Unnamed Co-Host (12:27)
All right, FBI agents, I'm entering back into Creepypasta. You're going to have to pull me out by my fucking ankles because I'm. I'm diving head deep into this bitch. Head first, scary monkey. Notice this is an allegedly true story posted in the comment section of an R slash ask Reddit post. Okay, one second. Okay, go ahead and rewind for me. Let's go back to that original Google search because R slash glitch in the matrix. Let me go ahead and cut to the chase of what we're talking about. I. I feel like I'm an apparition. I am on. I have so much caffeine in my system right now, I feel like a ghostly form. You know, when you go on a. A ghost tour in, like, a city, do y'all do that when you go to a new city? Are you, like, gonna check out the local haunts? I always go on a ghost tour in the city I'm going to. One of the best ones I've ever been on was in San Antonio, Texas. Y'all need to go on that walking tour. I wish I remembered the name of the company that puts it on, but the guy dressed up like a fucking ghost. And that's how you know it's going to be good. That's how you know he takes his job seriously. And they took us to this hotel called. I think I've talked about this before, a long time ago. They took us to this hotel called the Yellow Rose. Like the Yellow Rose of Texas, or maybe it's called the Elizabeth. I don't remember. It's one of those super high rise hotels in downtown San Antonio. Apparently the top just picked a booger. That's cool. The very top floor used to be the surgery level, okay? And now it is permanently stained in the walls. It smells like formaldehyde or like that anesthesia smell to sterilize things. And the service elevator in that hotel was the old body chute. Because at the very basement of this hotel, which was a mortuarium, it was a. A crematorium. You know what I'm trying to say? They would burn the bodies, the. The sick, dead bodies. So have a great sleep tonight. Here's the lamp story. Creepy pasta, creepypasta time. This is an allegedly true story posted in the comment section of an R Ask Reddit post. The question was, have you ever felt a deep connection to a person you've met in a dream? The original post was made years ago on a throwaway account. A screenshot can be found here. Throwaway account because this is really personal. Okay, okay, okay. This story is also known as a parallel life or awoken by a lamp. Here we go. My last semester at a certain college. Oh, Jesus Christ. Trigger warning, guys. My last semester at a certain college, I was assaulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive. Note he was £325. I was 120. While unconscious on the ground, I lived a different life. I met a wonderful young lady. She made my heart skip and my face red. I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over. After two years, we got married, and almost immediately, she bore me a daughter. Hey, why'd you type it like that? After two years, she graced me with her seed, okay? I had a great job and my wife didn't have to work outside of the house. When my daughter was two, she bore me a son. What? When my daughter was two, my wife bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life. I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter. One day, while sitting on the couch, I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd. Like inverted. It was still in 3D, but just wrong. It was a square lamp base, red, with gold trim on four legs and a white square shade. I was transfixed. I couldn't look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it. The next morning, I didn't go to work. Something was just not right about that lamp. I stopped eating. I left the couch, only to Use the bathroom at first. Soon I stopped that too as I wasn't eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking lamp for three days before my wife got really worried. She had someone come and try to talk to me. By this time, my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother's house just before I had my epiphany. The lamp is not real. The house is not real. My wife, my kids, none of that is real. The last 10 years of my life are not fucking real. The lamp started to grow wider and deeper. It was still inverted dimensions. It took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red. I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises. And I became aware of pain. A fucking shit ton of pain. The first words I said were, I'm missing teeth. I opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn't know. Lots were freaking out. I was completely confused. At some point, a cop scooped me up, dragged, walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car. I was still confused. I was taken to the hospital by the cop and gave CT scans and shit. I went through about three years of horrid depression. I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed. Holy shit. I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep, hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have. But sometimes I see my son. Usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision. He's perpetually five years old and I can never hear what he says. Holy shit. Okay, this was a little addendum, a little postscript that the author added. I've had many private messages describing similar experiences and three posters stating such experiences are impossible. I'd say more research needs to be done on brain functions. Pre med students don't assume you know everything. Holy shit. Okay, so I know that this is a creepypasta, but let's talk about it, because I have not had a dream to this extent of like, that is brutal, you know, to. To age years to find the love of your life and to have children and build a life and then have it ripped away. That hasn't happened to me. But I know and I know. I've also seen accounts of other people experiencing this, of being in love or being married. And you wake up and it wasn't real. I know that a lot of women have dreams of having children and looking and holding their child in their dream or being pregnant in a dream and waking up and none of it was real. And being in mourning the next day. And you can't explain what's wrong. You can't explain what's heavy on your soul or on your heart. It's just that there is an inconceivable loss that you are mourning. And there's a grief of something that is not real. The human brain is fucking wild. I've had dreams where, you know, I've lived an alternate life or I've met someone that was very important to me. I've had dreams where this actually happens a lot. And I think I have a condition. I'll have dreams that someone I love has died and I'll call them the next morning in tears. Or I'll text them like, hey, I love you and I don't tell you enough. And I'm sorry that I like, that happens to me a lot. I also have dreams of my teeth falling out. All of these I've read, you know, what people think that this might be. And there are theories that suggest it's just anxiety, which I know that I do have. And it is severely untreated. I know that the teeth falling out dream is about maybe feeling like you spoke too much, like you shared too much, or that you're lying. It could go either way. And then the death dreams, I don't fucking know. I think I just have a complex. But I have had dreams where I've met the love of my life and we have lived together beautifully and happily. And I, in the dream, you know what it feels like to touch their face and the nuances of how they speak and the color flecks in their eyes. And it's that weird thing of. This is another repeat thing that happens in some of my dreams. And it's happened with this one in particular where they're saying something and I can't hear them and I keep saying, what was that? What was that? And I can't understand what they're saying. Or they keep repeating it and they're getting frustrated at me because I can't understand them and I can't. And then I wake up and then I'm like, okay, they're mad at me, they're not real and I need to get my hearing checked. It's like you wake up in this weird. I honestly, that is the source material for a fucking book. That half dreamlike state of. It's almost a purgatory. But purgatory not with a negative Connotation, unless it is. Usually it's a positive connotation of like trying to situate myself after a dream of waking up and where am I? Oh yeah, I know where I am. And oh yeah, I was dreaming that halfway state. What is that called? Because I sometimes I have a fascination with that being potentially a different realm of consciousness which isn't that outlandish to think about being real. You know, it's not like conspiracy theorist shit. It's like we know that the human brain is capable of creating alternate realities to cope. Or like I was talking about last week with Streetcar Named Desire, like it's this and also with 1984 doublethink, you know, all these. The human brain is so complex and it is so hyper intelligent that we are able to construct things to protect ourselves and to protect our feeble and fragile sanity. And if that involves, you know, going somewhere else, who's to say where that is? In a world that we've created, a world of pure imagination, then so be it. You know, the human brain, whether or not we tell it to, will create that. And it's very interesting to think so many millennium or, or hundreds of years of doctors and scientists not having the means to accurately study all the neural pathways and synapses and all these connections that the brain can make and trauma responses and you know, created worlds and realities to, to protect something that was hurt. You know, when you are hurt, what a beautiful concept that your mind tries to fix it for you, you know, tries to make the pain go away. And I don't know if it can, not fully, not 100%, but it will do its best. And even tied to practices like, you know, Buddhism or things that denying yourself earthly pleasures or meditating to get to that higher version of yourself, higher version of self where you're no longer in the physical, you're no longer in the physical realm. You are somewhere