Created Sunday 16 August 2026
[SETTING: Egg Rock Studio lounge. sometime in late 2006, during the construction of "The Human End."]
[a brainstorming session. PAUL is tuning his bass into strange tunings to see how it sounds. REMY and DEGAN are practicing their dual guitar harmonies. FIN is providing a 4/4 drumbeat for their sake. when the guitarists finish their riffing, DEGAN starts practicing some modal scales, REMY and FIN become idle. REMY has had something on his mind ever since the last rehearsal of "The Human End."]
REMY:
Why does that Rise of Her Rain bit come back?
FIN:
Because it's cool?
REMY:
Yeah, I mean, I get that, but I'm asking because it's a Paul idea, so he's got something going on in that brain of his.
FIN:
Ah, you're asking him an artistic question!
REMY:
I guess I am.
[FIN takes his leave and exits the room over the next two lines. DEGAN begins practicing slower, listening in.]
PAUL:
It's the water motif. We're dealing with the mighty flood, and the end of the human being. The center of Rise, the section that we're quoting here, involved a human laying down in the sea, ready to die, ready to end.
REMY:
So it did. But wasn't Rise also about.. a dying friend in a hospital?
[PAUL considers his words.]
PAUL:
Rise was about the reality of death. It's happening to other people, it's happening to us. When it's happening to other people, it's perhaps safer then to imagine the impossible questions-- what do other people experience, what do the dying hear, is there anything fundamentally different about the experience compared to a regular non-dying day?
REMY:
Rise had a lot of big questions. "How are human minds biggest when nothing does not exist?"
PAUL:
Right. That's a play on words, a little. It's implying a statement: "Nothing is bigger than the human mind," or "As far as minds go, nothing is bigger than the human's" anyway, and then throwing a wrench into it by saying "nothing does not exist." I was probably thinking harder than I was able to convey in lyrics at the time, trying to contain big thoughts in every line. I was hoping we would have listeners who were willing to chew on everything, even the thoughts that may not have received as much development.
DEGAN:
It's a wild one, "nothing does not exist." It's also probably literally true. We have yet to find a true vacuum in nature.
PAUL:
Yes, that's the starting-point for the idea, but then we have to consider that the line is specifically dealing with the realm of minds, and there the nuance is different.
REMY:
Can you picture "nothing" in your mind?
PAUL:
Well, no. But you can conceive of it. The idea came from somewhere to begin with. We needed to-- as a species, we needed to conceive of negation.
DEGAN:
Subtraction, the invention of zero.
PAUL:
Right. It took quite a while for humanity to invent the concept of zero. But, so, we did eventually conceive it. It is possible for the mind to "know" what a "nothing" is, even if we have never seen it before. It's the absence of things. We can experience absence. "Nothing" is a synonym for absence in the general sense, but it doesn't take much of a logical leap to then suppose an absence of more and more things, and then the ultimate absence.
DEGAN:
But it doesn't exist.
PAUL:
No. But it's a sticky concept too. In our more...
[PAUL considers his words.]
PAUL:
In our more emotional brain, during emotional processing, the deflationary principle often has a veto.
[REMY looks at PAUL with bewilderment.]
PAUL:
I mean the urge in our minds to deflate the confidence of our own thoughts. The urge is manifold. It comes up when we suppose our own worth-- "Am I really allowed to speak right now? No, I should hold back. There's no point." Regardless of the context, we often have thoughts like this. "There's no point." That's the deflationary principle. It deflates confidence and, perhaps more fundamentally, it deflates effort, where otherwise our confidence or our effort might inflate and produce lift, be able to go somewhere.
REMY:
Okay, I understand.
PAUL:
Deflation has a function, of course, it is a necessary tool for self-regulation. But it can be a little too useful, and it can get out of control. We can start to suppose there's "no point" to a great many things, within and without us.
REMY:
Depression.
PAUL:
That comes with the territory. But, do you see the relevance, "There's no point" is a negation, it is a supposition of an absence of something. This is how it can feel like "nothing" exists, at least in our brain.
REMY:
And you're saying it doesn't.
PAUL:
Rise of Her Rain is saying it doesn't. It's not even saying that much, really it's asking the question "supposing nothing does not exist, how can we support the claim that human minds are the biggest?"
DEGAN:
In this context, "biggest" would mean something like.. "most complex," right?
