Hey, I noticed there wasn't a thread for this. I figured some people probably had put together some kind of story for The Downward Spiral in their heads over the years. Some people were putting up stories for Year Zero, and even though there won't be a movie or anything, it still might be fun to post our thoughts.

If you've built up a plot in your head all these years, you can share your stories/ideas for a book/movie/TV series/comic/upbeat Summer musical here.

Mr. Selfdestruct wakes up (after nightmare) in the morning, and makes himself a breakfast. His food supply lacks bacon. He goes to butcher's for some bacon and on his way there he meets his old school-friend who became a priest. This priest-friend tells Mr. Selfdestruct to stop eating fat food and to go pray in church, to be closer to god. He does not want to go pray, but he admits he's becoming fat and ruining his heart with cholesterin. He doesn't want to be fat and ill and weak, so he decides to take on a dangerous safari-tour and buys a gun, then takes a plane to some of the warmest places - Africa. He tries to survive in the wilderness and erase his old unhealthy life, but doesn't last long: in the desert heat he barely stays in clear mind and doesn't notice the snake which bites him and hurts him too much to escape death.

Mr. Self Destruct - a basic summary of the protagonists personality.
Piggy - his *female* lover leaving him.
Heresy - the protagonist starting to question the reality of God and religion.
March of the Pigs - the protagonist falling out with everyone in society (ie. I give you all that you want/take the skin and peel it back)
Closer - his emotions are stirring wildly. He admits he's a failure and he still wants more!
Ruiner - he finally falls out with God and erases his past life.
The Becoming - He is starting to develope 2 halves to himself (good half and bad half) and this is the point that he changes into something else.
I Do Not Want This - He is having a huge internall war with himself. Unfortunately the bad side wins and he is at the mercy of it's motives.
Big Man With A Gun - This is the rampage his second self goes on. I interperet this as rape. I think the protagonist rapes and kills a young girl.
A Warm Place - the bad side has fucked off (he's satisfied) and the good side is left with the blame and guilt. He totaly regrets it.
Eraser - After several years in prison, he gets out and still regrets everything he had done. He speaks out to the girl he killed (find you/taste you/fuck you/scar you/break you/hate me/smash me/erase me/kill me/kill me/kill me)
Reptile - he sees a prostitute to simulate some belongingness (he feels empty) but he knows it's low.
The Downward Spiral - He finaly kills himself. He's had enough.
Hurt - General summary of his life and what could have been.

Ah are they? Fair enough, I always interpereted them
as prison noises. No biggie, your probably right!

It's like those sounds in The Downward Spiral (especially the live version). I always interpereted them as sounds of ambulance and breathing masks. It probably is, I just have to relate sounds with something!

azacar1 posted:

Ah are they? Fair enough, I always interpereted them
as prison noises. No biggie, your probably right!

It's like those sounds in The Downward Spiral (especially the live version). I always interpereted them as sounds of ambulance and breathing masks. It probably is, I just have to relate sounds with something!

Mind, I think some of the sounds are just there to keep the cohesive musical feel of the album without being made literal--like Reptile for example. I don't see the factory sounds and burgeoning machine there as being anything.

...Unless Reptile is really about the Ruiner half having sex with the same hooker/girl from Closer, and it's an entirely different viewpoint. The human narrator sees the sexual gratification as his only connection left to humanity, and the woman as a higher portal to him. [You get me Closer to God.] Whereas the Ruiner, perhaps trying to see the same thing, only finds her a disgusting whore (hence why she would "lie" to him, if he's expecting her to be his connection to God.) The mechanical sounds at the beginning may represent the cold, mechanical Ruiner having sex with the prostitute. (It's clear from The Becoming that The Ruiner is meant to at least have robot/cyborg connotations; 'The me that you know is now made up of wires.')