up here in the in between. You're, you're in a higher conscious. And that feels so yogi, you know, white people with stringy hair and dreads. But that's not per se. That's a weird offset of, of people who have co opted that practice and that culture and made it an aesthetic choice, you know, or, or a bragging, right, or a personality trait, not, I'm talking more so like the ancient practice of Buddhism or anything like that. You know, yoga is, it is proven that yoga and stretching the body and holding the body in certain positions pushes you to that. It transcends you. So. Oh, also, I saw this TikTok this girl was talking about that book, the Body Keeps the Score. And my friend Katie read this book, too. I think we need to talk about it. Of women store trauma in their hips, because of course they do. That's where life comes from. Everyone came from a woman's hips. Everyone alive came from a woman's hips. Imagine how powerful that statement is, like, how much trauma and pain and beauty and love is stored in a woman's hips and how mean we are to our hips, you know, when they are, quite honestly, one of the miracles of humanity. So, I don't know. You know, we know that the body stores trauma, and we know that the body and the mind protect us from the horribly infinite effects of trauma. And it's very interesting to think that it's only been recent history that doctors and scientists have had the means and the technology to study it in a way that we can actually learn from it and put two and two together, you know, that we don't know what we don't know. And the more questions we ask and find answers to, it's just this exponential curve of questions that, you know, it's the same with the deep sea, where the more we find out, the fucking less we know. Everything that we thought was true, we find something that disproves it, and it's like, well, fuck, I think that's the point, right? We're not supposed to know. Marvel at the beauty. Marvel at the unknown, and realize how small and feeble you are. But that's. I wore in my own mind of this. Of, like, that's sometimes not enough for me. And I like to talk to myself. We know. Hey, we know. I like to talk myself through that sometimes where I start to get those existential dreads, the scaries, where it's like, oh, I'm so. Oh, none of this is important. And we're all going to die, and there's no point. There's no fucking point. There's no point in any of it. And the monkey fruit, and I was getting my blood, the plastics in my blood. I'm going to die. When I start to freak out like that, I pull myself back to that. That simpler process of thinking of, like, it doesn't matter. We're here to just enjoy it, you know, try to make it. Try to minimize the suffering as much as you can and have a good time with the people you love. Right? That's what it's about. But at the same time, oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. It's that. But also, I think, truly if in my lifetime I ever had the privilege to see the aurora borealis in person, I mean this very honestly. I've talked about the Sistine Chapel ceiling, I've talked about neoclassical art, I've talked about prose literature, some of the most impressive forms of just mind bending, soul shattering art that is, I think, the point of life. All of that just pales in comparison to something as magnificent, and I mean that in the most academic way magnificent as the aurora borealis. Who the fuck made that? And hear me when I say this, because I don't say this often. If there was a God, look at it. You know what I mean? I find it hard to believe there is not a God when you look at something like the aurora borealis. What the fuck are we talking about? It is divine with a capital D. It is magnificent. It is awesome. Not in the sense of like, that's awesome. I mean the dictionary definition. Inspiring awe. It is awesome. Where I marvel, I would drop to my knees and probably start drooling and crying like, boohoo, crying if I saw the aurora borealis. I'm about to be emotional thinking about it. I don't know why. I don't know why. I just can't imagine something like that. Beauty for the sake of beauty. Like, this is. It's why I'm so, like, what the fuck? Am I, a Christian? What the fuck? If there's no God, then why is the aurora borealis real? I don't know. Why am I crying? Oh, it's so hard when things like that just exist naturally, for no rhyme or reason. And it comes and goes. And if you see it, you and, and all of humanity knows, like, you saw the aurora. It's like a universal thing. And that's what makes things like climate change so much worse. It makes it even more acidic and sour that this is what the stars in the universe have gifted us and this is what we do to the fucking planet. It's sick. It's sick. The great Pacific garbage Pat. Sick. When this is what we do below and look above. Oh, it's just going to make me so emotional. We'll be right back. Cut to commercial. Oh, my God. This episode is sponsored by SeatGeek. Everyone should be fully aware by now of the Cowboy Carter tour. So I'd like to