure this stuff might be plain obvious to you guys but I just wanted to add something to the discussion.

Zero said...
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Zero said...
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Zero said...

No, it's great that you're discussing your thoughts on heavy metal here; that's what the comments section is here for, after all. I didn't find your post repetitive, and all things considered I don't think that I have the right to complain about other people being repetitive in any case. I enjoyed reading your post, as there seemed to be quite a lot of passion in the discussion of the music, and that's always nice to read. It's also nice to hear that this post and discussion helped a bit, and hopefully future posts and comments shall continue to help a bit.

I'm not going to disagree that the world operates not only on the level of reality but also of the perception of reality, and indeed if I ever did I'm sure that the Fates Warning albums would set me straight on that. Art isn't completely definite, but on the other hand it does give itself some context of its own. With art, you aren't supposed to simply imagine a context out of nothing, but rather the art itself provides some level of context. In 'A Pleasant Shade of Grey', one may not be sure exactly what relation the singer has to the person addressed in the songs, but nonetheless there is a sense of intimacy and affection conveyed through the music, and this is not separate from the 'objective' notes and words.

It's accurate to say that Arch may not have meant every symbol in terms of its full plausible connotations, although it could be just as much argued that if he did use a symbol he had a reason for it, be it at the least a vague association. Still, I'm not as concerned with how Arch meant specific symbols, but rather tend to explore possible connotations, whether they be conscious, subconscious or unconscious, which they may take on in the light of the wider ethos of the work.

I certainly agree when it comes to completing a work of art. If I recall correctly, Glenn Gould actually took this view to a further level by advocating the manipulation of the track by listeners to fit their needs, as a means of further breaking down the artificial artist-audience hierarchy (another reason for his famed distaste for the concert format). I think that that kind of equality between artist and listener is pretty much inherent to Arch's songwriting on these two albums, and I don't presume to point out a definitive interpretation so much as to help listeners to forge their own paths.

When it comes to Tang Dynasty, to be honest I seemed to have completely forgotten that I had that record. This is rather strange, as I actually remember having quite a positive first impression of it, although I have yet to get a proper listen. I suppose that I had got it at a fairly busy time, and as such may have forgotten it due to not listening to it for a while. Still, thanks for bringing it up, I'll be sure to listen to it, and with English translations on hand.