This becomes the mantra for the entire album. We see this refrain again in the song, “Years So Much”, before the conclusion of the album.

The concepts and the following revelations make the album one of the most personal and challenging records I’ve recorded in my career.

OK – so I decided to get a bit po-mo here and borrow greatly from several of my favorite David Lynch films. These lyrics defeat the pleasant imagery of the preceding lines. “Liz” is no longer being cute and romantic, but now she is mocking my naïveté, tormenting me. My own imagination has turned on me by manifesting itself into Liz and letting me know that it’s all just a dream and that I, myself, am in control of my own shallow depression. Here we see the idea of control come back into play. In this instance of horror, I can barely tell what is real and what is not.

“Then I woke myself shaking from deja vu,” doesn’t necessarily signify that I have woken up (think Inception before Inception even happened). The deja vu aspect is a major clue that this still seems all so familiar. Thus begins the entire concept for the rest of the album.

I used to have a tiny exhaust fan that would point out the tiny window of my bedroom in a tiny basement apartment in the Bronx. I have fond memories of blowing smoke into the fan on very dark humid afternoons. This is where the imagery came from – Liz and I started dating after I had moved into a much nicer apartment, but in the dream state things are often switched around or distorted.

It’s a shame in our reality that time is so important to our corporeal bodies. I was hearkened back to a song title I wrote for our 2005 EP, Goodnight Alchemy, “Cats as a Measurement of Time” when I began trying to describe the polaroid snapshot of death, the moment where timing means everything but also has dire eternal consequences. Time expired for my dear friend Ben, that moment the car sent him spinning high up into the air and crashing into the pavement. The last line is an inside nod to Ben and chippy commentary on the idea of “controlling your own destiny.” Ben and I were writing screenplays together as well as starting a new band called Cheers Amelia with delusions of grandeur.

I had a dream I was having a drink at a bar in a dimly lit upscale lounge. Ben was seated beside me, dressed in a tailored suit, and I hardly noticed him at first. When I did we carried on as if nothing had happened to him. It occurred to me in mid-conversation that I was talking to a ghost or whatever it was holding the image of Ben together. I became sad, but he smiled and told me things were fine. “Don’t worry!” I remember him saying. I was relieved, because now we could get back to bullshitting. But I had to ask, “So what’s Heaven like?”

Also, Eraserhead.

This is about how my best friend Ben was killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street. It was late, but Ben had the “walk” signal and proceeded to cross a street in Manhattan like usual. A car comes ripping around the corner making his decision fatal. “Fate” seemed like a pretty weak concept to me at the time. Here’s an intelligent, hysterical, sincerely lovable guy that just gets taken out by some irresponsible loser in a luxury car. It didn’t seem fair.

This is me struggling with the concept of time. I believe it might be the source of so many of my anxieties. It also reiterates the paradox of time as it takes time to contemplate the concept of time. There’s also the notion of “Hey, I’m still young. I don’t have to deal with these vast mysteries just yet. Right?” Of course, questioning my youth is in essence dealing with the vast mystery of time – so the next lines begin the struggle and frustration with many fleeting concepts… just like in a dream.

So many people have a solution to your personal problems, but they aren’t you. You are a singular being dealing with life on your own unique terms perceived through your own unique mind. I’m saying here: “Look, I got this, let me figure it out myself.” Sometimes an issue can be infinitely more complex below the surface of what an outsider recognizes it as.

It is unusually hot and humid for the Autumn season. The initial lyrics were written in the spring time in Charleston, South Carolina so the weather conditions were how they are being described, however, there is a twist later in this song wich reveals why things seem to be peculiar.