Nightly Emotion — My Ashes — Porcupine Tree
This is one of those songs that you’ll probably understand better once you’ve lived a little. There are some old souls out there that will get it regardless. As for myself, I didn’t really understand it until I went through my psychotic break and lost my fiance.
This is a rather nihilistic outing by the band and, I know, it really isn’t metal. This was one of those songs that took me out of my mostly metal funk on an album that I feel deserves more praise and attention. Steven Wilson is brilliant as a writer. While this song isn’t metal it’s depressive in tone and thus, I feel, has metal sensibilities.
The voice sounds sad about falling in line with a world that never brought him any happiness. In the end, it really won’t matter I suppose. Isolation is the medicine that the downtrodden consume to innoculate themselves from their disillusionment.
Honestly, it’s very hard for me to interpret any lyrics. I’m schizotypal and the figurative is usually just out of my mind’s grasp. I’ll do my best. My favorite bit is the following:
I will stay in my own world
Under the covers
I will feel safe inside
The kiss that will burn me
Cure me of dreaming
I was always returning
And my ashes find a way beyond the fog
And return to save the child that I forgot
It’s really easy to keep coming back to the things that make you temporarily happy. I relate to this because I tend to hide away from the world. It only makes things worse because I become less and less in touch with the world that everyone else lives in. Though I might die not having fully experienced my life the way others have actions will carry on and impact other lives despite that.
I could be way off here, but that’s what think about when I hear this song. The song is darkly reminiscent and looks at the better years of the past mournfully. It’s one of those things that people do when they take their current situation for granted. Either way, when you become ashes you’re spread back in amongst all the places and memories of your life.
Personally, I toil with what happens after death as I’m sure we all do. I worry that I’m just going to be lost in the static. Once my family is gone, and I’m gone what’s left of me besides my calcium in the mud? It is usually what drives most people. At this point, there’s no way to make yourself timeless other than to do and make as much as you can so that those that come after you will look upon your work gratefully. The more people that love you the more you carry on through them.
Image retrieved from (Fear Of A Blank Planet, 2012) on burningshed.com