I've always taken the sounds at the beginning of the title track to be kind of literal, these are just the sort of sounds that go on wherever the narrator is killing himself. Truthfully, I've never heard that one noise as an ambulance siren until just now (and it very may well be!), I've always seen the death scene taking place in this kind of Blade Runner factory setting, with fans in the wall that the light is shining through. Like Lord Zedd's throne room in Season 2 of Power Rangers.

posted:

Onslaught, really like your interpretation, really connects all the songs together

Thanks! Just trying to pick the pieces up. I think TDS is one of the few albums you can really pick a cohesive narrative up in through the entire album. Some albums have bits that are obviously clearly linked (Kinda I Want To, a song about being unsure about doing naughty sexual things, is followed up directly by Sin...a song about doing naughty sexual things.) but TDS is the only one that tells a story. This is especially true of The Fragile, where the songs were just kind of written and then assembled into an order that kind of made sense later. The journey there is much less a literal one like TDS, and more of a spiritual and moody one. I think it's because there's so many more influences going into the album and it sprawls into so many other directions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2010 04:36PM by OnslaughtSix.

my interpretation for tds is that it's simply a soundtrack for a bad day, we all have days where we feel rejected by everyone, we all feel at some point that there isn't a God in our lives (i'm a christian), we all want to give up on life or turn to the easy way out, but life goes on and we accept it and feel better

elmixo95 posted:

my interpretation for tds is that it's simply a soundtrack for a bad day, we all have days where we feel rejected by everyone, we all feel at some point that there isn't a God in our lives (i'm a christian), we all want to give up on life or turn to the easy way out, but life goes on and we accept it and feel better

But he kills himself.....

I got a very strong, dark religious view to that. "The Downward Spiral" is told by an omniscent narrator, who is incarnated as a kind of punicher that sees the fucking truth and must deal with that for himself at that what he has to be, and for his instruction for that he is in the world. All covered in connections to God.


It is way difficult for me to explain spontanous, so I started to work out my thoughts on paper. Because it is a lot and all in English, so it is kind of exhausting and will need its time.

And maybe this is all bullshit, and maybe I will change my nick name in the forums afterwards, and maybe I will edit and delete this post in a short time and maybe I will cry out for my Eraser.

Just for the record: I blocked out some background knowledge I’ve got about the time when Trent Reznor wrote TDS. E.g. that “Anni” meant very probably his friend Tory Amos, or that the album was recorded in the “le pig studios” in the “Tate House” in Beverly Hills, or video installations.
The following may be a pretty free interpretation of the whole thing. Individual tracks I would interpret in other ways, too.

----
The omniscient narrator is a punisher that is given into the world for elucidate /enlighten and decry religious grievance and misunderstandings, for speaking religious message clear. During the way downward the spiral he isn’t able to fulfil the instruction, he renounces his greater knowledge and fails in a very sinful way. At last the punisher commits suicide and must recognize that one can’t run away before his consciousness, knowledge and the way things are going.

Mr Self-Destruct: The narrator begins the search about what he is and what shall be the place in this world. Again and again he is in struggle and fight with himself, his insights (let’s say: alter ego) pushes him deeper and even deeper into his own mindfuck. He recognizes his inner strength and what power develops from that.

Piggy
When Mr Self-Destruct sees that his old ego, the person resp. the picture of himself he was before, is obsolete and how fucked-up he’s now, nothing can stop him to leave his old skin behind, on his way downward the spiral, letting his human behaviour behind. (Here is to clarify, that the term “pig” in old, religious writings is used for human-beings that can’t hear the words of God, they are “deaf” to that. So priests rsp. religious leader, e.g. prophets, must give HIS words to them; it’s the term “giving pearls to pigs”). He himself is the piggy that he broke. Now he sees that from a much wiser, clear understanding, than the cruel feelings in Mr. Self-Destruct.
With that he left also a lot more behind him, maybe his old love to a female one in his old life. In the sharp tenderness he speaks a kind of affectionate words, he seems to have a latent sadness and melancholy and sentimental of what he leaves, it’s a changeover.

Heresy (or: An ancient mushroom trip)
Right in the scene of the crucifixion. One of the soldiers that nailed Jesus speaks. The narrator is this soldier. He scorns Jesus. The first lyrics are spoken to the audience, the listener. He tells them what Jesus seems to have done (closing his eyes before the dominant orders, praying love instead of seeing people requires violence and hate and the law of the stronger, building up a religion of love, afraid to see that will change nothing).
Refrain: “your god is dead…”<-directed to Jesus and his fans. He accuses Jesus daring heresy with saying he would be the son of God

