these are interpretations. feel free to send me your own - dstarca@hotmail.com

scissor lock

he sat his hand on my shoulder in friendship his smile told me that he understood where i was at in this period of my life newly liberated from the throng of the masses , eyes open , spirit open even wider seeing so many beautiful colors , he did understand moments of birth an rebirth all around me swirling rejecting all I have been taught as truth and seeing the amazing truth of life outside of the veil we live the veil that seperated me from my soul and made me always question beyond it "i too once thought the radio played" he said with a smile and then a split second grimmace he then looked down at the ground lost in a whole world of though in that one moment thinking back to his days when he too was blind thinking back to when his true reality was labled as crazy thinking back to when he realized the "insane" thoughts were true then he was not crazy because his eyes had been opened he realized the world was much more "insane" than he sitting on every word the radio would produce, almost as infectious as the internet believing every story, hanging on to the top ten, consumed with it more than his own life itself the prank calls, advertisements, violence all served up hot on a dish the masses and blind sheep that took every thing for the way it seemed never wanting to open their eyes , in a lull, a scissor lock paralized in sleep never able to wake up and not wanting to they would all rather pass the buck, its not my problem like children they live life without feeling responsible for their actions like children they live wrecklessly waiting for mother to pick up their toys and make it all better back to the present he looked up and saw the same look he once had the look of a reborn man who turns the radio down to seek out the best music music of the spirit , voices of the soul cant be heard on any radio with admiration they walk away together with this moment in common forever bonded as spiritual brothers neither of them want to hear the radio play ever again

- guy smith

scissor lock

this is one of the many dredg songs i can relate to. whenever i try to write lyrics or music, there is always a block or a filter. it is the biggest problem i have. what it does normally is lead me away from the roots of the lyrics or music, which is the creativity and the feeling. all these thoughts of whether it will turn out good enough or sound okay take over, and it begins to shatter whats working so well. i then get frustrated with all of it and feel like i'm wasted my time, when in fact what i have is exactly what i was looking for. i get blinded by all the 'overthinking'. later when i look back at what i had written, i do find a sort of connection in it, a sense of what i meant. when i let my friends read or listen to what i wrote, they see it too, and 'appreciate it' its as if i had it all along, but the block/filter clouded my head. concentration becomes the key, you cant worry about how it will turn out, just let it go, 'its a small cost', you cant think of the past, you cant think of the future, 'only now remains.' what i think the chorus may stand for (although this may be the dumbest part of the interpretation) is the art/creativity/feeling calling for you to stick to it and never to give up because it will be with you soon.

- mark

scissor lock

my friend got into a car wreck and was in a coma for about a week before he died. and after that happenned, i was listening to "scissor lock" and it really struck a chord. "scissor lock" reminds me of someone in a coma. i know that i don't know what it's like to be in a coma, but some of the lyrics seem to represent what i've always thought it would be like. it seems to be about a person who's been in a coma for a looooong time and has just finally come out. the first verse basically just describes what it's like. but then the chorus "we act like children while we sleep paralyzed" could mean that while the person is asleep, his whole childhood and life is passing around him, while he's just lying there, his mind "paralyzed."

- thomas

triangle

i believe triangle is a song of inspiration, yet at the same time they're taking a shot at the government. if not "taking a shot" then he's talking about how the government is failing and the people don't care about it anymore. "tyranny's torn from the podiums where leaders stand, but rule no more" sums that up. like how all these government officials are trying to talk but nobody's listening because they have such a bad rep of lieing, stealing, cheating, etc. also, part of this song is just kind of inspirational. like the line "watch it explode, while it's not impossible for flowers to bloom and grow next to graves" (to me) means that anything is possible. you sit here and watch everything go to hell, but there's always a way out of it, there's always a way to fix it. "and babies are born in the same buildings where people go to pass away" just adds that look at how hospitals can have both extremes: life and death. when you can give life in a place where people lose theirs, anything can happen. that verse is basically my new motto in life now.

