A HOPE FOR HOME LYRICS

1. Nightfall

[The sun is the method by which we see all – truth embodied. We see a man standing on a hill in the dark. His eyes are glowing.]

No rising sun, all is cold. The only light held in our eyes: It brings forth a new way of life.

And we shall burn our pyres when the morning comes and welcome a new age.

When the night falls we know, we will never fear a reckoning again.

2. The Overman

["Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The overman shall be the meaning of the earth!" - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s overman embodies what we must become in this world with no god. The next stage of humanity, greater than man. All we have is now, we must then reject other-worldliness, and become the "meaning of the earth."]

We’ve broken the binding chain. The earth cannot contain.
Our arms stretch past the sky. Now as gods we all shall rise.

Exaltation in the least of these: We are all that will be.
Now awake and find the dream conceived, for we are the measure of all.

This is the dawn of time, this is the end of the world.
We will transcend ourselves, and we will conquer them both.

Our commission sealed the grave. Raise your glasses now it is done.
And with nothing above or below, upon salted ground we rise.

This is the dawn of time, this is the end of the world.
We will transcend ourselves, and we will conquer them both.
For we must shed our skin, become as gods in the light.
If we’re to find our own way, rewrite our paths from the start.

Rise up as gods. Rise up. Adorned as gods.

3. Withering Branches

[But what gods are we? For thousands of years we have been unable to transcend our basic animalistic passions for hate, greed, and violence towards our fellow man. The Greeks envisioned their gods just as humans, imperfect, flawed, violent. Modern philosophy envisions the God of theism as embodying perfection, justice, and mercy. Surely, these are qualities far from our reach. Nietzsche’s overman, then, seems to become what it set out to destroy: an otherworldly idea.]

Oh what a wide world to conquer, it rests in the palm of our hands.

The lines blur between corruption and where we sit upon our thrones.
And we draw blood as if it’s our right to, but is it our right to?

We’ve been swaying for centuries and we’ve dug in our roots as we drink up the sea of divinity.
But we can’t seem to shed our affliction.

What pitiful deities we make if we can’t reach beyond ourselves. Such lowly gods we
create when we only believe in what our hands can touch and our eyes can see.

We’ve been swaying for centuries and we’ve dug in our roots as we drink up the sea of divinity.
But we can’t seem to shed our affliction.

What pitiful deities we make if we can’t reach beyond ourselves. Such lowly gods we
create when we only believe in what our hands can touch and our eyes can see...
...what our eyes can see.

Oh what a wide world to conquer, it falls apart in our hands.

[(We are withering branches, we are sick and dying vines.)]

4. The Machine Stops

[The world is a machine. We are all cogs on the wheel. Blind idealism toward the "next step" in evolution. However, if we are just aimlessly evolving throughout time, any idea of humanity trying to work toward some "purpose" is blind, meaningless ambition, and humankind becomes a sort of machine – churning and shifting gears, but never actually achieving a goal. But what good is a machine without a purpose? The man chooses to, in his mind, "stop" the machine; detach himself from the world, and the machine. Not that such detachment is a good thing, but to fully understand truth, he must first see himself outside of the "machine."]

A cold steel womb. A distorted view. A deafening hum that won’t be subdued.
We’ve found our being within this churning, and the gears that are turning, but to what end?
To what end?

This is not what I’m meant for, this is not what I am.
A cog, a spoke in the machinery of men that never takes us to where we haven’t been.

Is it too late to take this all back?
If I plant my feet upon this trail without a reason or destination,
then this ship has sunk before it sailed.

An endless churning roar, a labyrinth of steel and ore.
Our blood becomes the oil, a meaningless, purposeless toil.

You are all mindless sheep, just a piece of the machine.
Keep fueling your hopeless dreams, they will never mean a thing.

Detach: can we pull these wires from our veins? Divide our flesh, our blood, our names.
In the face of the machine my reflection stands and turns, as I walk. I’m never coming back.

5. No Light

[The descent into nihilism. If the world has no purpose, then neither does the man. He has detached himself from the rest of humanity. He is alone. Darkness. In the midst of a purposeless existence, however, what good are our most basic interpersonal connections? Love? Giving? Sacrifice? If we are to become overmen and direct our goals toward only our own achievement, then we should never let ourselves be weighed down by others, never live for the sake of another man, never sacrifice anything for the lesser or the needy (see: Ayn Rand). Yet, most of us still desire to help others. Somewhere in the man, a desire for light sparks.]

Theres no way out of this, no light, no hope.
Put out the fire that burned so bright, no truth, no home.
My footprints in the sand are cleared with morning’s tide.
For nothing will remain, all will subside.

But there must be something more. There must be something more.

The darkest clouds will fall, all meaning laid to waste.
They tell me there’s no hope, no light to guide the way.
If these shells of skin and bone are all we have,
then I refuse to stand and watch the fire die inside...die inside.