Next verse tells about the God in the Old Testament, the Inflictive God that HE was then.
And now, there is God to shelter his son?
“His own hypocrisy” <- heresy directed to God, that drowns in his own hypocrisy, because how can He love the humans that much to give his son when he on the other hand initiate all these cruelty and atrocities. So He himself will go down to hell, when there is a, for His own hypocrisy, nearly a paradox. And because the soldier is doing the absolute heresy: killing the son of God, speaking heresy, decry religious understanding -> to Jesus then: “will you die for this” = Jesus died for our sins: Also for the soldiers heresy and for the God’s hypocrisy, too. Dying in the name of God, whom Jesus loves and trusts, and the God that betrayed him. Even when it is the prophecy and all is written, Jesus should be clear about.
“Are you ready to die now!” – Crucifixion goes on

---
The narrator knows what he does, that it is heresy. He tells the fucking truth and goddamn, the fucking truth is heresy in the view of Christianity.

March of the pigs (or: Mirror for the people)
The narrator=punisher hates to recognize how stupid human-beings are and wants to torture them for that they can feel something true instead of their “wantings”.
-> The end of the track: The benevolence that represents “actual instructed [divine] benevolence” of the punisher: for now let the pigs being what ever they are; maybe they aren’t worth it.


Closer (or: Doing sex for doing something human)
It’s the stadium when sex gives a feeling being alive -> later in “Hurt” after the killing in “the downward spiral” is it the hurting that only gives feeling.
[And also Trent Reznor made “Closer” for selling records, because he is a musical genius and knows how to do a catchy, dirty thing and to create a hymn for the fucking little piggys and his fans.]

Ruiner
The ruiner (= the punisher in another perspective resp. language) is bad about one that built up a personality that lost the way. The ruiner has to make that clear to the person with all strength and it is hard for the ruiner self to be so, too. He sees that actually the thing that rules is to fuck. But the ruiner has the instruction to ruin what’s seen to see what it really is.

The Becoming
Here the narrator explains what happens to him directed to another person, very probably a female one, maybe his love from his past life before the self destruction.
The protagonist found something that deeply turns him on from the inside, his machine. Beating that changes his personality. The pure and true soul was kinda raped by the old ego that was made by wrong influences. He can’t stop thinking about what he found. Even when he is with the female, he thinks on healing his inside with beating the machine (playing music, e.g.). He is honest to her. He says that he has deeper thoughts behind the surface of a more superficial ego and that he now is a new one. He can try to be the old one, but actually there is no chance for it, he cannot deny, what he has found for himself is absolute.
He is with the other person just in this moment. For this moment he can be with her. Probably the last time, he feels safe when he slips back in his comfortable blind, old ego.

He will stand to his decision / new consciousness, although it is hard stuff and bad, he will fuck/fight for his truth once he discovered it.

I do not want this
Here Mr. Self-Destruct is at his very end in weakest moments: Full of self-doubts and fears before the own courage, no new ideas. It’s the decision, whether following the rules of the instruction or to fuck it all up. He tries to cry out to a greater. Maybe a demand to God to lead him out of the hole he’s in.
At the end of the track the strength and power come back. Creed manifested through will and violence.

---------radical break in the whole composition------------

Big man with a gun (or: Another mushroom film)
= hateful and deadly. Base motives overpowering distinctness. One of a worst story the narrator tells, from the perspective and the thoughts of a bad fucker, a nightmare.

A warm place
After the “big man with a gun” nothing can go more worse. All fuck is told, the instruction is done, the punisher failed. Maybe “a warm place” also describes the satisfaction after being the big man with the gun.
An interlude to reflect and to let sink what happened before, too.

Eraser
Full of sexual fantasies the punisher sees his victim. He wants the violent treatment. He hates to feel, because that weakens him like in “I do not want this”. Actual he cannot stand this and underneath the truth screams “kill me” in repeat.
A kind of the offender-victim-theory.

Reptile
The thinking and dreaming of a sex friend in a very dirty (let’s say perverse) and bad sexy way.

The Downward Spiral
Suicide. The thoughts and mind can’t be stopped with that. It’s a retrospect and spoken in past time, while every other track is in presence. So the narrator is already on another point. There weren’t any words left to say in that moment of the suicide, the bottom of the hole.

