about
Mask
Within the first few moments of our lives we gasp for breath and cry out. In the most ideal of circumstances, we are met by a loving other who provides attention and support, models compassion and strength, and serves as an authority who balances the awareness of self and other. Though many of our early relationships seldom demonstrate all of the above, we continue to use our voice to signal to the outer world, “I need you.” Throughout the first half of life, this need for external authority, and the equally important external sources of love and attention, helps orient and guide us in a world that would otherwise be completely overwhelming. But rather than introducing us to the world as it is, inevitably our authority figures imprint upon us their own conclusions and prejudices. We seek truth about external reality and our relationship to it, but receive at best a limited and biased view, at worst a distorted and traumatizing one. Because there are differences between who we are and what the world tells us that we need to be, our psyche creates a mask, which serves as a vital intermediary between the world and the Self. But while it protects us, it also conceals psychological, social, and spiritual contents deep within each of us that must be repressed in order to adapt to authority’s demands. When the outer authority does not accept and nurture these contents, they go within and lay dormant. But dormant does not mean passive. Quite the opposite, these are the contents that seek to be sung; eventually they flood our hearts with desire, passion, fear, anxiety, depression, and pain until the mask that we wear no longer serves us. We head out into the forest to forge new and unfamiliar paths, paths upon which that same authority told us not to tread. These early experiences form and inform what the alchemists called the “prima materia” or the essential matter of life’s work: our true selves.
lyrics
A little daydream sends me slowly off to sleep
Meeting memories and those around the table that I can’t keep
As the sun greats the night breaking the magic of the dark
The writer of your reason takes his place to make his mark
In many ways I know there’s something just beneath
Where hidden secrets live known to the chambers of your heart
It’s only a beginning and how many stories start
Police the people keep and them from going wild
Formed in their image as a child
Held up high
And now all the gods have died
Poisoned by words that colonize
There’s no opposition, paradox, where’s the tension?
So, I’ll put on the face you want me to
I’ll walk this way and sing songs for you
and even though I’m hurting
You won’t know it, of this I’m certain
That’s just what masks do
The king is sick and requests fabric and a ring
No dragons will be slain today, the hero’s after other things
Like how to hold a daydream in the palm of your hand
Encountering adventure and things you cannot understand
I’m a fool, I’m a riddle, I’m really quite obtuse
I’m a soul trying to take flight wearing a gilded concrete suit
Held down by forces known within the chambers of my heart
Creating and obstructing my desires from the start
The greatest joke that anyone has ever tried
Placing wisdom within those who search outside
And up high
And now all the gods have died
Poisoned by words that colonize
There’s no opposition, paradox, where’s the tension?
So, I’ll put on the face you want me to
I’ll walk this way and sing songs for you
and even though I’m hurting
You won’t know it, of this I’m certain
That’s just what masks do
credits
from
Empyreum,
released September 20, 2020
license
all rights reserved
