THE OCEAN LYRICS

1. Anthropocentric

"Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the heart; but now it has first to burden the heart so as afterwards to be able to lighten it. Consequently it shall perish"
[Friedrich Nietzsche]

As the symbols of the metaphysics of the hangman are taken off the walls of our living rooms
Humanity emancipates
Christ statues fall and die of age
Just like us: in/organic decay
The myths of the martyrs have waned
No longer do we mourn their loss
Their children dance and play their games
In the shadow of the great old white cross
Wealth heals all wounds and alleviates any kind of pain
The shroud of collective oblivion coats any individual scars
The widows of the skepticals have passed away before they could retaliate
And those who baptised the world with the sword have long been buried
And have not arisen from their graves
The guardians of righteousness have lost their immaculity
The rise of the enlightenment has defeated Christianity
But its legacy of submissiveness prevails in many brave man's heart and soul:
The saddening conception that humanity cannot choose its own destiny
With our lives based on the hope for salvation
The humanist paradigm is nothing but a charade
Condemned to inertia: a passive race
We wait and contemplate
And even in these days and age some people still believe
That Earth is at the center of God's own universe
And that man was made the 7th day, evolution is a myth
And that even bones of ancient creatures are no evidence of the fact that we are not the end of the chain
And they wont leave their ship
That is sinking
They refuse to leave their ship
And while they spoke of grace and love, forgiveness from above
They nailed thousands of non-believers to their crude symbol of love
The myth that man is the crown of God's creation
Breeds the excuse to deplete the Earth today
The myth that man is the crown of God's creation
Supports our present anthropocentric misconception

2. The Grand Inquisitor I: Karamazov Baseness

Even if I did not believe in life
If I lost my faith in the order of things
Were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable and devil-ridden chaos
If I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment
Still I would want to live
And having once tasted the cup
I would not turn away from it
Until I had drained it
You are trying to save me
But perhaps I am not lost
Is an unworthy, uncaring father still entitled to the love of his sons?

3. She Was The Universe

"Man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast believed him!
By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask too much from him - Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself?
Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him.
That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter."
[The Grand Inquisitor to Jesus, in Fjodor Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov"]

I had a dream which was not all a dream
The sun was extinguished
And the stars wandered darkling in space
Rayless, and pathless
And the icy Earth swung blind and blackened in the moonless air
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; And all hearts were chilled into a selfish prayer for light: They did live by watchfires
And the thrones of crowned kings
Habitations of all things which dwell
Were burnt for beacons
Oh Lord, I lack the strength
To turn and leave you
There's no confidence
In my hesitation
Happy were those who dwelt in the eye of the volcanoes
Their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contained
Forests were set on fire
But hour by hour they fell and faded
The crackling trunks extinguished with a crash - And all was black
The brows of men by the despairing light wore an unearthly aspect
The flashes fell upon them; Some lay down and hid their eyes
And some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled
And vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude
Hissing, but stingless
They were slain for food
A meal was bought with blood
And each sate apart
Gorging himself in gloom: No love was left

4. For He That Wavereth...

"They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not within Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou has caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.
So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy kingdom, and noone is more to blame for it."
[The Grand Inquisitor to Jesus, in Fjodor Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov"]

One is supposed to be submerged in belief
Somehow by a miracle
And from then on to swim in it
As in the least ambiguous of elements
And even just a glance towards land
The thought that one perhaps might be there for something else as well as swimming
Even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature is sin!
What they want is an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned

5. The Grand Inquisitor II: Roots & Locusts

It is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world
A world with God would be even more disturbing than a universe without him
For if He tolerates atrocities
If he condones such cruelty
Who would want to worship such a maker anyway?
They locked her up for 30 days
In a dark room under the roof
They broke her will with the cane
She'll remember everything
You are trying to save me, but perhaps I am not lost
It is not God that I do not accept
It's this world of God's, created by God, that I cannot agree to accept
I dragged myself out to the Ocean
And stared all night into the sky
The only lights I saw were far below me: Black waters full of life
I too lived on roots and locusts
I too have been in the wilderness
I too was striving to stand among They elect
Among the strong and the powerful
I too lived on roots and locusts
I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed us
But I woke up and would not serve madness
The kiss glows deep in his heart
But the old man adheres to his idea
I too lived on roots and locusts
I too

6. The Grand Inquisitor III: A Tiny Grain Of Faith

"I think that if the Devil does not exist, and has therefore been created by man, then man has created him in his own likeness and image"
[Ivan Karamazov, in Fjodor Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov"]

The devil sows in you a tiny grain of faith
And it will grow into an oak tree

You will dine on locusts
You'll wander in the wilderness to save your soul

7. Sewers Of The Soul

The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure
This functions is performed by persons, professions, the fatherland the world
Or for the really arrogant: by the Good God himself
Christianity has been from the beginning
Life's nausea and disgust with life
Merely concealed behind
Masked by, dressed up as faith in "another" or "better" life
A casual stroll through the asylum shows that faith does not prove anything

8. Wille Zum Utergang

"Parasitism is the only practice of the church; with its ideal of anaemia, its "holiness", draining all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself."
[Friedrich Nietzsche]

9. Heaven TV

"Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the supreme cause, which ought always be excluded from philosophy; what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable.
The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth:
And if the former state of existence no wise concerned us, neither will the latter."
[David Hume]

There is no comfort in the idea of the eternal soul to me
How could it live on without the experience of the colour of the sea?
If Heaven was to be an empty white sphere
Devoid of anything that you could taste or feel-without feeling need
Then I take more comfort in the idea
That one day my eyes will cease to see what's right there in front of me
Are you prepared to face the one big question: Have you lived everyday as if it had been your last?
If Heaven was to be a blank projection screen for all your most secret dreams: What would you see?
What would you see?
What would be on Heaven TV?
What would you see?
What would you see?
All that you never dared
All the things you were to scared to try
You haven't lived everyday as if it had been your last
The infamous inventors of eternity have ruled our lives long enough
They refuse to see that we are animals
We need to feed, fight, sleep and make love
Have you lived everyday as if it had been your last?
Have you lived everyday as if it had been your last?
They refuse to see that we are animals
We need to feed, fight, sleep and make love
And I tell you one thing: When all you put on the table falls short of all your great promises
Then I don't want my share in any of this

10. The Almightiness Contradiction

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
[Epicurus]

"If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence.
But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention which means he is not omnipotent"
[Richard Dawkins]

If He knew it all

If He knew everything there is to be known
Then that would mean that He would always know what to do next to change the course of history
He could choose to suspend the laws of nature
He would always know the past and the future
But this would make his own knowledge untrue
For if He knew everything
He could not do anything different from what he knows
And even if he could hear our prayers
He could not encroach
There's noone here who knows it all
There's nothing there beyond the world we know
There's noone here who knows it all
Is there something there beyond the world we know?

Christian morality has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism.
Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness;
Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt."
[John Stuart Mill]







THE OCEAN LYRICS