Hurt
The old mortal coil is gone. The soul is pure and new. A new “me”, that knows now and understands himself. An awakening in tenderness. At the end stands a regret that follows the understanding: That a fucked-up, heretic life and suicide won’t give the inner satisfaction and peace.


Conclusion: Fucking is all about.

Notes
While writing these interpretations I listened more intense to the album The Downward Spiral. And when I listened to “Piggy” and for the first time I nearly cried, because of the feeling it was touching in me.


Oh, I fear, I'm single again since yesterday and that has nothing to do with NIN and the sun is shining.

Thank you for your feedback, OnslaughtSix!

OnslaughtSix posted:

xcore posted:

Heresy (or: An ancient mushroom trip)
Right in the scene of the crucifixion. One of the soldiers that nailed Jesus speaks. The narrator is this soldier. He scorns Jesus. The first lyrics are spoken to the audience, the listener. He tells them what Jesus seems to have done (closing his eyes before the dominant orders, praying love instead of seeing people requires violence and hate and the law of the stronger, building up a religion of love, afraid to see that will change nothing).
Refrain: “your god is dead…”<-directed to Jesus and his fans. He accuses Jesus daring heresy with saying he would be the son of God

Next verse tells about the God in the Old Testament, the Inflictive God that HE was then.
And now, there is God to shelter his son?
“His own hypocrisy” <- heresy directed to God, that drowns in his own hypocrisy, because how can He love the humans that much to give his son when he on the other hand initiate all these cruelty and atrocities. So He himself will go down to hell, when there is a, for His own hypocrisy, nearly a paradox. And because the soldier is doing the absolute heresy: killing the son of God, speaking heresy, decry religious understanding -> to Jesus then: “will you die for this” = Jesus died for our sins: Also for the soldiers heresy and for the God’s hypocrisy, too. Dying in the name of God, whom Jesus loves and trusts, and the God that betrayed him. Even when it is the prophecy and all is written, Jesus should be clear about.
“Are you ready to die now!” – Crucifixion goes on

The only thing that bothers me about this interpretation is that, to me, Heresy is very clearly from the present view--"He made a virus that would kill off all the swine" refers to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Or at least I always thought it was. The second verse is kind of in a mocking POV from a religious person, not too dissimilar from God Given on YZ.

In the time of Jesus there were a lot of epidemics and mass mortality, because of lice, pox etc. The hygienic circumstances were horrible, especially in the poor underclasses.
In the New Testament the Christian God isn't the Inflictive God anymore, but the loving.
So in the present the "HIV Virus" for "he made a virus for kill off all the swine" could be a warning not to fuck around like dumb asses. Though we know that HIV is a virus that was a failed experiment of the army as a biological warfare agent, don't we?!
I dunno, that was really the sentence I couldn't fitting interprete. I thought the track is in present time, because it's a trip into that scene, for a better identification.

OnslaughtSix posted:

xcore posted:

[And also Trent Reznor made “Closer” for selling records, because he is a musical genius and knows how to do a catchy, dirty thing and to create a hymn for the fucking little piggys and his fans.]

I dunno about that. I just recently read some old interviews again and Trent didn't think Closer would be a good single at all in '93.

He was sometimes too modest back the days ;-)

OnslaughtSix posted:

xcore posted:

Conclusion: Fucking is all about.

I hate to laugh when someone is earnestly trying hard to convey something in a foreign language they don't exactly grasp (and despite your language barriers, I think I understand the point you're getting at) but this line is too funny.

;-)

xcore posted:

Another version:
Mr self destruct is bored and don’t know anything he can do with himself. He needs something new in his life, another pet: A little piggy. He adores that piggy, but after a while he gets bored again and does heresy to the piggy: He goes to the pet shop and buys some more pigs. And in a march of the pigs he lets them all in the box to the first piggy. He watches the pigs now day in day out. Most time the pigs eat, fuck and grunt. For the pigs he is God. For him they seem to communicate with each other, mostly before they fuck like animals. So he listens closer to that sounds, but can’t understand a shit. He fears, that the pigs could do a complot and he has to ruin that, though he does not want this, but he is hungry anyway. He goes to take his gun and the stands before the pigs as the big man with the gun. He kills one piggy and brings it to a warm place: A pan on the cooker. After that he erases the marks of his action in the kitchen and goes to eat in his room. Next to the dining table stands a terrarium with a reptile. The reptile gets a part of the piggy for eating, too. The bites of the meal runs down the gullet like downward the spiral. Suddenly a little knucklebone is stucked in his throat and makes him hurt.