direct your attention to SeatGeek. With over 28 million downloads, SeatGeek is the number one rated ticketing app. There are more than 70,000 events listed on SeatGeek, including concerts, sports, festivals and more. So many artists are going on tour and you can get tickets to Kendrick Lamar, SZA, the Weeknd, Beyonce, and more. I love using SeatGeek and Trust. I saw Hozier plenty of times last year thanks to SeatGeek and quite frankly, I just can't get enough. SeatGeek has your back. Each ticket is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 so you know you're getting a good deal. So look for the green dots. Green means good, red means bad. Let's use our brains people. Plus every ticket is backed by their buyer guarantee and you know I came through for you guys. You can use code BROSKI2025 for 10% off your next set of tickets at sea Geek. That's 10% off any tickets with promo code BROSKI 2025. Make sure you click the link in the description to download the app and have the code automatically added to your account so you can use it later. Thanks seatgeek this episode is sponsored by PDS Debt Feeling buried under credit card bills, personal loans, or medical debt, it's like your money's working harder for your lenders than it is for you. But it doesn't have to be that way with PDS debt. PDS debt does more than just help you manage your debt. They empower you to take control using their platform. They go beyond the numbers to understand your unique financial situation and craft a personalized plan designed just for you. No more cookie cutter solutions, just a clear path to financial freedom that fits your lifestyle. And here's the best part. There's no minimum credit score required. Whether your credit is bad or fair, they're here to help you save more, pay off your debt faster, and start putting money back where it belongs in your savings account. I have a lot of people in my life who struggle with student loans or just general credit card debt, and I know how suffocating it can feel. But the good news is, getting started is easy. Go to pdsdebt.com Broski to complete your free debt assessment to see what options are available to you. Every day you wait, it's costing you money. So get started with your free debt analysis in just 30 seconds@pdsdebt.com Broski that's pdsdebt.com Broski Take back control today by visiting pdsdebt.com Brosci okay, we're back. Sorry about that. Sorry for crying at the awe inspiring eccentricities and phenomena of the world. Sorry for marveling at what God hath made. What was that tweet that was like when God calls His angels home, will turtles not be a part of that choir? What the fuck is that tweet? Will turtles. When God sings with his creations, will the turtle not be part of the choir here? Is there anyone even named Sheldon irl, my class turtle from sixth grade. That's a turtle. When God sings with his crucial. Will a turtle not be part of the choir? So fucking true. I don't know why that came into my mind. Okay, here's what I want to. Here's what I want to Google. Why does the aurora borealis occur? The aurora borealis, or the northern lights occur when charged particles from the sun carried by the solar wind collide with gas. We're doing fucking science with pretty rosky again. Shit we're doing. How does it work? Universe edition again on the Broski Report, which, by the way, I'm not going to understand any of this. So whoever you bitches in the comments who are like astrology astronomy major here, we're going to need tap in. Tap in because I need you because I'm about to read this. And the centrifugal force and the solar winds. What are we talking about? Bro? Half of the shit I know about space comes from interstellar, and it comes from Red Rising. Okay? I'm not working with much. I'm not working with much in the observable universe that I understand, okay? Very, very limited to sort of the dynamics of Dune. Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Red Rising. That's. That's what I'm rocking with. So. By the way, God, I miss Red Rising. Have you guys read it yet? One of my. My favorite character died. And I'm not gonna say who it was, but it happens in the last book, and I. I still. It's been months and I'm still devastated. I am. Okay, okay. Solar wind collider, baby. Baby, I don't care. Primarily near the poles due to the interaction with Earth's magnetic fields, Polar bear and release energy. Okay? These natural light shows are caused by magnetic storms that have been triggered by solar activity, such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections. What? Ejected gas bubbles, energetic charged particles from these events are carried from the sun by the solar wind. That's why they move. Okay? That's why they move. What does the Aurora borealis mean? Aurora borealis is the scientific name for the northern lights, which literally means light of dawn. The term comes from the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek God of the north wind, Boreas. The aurora borealis is seen in the Earth's northern hemisphere around