- joe

symbol song

to me, this song is the most inspirational song i've ever heard. before i ever heard this song, i had never thought about the things he sings about. but lyrics mean different things to different people. they're special and unique, just like we all are. so just remember, i'm just writing about how these lyrics have changed me. anyways, i started out, obviously, finding the lyrics strikingly almost like poetry, unlike so many other lyrics i've heard before. so, whenever i read poetry, i have a dictionary handy. then, as I read more and more into the lyrics, I found them quite similar to some parts of the inferno by dante. that book's about a spiritual journey, this cd is about a spiritual journey. in the book by dante, virgil represents reason and the main character has to trust in virgil to get him through the journey, hence, "faith is trust in reason." so, then, if faith is trust in reason, there must be a reason for everything, always leading to fate. and everyone thinks negatively about fate. but trusting in the reasons brings you faith.....and you are empty without faith in something. i could go on forever with all the figuring i've done in my notebooks. but what i'm trying to say is, the song, actually the entire album, inspired me to think about religion and god and i've basically gone from being atheist for more than half of my life to being a christian and finding that everything actually fits in nice and neatly now.

- thomas

yatahaze

i do not think this song has a necessarily positive or negative message. much like the rest of leitmotif, this song seems to be observing the condition of our world and, more importantly, the condition of the collective human consciousness. this song in particular is such an appropriate ending for such an amazing album. it is a subtle attempt at explaining the mysteries of thousands of years of spirituality. though, we may strive to understand, it is because we strive that we don't understand. the spiritual "leaders" of our world attempt to rationalize god and the path to the divine. it is the rational mind that fails us and, to reference the song, we drift back to the ground hugging our failed opinions. in declaring that there is an undeniable truth, we have disallowed an infinite number of other possibilities. in the sleeve for their album Ænima, tool wrote "beliefs allow the mind to stop-functioning. a non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing..." this is not a request for a mass embrace of atheism. it is a plea to open the boundaries of our spiritual understanding, both outward and inward. the kabbalist understands these inherent paradoxes in working to meet the divine. ein sof is the nothingness that is at the center of all things. the mystic must stare into the meaning of all things until that meaning disappears. when all things converge and they are understood to be as one, the alchemical gold is discovered and we are looking into the face of god. in drawing our own boundaries, we have shut out our own channel to the divine. dredg is pointing at that sad state of affairs that seems to run rampant in our general populace. i am not claiming to know the truth, and neither is dredg. however, is it too hard to believe that god is beyond a mere human rationalization? perhaps we should all rethink our approach.

- jeremy hall

redrawing the island map

the song is about the system the world puts on you. the system of sleep. It's about fighting it, and how ridiculous it is once you gain the courage to look at it. to make it more simple, it's about the problems man suffurs and always had. you know, that voice in you head that says, "go jack off. write your book tommorow. do this...". and once you gain the courage and strength to question it, you see how predictable it is. at the end he says that there there is no way to fight out of here. that line sounds depressing if you look at it the wrong way. you think that he is basically saying we are stuck and lost, but he is saying the opposite. he is saying that we cannot force our way out of here, we must learn to love the world and even it's hatred, and eventually it will give up on us and go tempt someone else.

- hail eris

running through propellers :

this song is about a raging party which i think is referring to life its self. the song conveys a message saying that we should cover ourselves up and hide what he have on the inside so we can fit in to this raging party for us all. it tells us to paint our eyes to hide whats on the inside. after all we can tell alot about a person through their eyes and this becomes impossible if ones eyes are covered over or painted. it has a ironic part that says "we were running running waiting" almost a oxymoron there. but i feel like, especially with the tone of how those lines are said, its saying that we are lost. and confused. why? because we are hiding our true selves so we can go into this raging party or life.

of the room :

i think this song has drug related origins because of the use of the word swoon. it's a very erie song that i can see them writing when they are trippin out on something or since dredg is so talented they can visualize things like this naturally which i think is the case. but it's just about a room...with unusual things pointed out that we might not pay attention to on a typical day or night.

yatahaze :

to me this song is inspiring becuase the fact that no matter how much we fall we keep climbing. i think it portrays life and how "suddenly" things can change. one second we can be on the rise and the next falling right back down. but it reminds us to keep climbing. however it tells us at the end that our falls might be our own faults..because our ignorance remains while we are hoping for things and waiting instead of working hard for them.

- mo gorjestani