I don't know if I can listen to that album the same way again.

I realy like the interpretations from onsloughtsix and xcore and i think they can be connected.

my view is similar to both of your and i think the "downward spiral" meaning life falling apart and the narrator is realizing that his life and everything around him is falling apert right befor his eyes and there is nothing he can do about it. Nothing he can do either from religion or society can stop or fix the disaster in his life. so he developes an alter ego to try and grasp the situation and take controle but he realizes the way the alter ego (ruiner or Mr. Selfdestruct) wants to controle the situation is more destructive and violent.

Trent has mentioned befor he tends to use sex as a metaphor for controle.

I think what i just said was a lil repetitive. lol

but thats just what i get from it.

Mr. Self Destruct is a summary of the album, and an explanation of why the man in the story did what he did. Everyone has a Mr. Self Destruct in them.

Piggy is the man's first decline in sanity. It is an awakening of sorts. He feels beaten, and betrayed by someone he obviously cared alot about. He is lost because of this person,
but now realizes they are nothing more than a pig.

Hersey is about him growing tired of being told what to believe in, and what to do. He sees it all as a big lie now, and it's dead to him.

March of The Pigs is him realizing that everyone is a pig deep down. He gives them everything, and he gets shit for it. They will fuck everything up, and
watch it all fall apart for personal gain. They feed on people, like they are just fleshy emotionless sacks. He feels everyone is against him, and they've
won the game of breaking him down.

Closer is about his only escape. A relationship built purely on sex. He has next to nothing to give anymore, but he would give it all to this woman in a heartbeat.
She is the last thing he has, and she is what's keeping him alive.

Ruiner is about someone from his past, who made him the way he is. No one can see through the ruiner, but he can. He has to face being a victim of the ruiner cause
that's all he is anymore. He sees a piece of himself in the ruiner, or a piece of the ruiner in himself. He is horrified by this fact.

The Becoming is what I would say is the last piece of act 1. He is slowly becoming a pig, or perhaps the ruiner himself. He doesn't feel anymore, he just feeds his disease.
Just like everyone else. He feels there is nothing he can do to stop himself from becoming what he's turning into.

I Do Not Want This is his last plead to the entire world. He can't stop it himself even if he wanted to. He is completely miserable because of this, and he
is screaming for someone to help him. He is finally going to lose the only thing he had left, and begins to hate people for trying to help. The end of this song
is him saying fuck it, I'm going to be just like you.

Big Man With A Gun is him saying now that he is hard, and emotionless like everyone else. He can do to other people, what has been done to him. He fantasizes
what he is capable of now.

A Warm Place. Ah, words cannot describe what this beautiful piece of ambiance speaks. If i were crazy enough to try and sum up a instrumental. I would say this
is him slipping away from the world into his warm place.

Eraser is a summary of every relationship he has ever been a part of. Happiness for him has become tedious, and meaningless. It's all the same in the end.

Reptile is his last try to fill the void inside of him. To alleviate his loneliness. He makes love to all these women to try to fill it. Just like all these
women have made love to so many men, to try to do the same thing.

The Downward Spiral is his attempt at suicide. Nothing can ever be the same again. It's all broken, and fucked up. He wants out. Bam. Done. The End.

Hurt. Wait, there's more. Did he change his mind? Was his suicide attmept a failure? Who cares, not important. Guess what? He feels again. He tried to hide
all of his emotions from himself, but they are still there. He had become something awfull, and that's what drove people away. He'd give everything away all
over again if someone was willing to take the risk, and get hurt. The woman he loved doesn't love him anymore. She's moved on, but he hasn't. He's still
in love with her, and he's still stuck in the same spot. If he could do it all over again, he'd find a way to stop himself from becoming what he has become,
but he can't. Time moves on.

Glad to see that there is a thread on this.

The Fragile is only a spiritual successor, not a literal one--if there is any literal context to be derived.

