Yeah I was gonna make a crazy throwaway. But the chorus is what solidified PTM and this album as a soul experience/example of art.

Life Spoilers

So I was doing some soul searching, read: depression, searching for meaning etc for a few years. I was on a tear. Going through works of art, stereotypically following breadcrumbs through another cliche of a rabbit hole. I honestly didn't know what started it, where it was going, or where it would end.

It culminated into a very moving experience for me when I read 'Dante's Inferno'. I think for someone like me, 'Dante's Inferno' is a human-catchall, there's something for everyone because the poet encompasses a vast array of human experiences you can't deny. In this case, Dante's Inferno is the whole rings of hell thing, greed, lust, sloth etc. But the poem itself is a mountain. The inferno is a hole. Metaphorically its represented as such.

But on the other side, once you go through these seemingly horrid depths you come out the other side. Apart from that, what you just read is now pleasurable and enjoyable instead of being out of fear/bewilderment. Part of that is specifically Dante's Inferno with the first lines, 'Abandon all ye hope who enter' because its a false sense of hope. A hope built on a 'god' who turns suffering into violence verses a 'god' that turns violence into suffering. (Last bit taken from a literary analysis of Dante's Inferno or something along the way).

So the chorus of this song, back to the poem, is finding that crack in the sky. Or from 'Once Was One', 'Once was one but now am two'---the idea that you can have two simultaneous world views together when previously you only one (for me, Dante's Inferno and viewing hell as I saw it, because hell is what you make it).

I don't know guys. Its very hard to culminate my experiences into specific art, yet, I'm glad for artists who've steered me in this direction and who's work are reflection of that process as well. I don't think its a topic that can be prepared and performed all your life in every work. With PTM, this album in particular is their soul album. I feel like artists reach this every now and then. Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album is on a soul level in the same way they reflect themselves from the Blood Sugar Sex Magik album---two examples of albums dealing with the topic of soul/whatever.

My thing is that, I found something written ~700 years ago because artists today wrote something which draws from something as old as that. I don't have the mysteries of life figured out, but I'd say I'm down to highlight these aspects in which art inspires art.

PTM is littered with all that soul. This album as a work functions as a soul searching venture for them (but a reflection of possibly that process for human beings)? Whereas, In the Mountain in the Cloud, represents maybe the crossing over and discovery of another world out there.

Again, taken with a grain of salt. Other songs by them, (I'll have to find examples), basically acknowledge that this makes you crazy. And I mean it does. Look at all of what you just read. For me, I could spend the 60 years doing this and hope it lasts or create something of this magnitude..."If it takes us 60 years, I'll, dig a hole and find the fire."

These guys get it though, whatever it is.