the polar regions. It's Difficult to predict when it will occur, but it's best to look for it on a clear night. The counterpart to the Aurora Borealis in the southern hemisphere is the Aurora Australis, named after the Greek God of the south wind, Ostera, Oster. Is that why Australia is named? Australia? What the fuck? Is there a Southern Australia Southern aurora Borealis? No, there is not a Southern aurora Borealis. What the fuck? In the southern hemisphere, it's called the Aurora Austral. Oh, that's just. I can't. I'm, like, speechless. Look at that. Imagine being a fucking caveman and seeing that in the sky. Imagine being a caveman and seeing that in the sky. I would be terrified. I'd be terrified. They're coming. They're coming. Holy shit. I want to watch a video. I need to, like, get high as balls. I need to get high as balls, watch Dune Prophecy and then watch Aurora Borealis livestream for three hours. You know what I've been into recently while I read? Well, y'all know I like to watch those ambient videos, okay? And can I say something? I was on that before any of you bitches were on that. I. And I hate to be that person that I did it before. It was cool. But I found that shit years ago. I've been watching that stuff for years, okay? There are a few that I like to tailor to the book I'm reading. When I read Sherlock Holmes, I do the London one. London Victorian study desk with light rainfall. I don't like the ones with campfire noises. I don't like the ones with fire noises because the crackling and popping, it pisses me off because I'm focusing on that now. And now I'm watching the screen when I really should be reading Sherlock Holmes, okay? So the rain, it's a good enough variation, you know what I mean? Where it's not just brown noise, because then I'll go to sleep. It's enough. It's enough variation, okay? For a while I was watching the Paris one and then there's an Amalfi coast one, but those don't really have rain. And sometimes when I clean the house or whatever, they have some with bossa nova, because we all know I love. I do love bossa nova. So, yeah, that's sort of, you know, get on that. If you haven't tried reading with that in the background, I'd really have to recommend it because really a spectacular experience. By the way, I'm a bit further in one dark window. Really, really cute. And apparently there's a smut scene coming up. Hurry, hurry. I want them to diddle each other. Can you guys just diddle each other already? I'm tired of waiting. Boring. I'm not bored. Actually, I'm not bored because I've read some fantasy books where I'm like, get to the point. Like, I don't even need smut. Just give me a plot. Fuck. One Dark Window. The plot's compelling. Okay? I love an original storyline. It's not like, and then there was a war, and then they have to fight the war and you'll never guess who dies. Like, fuck you. Be original. And I will say there is a. There is a skeleton to what makes a commercially successful romantasy. Okay? And I applaud authors who try to break the mold in any case. And I think that's, you know, the. The first person to do that. You start the new genre, you start the new offshoot of a famous genre. So shout out. Especially when magic is involved, it's super hard to create a new magic system that is easily understandable, that is new and inventive and isn't, you know, you know, easily drawn back to. Okay, it's clear this author was inspired by this book or inspired by this series or by this character or whatever. And I want to do a quick shout out to all the fanfiction writers who started writing a story inspired by either their favorite celebrity, a book character, a movie character, whatever, and then slightly adapted it and turned it into its own full story shout out, because that's what the fuck I'm talking about. Okay, Anyway. Aurora Borealis. Yeah, that shit is. Wow. Oh, did we stop finish? Did we finish talking about the lamp story? Oh, yeah. I went on a whole spiral, didn't I? Sorry for getting existential. Oh, fuck. Oh, we haven't done this in a while. I want to do my song of the week and I also want to do a lyric breakdown of one of my most favorite songs of all time, because eventually I'm going to do. Okay, well, here's what it is. It's a Hozier song. Eventually I'm going to do a. What I did with Motomami by Rosalia. I want to do that with Wasteland Baby by Hozier, because Wasteland Baby and Hozier, Self Titled and Unreal on Earth are all, like, albums that have impacted me thus in a way that is just, I mean, fundamental. And it's art that, like, it feels like a privilege to be able to discuss it and annotate it and, you know, think about all the references literary and musical that he has packed into these albums. So here are two of my favorite songs of all time. We're going to start with Foreigner's God by Hozier and we're going to do a lyric breakdown. I'm going to do a dramatic reading a la Jonah Hill and 2021 Jump Street, 2221 Jump Street. Okay, here we go. This is from self titled, his first album from 2014. She moved with shameless