Perhaps it's a comic book death. "Yeah, he kills himself at the end of The Downward Spiral, but, uh...he got better."

some food for thought to add to OnslaughtSix's jolly interpretation:

1) names.
- "Mr. Self Destruct," "Piggy," "Ruiner," "Big Man With a Gun," "Eraser," "Reptile" - they're all kinds of names or titles not just for the songs but for characters or phases of characters. possible links: "Mr. Self Destruct" as one name for the two-sided narrator; "Ruiner" and "Big Man With a Gun" as names/phases of the "bad side" that harms people; "Eraser" as the post-"BMWAG" phase of the narrator seeking punishment for the pain he's caused and to erase that history and/or the Ruiner side; "Reptile" as another name for "Piggy," or for whoever the narrator screws in "Closer," or for a(nother) female the narrator encounters.

2) "Mr. Self Destruct."
- could be the narrator or the Ruiner, sure, but there's one line that throws me on this interpretation: "I speak religion's message clear (and I control you)" - if you interpret "Heresy" as the Ruiner convincing the narrator not to believe in god or religion, how could either side of the narrator "speak religion's message clear?" i guess it could be ironic (i.e. the "clear message" is that any religion isn't worth believing), but if it isn't, there's another option: "Mr. Self Destruct" as a name for society, which links to its rejection in "March of the Pigs" and possibly to the character introduced in "Piggy" (see next point).

3) "Piggy." also, homosexuality.
- clearly and obviously supposed to be the reference name for someone that leaves the narrator. but consider the titular connection to "MOTP" - we are introduced to Piggy, who left the narrator and thus stopped limiting him/the Ruiner ["nothing can stop me now"], then religion is tossed out, then society is a bunch of "marching pigs" that need to be disregarded as well. the evolution of the use of "pig" in the lyrics and song titles suggests that Piggy, upon leaving, has joined the empty mass of society the narrator then rejects - society are called pigs because Piggy left the narrator to join the anonymous rest of the world (and since the "disease" in "Heresy" obviously isn't killing the "swine" fast enough, why not help it out?).

- i'm not buying the homosexual "overtones" - you don't have to love a friend as more than a friend just to mourn their leaving or loss. if the lyrics' original intent was in response to Richard Patrick leaving (like the title suggests, if his nickname actually was Piggy - you never know if RP's PR guys invented stuff!), it's actually more of an insult to call him "[Trent's] little piggy," not a homosexually-charged statement.

4) "Heresy." also, perspective.
- is the first verse about a priest/minister, or about the human side of the narrator? i.e. is it from the perspective of the narrator, or the Ruiner?

5) "March of the Pigs." also, phallic imagery.
- most of the language used in the lyrics of "MOTP" strike me as phallic, and i don't just mean "take the skin and peel it back" - i mean "I want a little bit (etc.)," "don't like the look/taste/smell of it," "shove it up inside," and so on. are the pigs "lined up" because society is a bunch of mindless drones suckered in by religion and other shit the narrator grows to hate (i think this is the common interpretation), or are they lined up to suck off/be penetrated by the powerful dicks because it "makes them feel better" to be subservient to "big men with big dicks" (i.e. power and control)? i am leaning toward the latter, because this then sets up "Closer," "I Do Not Want This," and "BMWAG."

6) "Closer." also, honey.
- so, if all the pigs are hungry for dick, and the Ruiner side is influencing the narrator [in "Heresy"], and the Ruiner wants to be powerful and have control ("MSD," other songs later), who says "Closer" is about fucking one person? maybe this is the other side of the situation i'm interpreting from "MOTP" - the pigs love getting dicked by the powerful because it "makes them feel better," and the powerful love dicking the pigs because it "gets them closer to god" (after all, the powerful "flex [their] muscles to keep [their] flock of sheep in line," mixed metaphor or not), so naturally the Ruiner influences the narrator to become one of the controllers in society, hence the first person perspective in the lyrics of "Closer" - "help me become somebody else."
- also, "honey" and the "hive" lyrics link directly to "Reptile;" see the "Reptile" comments below.

7) "Ruiner." also, perspective again.
- considering the majority of the song is from a perspective describing and insulting and questioning the Ruiner, it seems to be an attack from the outside - a step out of the head of the narrator and into one of the pigs (maybe Piggy) watching the narrator's Becoming, asking "how did this happen? this is what you've become - the collector, the infecter." the coda of the song is then the answer, and the step back into the Ruiner/narrator's perspective: "you didn't hurt me. nothing can stop me now."