PAUL:
[nods] It's the idea that human intelligence is special. Which, I certainly think it is; I would suppose that all types of intelligence are special, but I would find it more interesting to ask how human intelligence is special. Instead, the common approach is to suppose that human intelligence is an evolutionary "end-goal," or to look at other animals or even certain human beings as having "lesser" mental capacity in some technical way. Maybe it can be meaningfully accurate in some regard; human conversation proceeds along relatively functional lines, which makes for a niche context. But I see no conclusive evidence that it's technically correct. And furthermore, it's also the idea that among humans as we presently exist, there is some kind of ideal mental way of being. Some voices would argue that some human who either has existed or currently exists is the model to follow. Some voices would argue that the model has not been reached, but that it instead rests in a given field of study or of vocation, that society and mental effort as we have envisioned it has been able to describe a "biggest" anything.
DEGAN:
Your line of thought is leaving me in the dust.
REMY:
I don't even stand a chance.
PAUL:
What I'm getting at here is actually a pretty simple thought, but the challenge is in conceiving it as an articulated point.
[PAUL takes another moment.]
PAUL:
Hm.
[PAUL taps his foot, working the puzzle in his head.]
PAUL:
How can we be certain that our ideas have the authority to deflate our efforts, when our ideas come from deterministic, limited, sources? That's what the line is saying.
DEGAN:
Of course! It's the scientific method. We must be mindful to begin our efforts from an awareness of our own ignorance.
PAUL:
Yes, and we must remember that "our own ignorance" does not only refer to the individual mind, but to the human project as a whole.
DEGAN:
Oh, totally! "Ignorance" doesn't mean, like, "Remember that you are an idiot compared to the geniuses who wrote Scientific Theories." It doesn't mean "There is no point in trying to contribute to science." It is an urging to be mindful of the ignorance of our entire species, and therefore us as individuals.
[now REMY is lost in thought.]
PAUL:
Does this make sense?
REMY:
Yeah, yeah, it does. So, Rise of Her Rain, as a whole. Was it, like.. you experienced a death in your life, and you were confronted with a spiral of "There's no point in me doing anything when a loved one is suffering," and, like, you had to remind yourself to live?
[PAUL nods.]
REMY:
And that's also the meaning behind "Life's the one to be feared?" You're stating that life, particularly as our depressed brains experience it, is an overwhelming challenge. And not to get defeated by the thought of death.
DEGAN:
In fact, the song's probably thankful, in a way, that death opens the door to many strange deep thoughts that our daily lives don't normally inspire.
PAUL:
I would say you two understand the song. It condenses something I'd been going through over an entire year, into what is narratively the events of a single night.
REMY:
Your mother.
PAUL:
Yes. And by condensing the narrative in this way, the song comes across as pretty self-obsessed. But there is a lot of empathy tucked away in those thought processes. Take the "nothing" thought to its logical conclusion: If nothing does not exist, then what is death? It's of course something we cannot imagine, by its nature it is, but the default assumption when faced with such an unimaginable wall is, once again, deflation. Even more than deflation, actually. Deflation would suppose there is no point to speculating on the experience of death, but what our brains do in practice is suppose the "default" is.. "nothing." That there is "nothing" after death.
DEGAN:
And that's just an assumption.
PAUL:
It's insidious, is what it is, to suppose there even is a "default" when thinking of something unknowable. It decides much of the template for our everyday thoughts. There's a lot of power in supposing a default. There is function in this, mind you. We developed this tendency as a means of regulation. If we are faced with imminent danger and our minds are lost in deeper speculation, there is value in being able to regulate that, in drawing a line in the sand and saying "this question has to be given an answer, even a reductive one, in order to be put to rest for the moment so that we may focus our thoughts on the imminent danger." But modern society is structured differently than that. Modern society has the space for speculation. There's room enough on this planet for that now. So, what is death? If Rise of Her Rain supposes that "nothing does not exist," then death cannot be the experience of nothing, unless we define death as non-existence. If nothing does not exist, then "nothing" can be found in non-existence.
DEGAN:
I think that's a valid interpretation, and probably a common one. It is also more specific than it seems. "Nothing" is broad, but "non-existence" is narrower, has different connotations, and so it is beholden to more specific questions.
PAUL:
Yes. Such as "Can something which exists transform into something which does not exist?" If we accept that someone's consciousness, let's say Napoleon's, if we accept that Napoleon was conscious, that his consciousness existed, then if his consciousness no longer exists, we can still say it once existed. And doesn't that feel stranger, somehow, than to deal with terms of "nothing?"