Wonderful the perfect creature rarely seen since some liar brought the thunder when the land was godless and free her eyes look sharp and steady into the empty parts of me still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man's beliefs still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man's beliefs Always a well dressed fraud, always who wouldn't spare the rod? Never for me I love genius. Let's read this shit from the Victorian phrase spare the rod and spoil the child, meaning without corporal punishment a child will become spoiled. In the context of the song, it points towards the parent referred to in the line with the hate of some other man's beliefs. This is also the parent that has instilled these patriarchal values in him. Here's the chorus. Scream in the name of a foreigner's God Scream in the name of a foreigner's God the purest expression of grief oh my fucking God. Screaming the name of a foreigner's God the purest expression of grief. Because how else do we know how to express our outrage our any explicative than through this Judeo Christian lens? It's infiltrated our language. Throwback to me crying about the divinity of the Aurora Borealis 20 minutes ago okay, verse two wondering who I copy Mustering some tender charm she feels no control of her body she feels no safety in my arms I've no language left to say it but all I do is quake to her breaking if I try Conveying the broken love I make to her I just can't. I just can't. You bitches don't get hozier the way that I get hozier. Y'all aren't listening. You're not listening. Fuck. Fuck. Why is this not the most streamed song of all time? You bitches don't get it. Everyone say sorry Hozier in the comments right now. Wondering who I copy Mustering some tender charm she feels no control of her body she feels no safety in my arms. If the song truly is supposed to represent Ireland, then the top line she feels no control of her body could refer to the fact that it wasn't until the early 20th century that Ireland began its own nation again, but is still split. Going with the top. The bottom line could refer to Hozier trying to do justice by bringing something back to her. But the damage has already been done. I've no language left to say it. The song in general is about the pain of losing your own people's language, as most Irish people have lost fluency in Irish Gaelic. The most intimate things we do, like screaming out in sexual ecstasy, are bound by our conception and our conceptions are bound by our language. If you're monolingual, your most private thoughts and most wild fantasies are still bordered by the possibilities structured in your language in ways you're probably not even aware of. This song is a lament to that fact. Whoever the fuck wrote this on Genius. Holy shit, it's true. All that I've been taught and every word I've got is foreign to me Screaming the name of a foreigner's God the purest expression of grief. There are so many layers to this of both. You know, when you're thinking about it through the Catholic church lens, where 100% of the time when children are raised in a Catholic Church upbringing, a Catholic Church, a Catholic school, they didn't pick that this is something being forced on them. And forever from now until the end of time, your worldview will be impacted by your time spent in the Catholic Church. And that's not just the Catholic Church, any church, any religious institution that you were brought up in as a child. Feel however you want to feel about that. But acknowledge that that happened. Acknowledge that your worldview is for better or worse, clouded by a religious aroma. Right? Everything you do say, hear and know is being through that. It's being pushed through a filter, a cheesecloth of religion. And that does something to the brain. So that's one layer to this. Another layer is of course, the oppressive history of the British Empire on Ireland, the bloody history of Ireland with respect to Great Britain, the attempted and demi successful killing off of the Irish people, the loss of the Irish language, the abuses in the Irish Church, all of these things where it ties back into the language that we use to describe such atrocities. And this is prevalent in a lot of poetry around colonialism or slavery when it comes to I'm speaking the colonizers language. And I think this is, in a sense, this is what this song is about, you know, that the way that I'm even singing this song and expressing these heavy thoughts I have is through. It's in English. I'm not English. So that's another I'm really intrigued by. She feels no control of her body. She feels no safety in my arms. I want to say that there's also a level of. Ever present in Hozier's works is this plea for women's rights and Swann upon Leda, which. Fuck, let's read that one next. Swann upon Leda is another one that is. He released this during. Or this is 2023. I thought he released this during the pandemic. He released this right around when Roe v. Wade was overturned. And I think he had had it. It had been in the arsenal for a