Something new is coming.
There are moments when a fog clears and a landscape reveals itself, as if what was seen as clenched fist had always been an open hand; as a new field of awareness emerges, greater understanding reveals the inherent worth and dignity of ourselves and those around us.
Memory holds enormous power; it creates the rubric for how we formulate our identity, shaping our preferences and our processes and offering comfort in familiar scents and shapes. There’s a temptation to linger in an intimate yet distant world and project a illusory view of the past while the bounties of the present pass us by. But through measured perspective our foundational histories open before us uncharted futures: unchained from the mythology of memory, the truth of our journeys propels us in freedom to run to the edge and dive with abandon into exhilarating currents unknown.
It is easy to feel insignificant and powerless living in the shadows of the grand yet intricate mechanisms that order and determine our world. Despite appearances, not everything is beyond our control--for even found in sightless dark, our intrinsic agency is illuminated in our ability to cherish the beauty that we witness and cultivate. This meek yet persistent resistance stokes a hope indomitable and channels of ability unknown.
The haunting blemishes of our past often tempt us to walk away and let it die as we project an unwritten present of limitless possibility--but in reality, this illusion is built upon willful amnesia of the roads we’ve traveled. The more we ignore our past, the more estranged we become from our very selves for what are we but a collection of memories.
The broad appeal of the time travel genre is not the fantastical idea that the past can be changed but rather that if the wrongs of history could be made right then the present day could be magically substituted for a brighter tomorrow while the world is distracted. It is the dream of a benevolent, worldwide, bloodless, and microwave ready revolution. And who knows, next time may be different… but we should know better.
This song was written around the idea of a kind of science fiction Sisyphus who has gotten themselves stuck in a predestination paradox and by their own force of will is doomed to attempt--and always fail--to change a course of events they have locked themselves into. The song, and the album it bookends, repeats forever like an intentionally broken record. Living for the fight, trying to change the past. And who knows, next time may be different...