8) "The Becoming." also, the identity of the machine.
- i find it an endless conundrum that the first lyric in this song is "I beat my machine/it's a part of me/it's inside of me," then the rest of it talks about how the narrator is "now made up of wires" and "all pain disappears" because it's the "nature of his circuitry" - the majority of the lyrics liken the takeover of the Ruiner as the change from flesh to machine, but the very first line says the narrator "beat" the machine, that the narrator won the battle. obviously, he didn't; the Ruiner took over. so, it's either a big slip in phrasing, or the word "beat" means something else. (the return of phallic imagery?)

9) "I Do Not Want This."
- to me, this is the superior example of the struggle between the narrator and the Ruiner [compared to "The Becoming"]. most of the lyrics seem to be from the narrator [the one who "does not want this"], but then the Ruiner interrupts childishly ["don't you tell me how I feel"], and this is all reflected musically by the different instrumentation and the dynamic change. by the end of it, the Ruiner has full control and is ready to break out in total assault mode.

10) "Big Man With a Gun." also, his victim.
- not sure how this can be construed as a homosexual encounter whatsoever. there's absolutely nothing in the lyrics that even says anything about who is on the receiving end of the assault, just the intent of the Ruiner/BMWAG. but if "Closer" is the example of "worldfucking" that i just made it out to be, why would he do it again later in the storyline? i think the answer to that question is rooted in interpreting who is the victim of this attack, and i'm willing to put forward the idea that it's the Ruiner side asserting his dominance over the narrator. with the phallic imagery continued as in "MOTP" and other places earlier, the song is obviously all about asserting the control and power of the Ruiner; and considering he just fought the narrator, won, and took over, it seems likely that the victim is the old self. the battle is over, and the Ruiner is in control, and so he "has fun."
- also, interesting that it shares its tempo with both "Mr. Self Destruct" and "The Downward Spiral."

11) "A Warm Place." also, the source of the epiphany.
- with that consideration, then, "AWP" is now not the epiphany of someone who let his animalistic desires manifest themselves on someone, but rather of someone who realizes the desperation of a person who would be so fractured and bruised and broken that one side could do this to the other. is it the narrator in general, as a whole, having the epiphany? or is it the Ruiner?

12) "Eraser."
- i'm willing to bet it's the Ruiner, because it seems characteristic at this point for his reaction to be intense enough to wish for someone to kill him (and to do drugs in effort to forget, if that's how you interpret the sounds at the start of the song made by the saxophone mouthpiece). he didn't just "see/dream/find/taste/use/scar/fuck/break" other people, he did it to the other half as well. the yearning for death isn't by someone else's hand - it's by the hand of the narrator himself. the Ruiner "now knows the depths he reaches are limitless" and wants the other half to stop it permanently.

13) "Reptile."
- if the object of "Closer" is to fuck as many people as possible ["I want to fuck everyone in the world"], and "Reptile" comes after the culmination of the Ruiner's madness in "BMWAG," maybe "Reptile" is the memory of how things worked during the "Closer" stage of the storyline, with a new perspective on the people being screwed [they're "precious whores" and "liars," "diseases" and "infections," not ways to "get closer to god"]. but if we follow the idea i suggested for "Eraser," it could even be a recounting of the results of the events in "BMWAG."

14) "The Downward Spiral." also, the identity dying.
- it then becomes a totally Fight Clubby scenario in this song, with the narrative not being suicide as such, but the proverbial gunshot-out-the-cheek to kill the other half.

15) "Hurt."
- which would be why it's followed with a song mentioning the needle and heroin (or whatever) use. it's the only way the narrator can deal with offing the Ruiner, following this interpretation [and maybe informed by earlier events if you subscribe to the drug thing in "Eraser"]. perhaps the most unsettling part of this interpretation of "Hurt" is that the final lyrics are stating that the narrator wouldn't change anything even if they could - that somehow, despite all the desperation and pain and horrible shit that happened, some part of him still values it. maybe in a good way (i.e. appreciated because now he's a better person having gotten rid of the Ruiner part) or a bad one (i.e. he liked it all the whole time, and the Ruiner really isn't gone).

edit: fucking smileys!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2010 06:27PM by seasonsinthesky.