while, and he decided to share it. And it was. How am I gonna cry? It was such a beautiful display of solidarity with anyone who mourned in that moment that this is really the reality we live in, that I know I don't have control over my own body. I don't have autonomy. Laws regulate my body, and I am a walking womb to these people, you know? And it's just like this. This sweeping sense of just numbness, of like, I cannot believe. And so to have him release, this was such a beautiful display of like, I can't do much, but here's what I can offer, you know, okay, let me stop crying on this podcast. Here are the lyrics. And I'm gonna cry again. Let me just cry through it, okay? A husband waits outside A crying child pushes a child into the night she was told he would come this time without leaving so much as a feather behind to enact at last the perfect plan One more sweet boy to be butchered by man but the gateway to the world was still outside the reach of him Would never belong to angels had never belonged to men the swan upon Leda Empire upon Jerusalem A grandmother smuggling meds past where the God child soldier Setanta stood dead Our graceful turner of heads Weaves through the checkpoints like a needle and thread Someone's frightened boy waves her on she offers a mother's smile and soon she's gone the gateway to the world the gun in a trembling hand where nature unmakes the boundary the pillar of myth still stands the swan upon Leda Occupier upon ancient land the gateway to the world was still outside the reach of him Wood never belonged to angels had never belonged to men okay, so let's go ahead and dissect this. So a lot of themes here. I. I don't know what genius is about to sort of, you know, detail here, but again, we're dealing with themes of war and abortion and forced Pregnancies and separated families and occupied lands and colonialism. And, I mean, the list just goes on and on because they're all intertwined. They're all coexisting, and one is a cause of the other, you know? So first of all, let's look up Swann upon Leda. And if I'm not mistaken, I think that this is. It's an old myth, and it has to do with a God assaulting a goddess or a nymph, and some form of that, some form of a male God exerting dominance and sexual ownership over a goddess, I'm fairly certain. Let me go ahead and double check. In Greek mythology, the myth of Leda and the swan tells of Zeus seducing Leda, the queen of Sparta, in the form of a swan. Zeus, the king of the gods, transformed into a swan to seduce Leda. Lada slept with the swan and then with her husband, King Tyndareus. On the same night, Leda laid two eggs that hatched four children. Helene, Clementine. Okay, okay. So knowing that it's a myth, let's go back to the lyrics. And let's go, I guess, line for line. Buckle up, buckle in. So, yes, this does reference Zeus as the swan assaulting Leda and her bearing his children. As is custom of the olden times, husband would wait outside while the wife gives birth. The second line, a crying child pushes a child into the night. I think we can sort of understand what he's saying there. She was told he would come this time without leaving so much as a feather behind to enact at last, the perfect plan. One more sweet boy to be butchered by men. So that's the swan leaving. Genius says this seems to be about the way patriarchal society destroys boys as well as girls, raising them with toxic ideas about women, punishing them for expressing emotion or affection, and turning them into agents of the structures that hurt them. A game where not even the winners get to truly win. But the gateway to the world was still outside the reach of him, would never belong to angels, had never belonged to men. The swan upon Leda, empire upon Jerusalem, Empire upon Jerusalem seems to allude to the annexation of Jerusalem by various empires as akin to Zeus's sexual assault of Leda in Greek mythology. Ireland recognizes the statehood of Palestine, and it is a significant topic of modern discourse in Ireland. Hosier's reference to border crossing could suggest that mankind's empires and various seizures of the Holy Land and the lore of Christianity have laid waste to one of the holiest places on Earth. In Christianity, this would be considered the birthplace of Jesus and a sacred place to be venerated. But the parallel drawn may be that it is the birthplace of conflict via the imagery of a child born of assault. Damn. In the second verse about the grandmother smuggling medicine in past, the guard soldier, who is a child himself and looks at him knowingly with this gaze of, you know, you're a young boy and I am a mother, and I know that this situation we're in is just. It's just that acknowledgment, you know, it's still a young boy, he's afraid, and now he's been armed. And that line about, you know, the trembling hand with the gun in it. I mean, it's just so beautifully written. The gateway to the world, the gun in a trembling hand. Where nature unmakes the boundary the pillar of myth still stands the swan upon Leda Occupier upon ancient