6. Post Tenebras Lux

[The man sits from afar watching a silent march. The only light seeps from out the eyes of the marching men, but it is not enough to light the path. Still they march, endlessly. The man reaches his hands into the soil and finds a weak, glowing light.]

Under a dim lit sky shadows marched like statues.
Darkness was coursing throughout their veins, and light shone from their eyes.
And it was all they had, but it was not enough to light their way: A silent march into awaiting graves.

Turned my back against the night, toward the hope that there’s a place where truth abides.
For here we’re left to wonder why we douse the flame and there is nothing left inside.

We have become as the ravens; mighty in numbers and blocking out the sun...the sun.

And here my will could never contend: Is this not cold and bent?
And where does my volition fit in? Where?

Too weak to wade amongst the dead, too tired to stand amongst the rest.

So face the sky and tell me how you gauge living in vain?
Show me the crooked and bent, the shape of contempt...
of...contempt...of...contempt...of contempt.

We’ve buried the flame, but I contend to dig it up again.

7. First Light Of Dawn

[The man stands up to walk down the path in the opposite direction from which he came. Still with no direction or understood purpose, he stands in direct opposition to the circular path of the machine and the marching men toward the east, the rising sun.]

I stand... I stand and turn my back. [3x]

I turn and face the road ahead. To the unknown that lays fast in my stead.

8. The Crippling Fear

[All too often in the light of facing evidence which might run contrary to our beliefs, we choose to shut our eyes and close our ears in order to never second-guess ourselves or truly understand what we believe. It goes both ways, whether you believe in a higher power or not. It is a crippling fear which leaves us pinned to close-mindedness, and keeps us from ever being able to see beyond our prejudices and preconcieved beliefs. The man stands at the gate of the way he wants to see the world, and the way it truly is. If Truth exists, it exists outside of us, and we have no say in shaping it or reshaping it to fit in our boxes.]

For too long we have lived in a confounded state of being, with nothing to lessen
the sting of knowing that all toil and gain is just the ebb and flow of time.

Was it all a lie?

We fail every time we let this fear inside – reason given way to overarching pride.
By our own design we were led astray. Crossing ageless lines. Blind men led the way.

We hold to whatever makes us safe as if Truth was all too much to take.
We crawl like shadows in the night. The illusion fades with morning’s light.

We will fail every time we let this fear inside.
We must open our hearts to look beyond ourselves,
then we’ll understand that all of us can see everything as day,
a light to guide the way, a reason for today.

We say... Are these the words of God, or reflections of mine?
Will I find that path, or just circle around, damned to the unknown?

9. The Warmth Of The Heavens

[Many times it is said that belief in the otherworldly is foolish, since we have no direct evidence or widely accepted philosophical proof for the existence of what we cannot see. For thousands of years man thought the earth was the center of the universe, our only method of gathering information was to simply just look up. When our method for understanding changes, the thing which we are trying to understand does not change in its nature. Our limited understanding of Truth has no bearing on whether or not Truth exists.]

With arms outstretched and hope intact I fix my gaze to the stars above.
I can’t feel their warmth, burning on my skin, but still they shine, with no need to question them.

10. Seasons

[We tend to think of ourselves as much more important to the grand cosmic scale of the universe than we truly are. This is not to say that our individual lives are not valued or of importance, but the universe will not tremble at the thought of our passing; Truth exists regardless of our existence, and nothing we can do or say can strip that Truth of its meaning. At the end of the man’s life he faces all he has been, all that he has known. He has traversed the tunnels of nihilism and faith, and found himself facing one final, immutable Truth.]

We’ve conquered everything, these minds and these machines.
By our hands the earth stops its spin, and with our will it begins again.
But our first breath is as our last. Our first breath is as our last. Our first breath is as our last.

And will the heavens still shine without our gaze?
And will the seasons still pass if there’s no one to count the days?

We fade like the summer leaves in fall, then drift with the winters wind.
And still we thought that we were gods, but we’re nothing more than a grain of sand in time.

We’ve conquered everything, these minds and these machines.
By our hands the earth stops its spin, and with our will it begins again.
But when the mountains turn to dust, and the rivers all run dry,
when my final breath has come and gone, this place will carry on.

We are nothing more than grains of sand on the shores of time.

11. Ascension

[Facing death, the man finally comes to understand what gives his life meaning. There is something beyond his temporal material existence: this Truth gives us meaning, and it is real. The man dies.]

Can this be my only home? Planes of dust, and rising seas.
I will release the bonds, but will this set me free?

Awake, climb, all will fade.
In time, we will understand that all we can see is not the end to all that will be.

Mistaken for the final rest – the collapse of lungs and one last breath.
All reveals the trail to a door ahead. Collect consciousness, prepare to tread endless voids.

12. After

[Communion with Truth, meaning, purpose.]

Past life and frailty. Light pours its way through me, revealing more than alchemy.
And the Truth behind all that we see –
in time, we will understand this is not the end to all that will be.





A HOPE FOR HOME LYRICS