land. Shit. When I say I love Hozier, this is. I mean, it's. It's one thing to say it, and it's another thing to just spend time with the art, you know, And I would be doing y'all a disservice if I continued to just talk about. Oh, his lyrics. His lyrics. His lyrics. And not actually. Are you hearing this? Here's another one. This song is called To Be Alone. This is one of my favorite. These lyrics are a bit more straightforward, right. We don't have to do so much annotating. And Cliff's notes on it. This one is also. The melody is so fucking good. He sings his face off. And this is. This is, to me, the pinnacle of what a good fucking song is. To me. My opinion, it's a great melody, a great vocalist, talented instrumentalist, and lyrics that just standalone as a poem, I would be. Gah. But he also managed to add a fantastic melody that's catchy. It's got a hook, you know, to it. And live. Don't even get me started on how it sounds. Live. Never feel too good in crowds with folks around when they're playing the anthems of rape culture. Loud, crude and proud Creatures baying All I've ever done is hide from our times when you're near me, honey when you kill the lights and kiss my eyes I feel like a person for a moment of my life but you don't know what hell you put me through to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you to feel your weight in arms I'd never use it's the God that heroin prays to it feels good Girl, it feels good to be alone with you There are questions I can't ask now at last the worst is over See the way you hold yourself Reel against your body's borders I know that you hate this place Not a trace of me would argue Honey, we should run away someday Our baby and her mama and the damaged love she made But I don't know what else that I would do Than try to kiss the skin that crawls from you to feel your weight and arms I'd never use it's the God that heroin prays to can you fucking believe? Can you believe my favorite line? You don't know what hell you put me through to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you this also seems to be someone talking to their abuser after an assault. Many people feel their skin crawl when they experience a sensation that reminds them of it, even if they love and trust the person they're with now. Trying to have consensual sex after surviving sexual violence can be incredibly frustrating because it can feel like your body is betraying you. It won't let you forget what you've gone through and can even drag your mind back to the incident. And I would add on to that, unfairly blame the person you're with or take it out on the person you're with who, ideally, in an ideal scenario, you trust completely and they understand what's happened and have the utmost respect and caution with the situation. But it's one of those things that's just unfair. It's unfair. Even him starting the song with, you know, I never feel too good in crowds with folks around when they're playing the anthems of rape culture loud. You know what that makes me think of is that fucking Robin Thicke song. You know the one I'm talking about, that one that. It was everywhere. And it just. Every song, every chart topper, it just. We live in such a hyper sexualized culture, and it's sick and it's weird and it's too normalized, and it is. I don't think it's. It's good or safe or healthy, and it empowers the wrong people, you know, to feel emboldened in their acts. So anyway, I didn't mean to bring the. The tone down. I didn't mean to bring the vibes down. But when I say I love Hozier, he is capable of that type of songwriting, tackling such heavy topics and putting them to songs that make it bearable. It makes it bearable, and it's that. But he also has you know, silly sexual song is about being so in love with your partner and lustful and. And how that is as much a part of reciprocated romantic love as all the emotional things, you know, And. And it's not. Sex doesn't overpower the emotional side, and the emotional side doesn't overpower sex. It's. It's in a perfect scenario. It's this beautiful harmony where, you know, it's a current that flows and ebbs and never stops and. And it's beautiful. He's got a song called Moment Silence about fucking. Plenty of his songs are about fucking, which I'm down with. But then there's also songs about the church and religious trauma and oh, my God, just love him. Love him to goddamn death. One of my favorite songs by him of all time. I've talked about it. It's Empire Now. Empire now is so good. Blood upon the Snow from the God of War soundtrack. What? Arguably top three hoser songs ever, and it was on a video game soundtrack. He's so good. Okay, that'll do it for me this week, guys. Love you. Thanks for rocking with me and my heavy topics and me crying and the lamp dream and the aurora borealis. Shout out. And yeah, if you want some merch, go, go grab it. I'm not stopping you. No one's stopping you. Broski. Shop and go check out Royal Court, my medieval interview show. All right, I'll see y'all next week. Love you. Be good. Bye.