DEGAN:
You're saying that the concept still exists in this universe, the memory is still there, the effects are still there, it is still something we can talk about and conceive in our minds. You're asking if it is possible to conceive of something which does not exist.
PAUL:
That's an open question. That's the kind of question that this subject requires.
REMY:
Hang on, though. There's more to Rise of Her Rain, isn't there? The narrator is scared of "resurfacing."
PAUL:
Ah, now you're getting at the meat of it. Rise introduces these weighty concepts in order to lay the foundation for that line. The Soliloquy in movement 3 is sort of a message relayed from the dead to the living: We spend all this time fearing death when life is far scarier-- and life-after-death would be more so.
REMY:
Yeah, that's what I thought it was saying. I always liked that. The song never really explores it though, does it?
PAUL:
It hints at it. At the time, I felt that was enough. Rise is a narrator asking questions when confronted with grief. It isn't a.. it isn't a narrative song per se. It has no interest in shock, not intentionally anyway.
DEGAN:
Some of our critics thought it was shocking that the narrator didn't seem to spend much time thinking about her poor, dying friend.
PAUL:
Quite. And that's due to the condensing of the "action" into one single night, as I said earlier. But we might have gone for shock. I can imagine that kind of song. "After my friend died, I stood on the shore and watched the ocean, lost in thought. And lo, who is it that comes rising out of the sea other than that very same friend?"
DEGAN:
"And this is what she said to me: I come bearing a message, from we the dead, to thou the living. Do not fear the dead; life is the one to be feared."
[the three are silent for a moment.]
DEGAN:
Is it just me, or is that idea.. better than what we did?
REMY:
It's kinda fucking awesome.
PAUL:
Fuck. Why didn't we do that?
REMY:
Well, you wanted something more reserved. I don't think anything on Mythology has any actual, like, "action." It's all in the mind, transformations of the mind. It's all empathy. So having Rise be that much of a story would have gone against the spirit of things. I think.
PAUL:
Right. Right, of course...
REMY:
I think, anyway. You wrote it, man.
PAUL:
Mythology was our first, and I made the decisions I made. Maybe I'd do it differently if I made it again today. Maybe that's why Rise comes back.
REMY:
Huh.
PAUL:
It's not just that. Of course I stand by the song that we made, and I don't think it's a good idea to devote an album to the proof of a previous one's inadequacy. That sounds like a waste of two albums, to me. But motifs can still return across albums. The Last Sunset came back in Summer Sucks. And we did, in fact, use some Rise motifs in Excavate. It's a question of connection, what is a motif if not connection, what is connection in the context of music?
DEGAN:
All good questions.
PAUL:
Good Elsie questions. She spends much of her time thinking about exactly this kind of thing, she is who I consult when it's time to consider the macrocosmic scale of a construction. And, what might surprise the two of you to hear, these are good Fin questions too.
DEGAN:
(laughing) Seriously?
REMY:
He's capable of discussing his own music?
PAUL:
If you know the right way to ask him. Connection in music is, really, a question of rhythm. Structure is rhythm! And Fin understands rhythm, I'd say on an intellectual level. He just isn't confident talking about what everyone else is doing, and therefore the song as a whole, or so he sees it.
REMY:
No, of course, he's seriously smart.
PAUL:
He spends great efforts to believe that he has a layman's understanding of music.
DEGAN:
As always, that's an incredible articulation of it.
PAUL:
Thank you. We're not here to pressure him to put his music into words, and we're not here to judge him for his psychology. But one must observe these things, all the same.
REMY:
So, sorry, I just want to get us back to the original question--
PAUL:
By all means!
REMY:
You've spoken of what Rise is about, and you've alluded to why it can return, but why does it return here? I don't suppose you've already got our next album figured out in your head beforehand, but if I want to contribute to our concepts, I need to start asking these kinds of questions.
PAUL:
You do contribute, Remy. But it's right to ask questions, and it's good to want to contribute more. This is your music too.
DEGAN:
Damn straight.
PAUL:
I don't have the album figured out, no. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect it's going to be a very tough album to figure out. I've got lyrics for our song, The Human End as I want it to be called, and in the process of writing them-- listening to our tapes over and over-- I got these glimpses of something.
REMY:
Oh shit, can we see these lyrics?
PAUL:
They're in my laptop bag, which I think is in the office.
[REMY enters the office.]
DEGAN:
Maybe we can look over them together as a band? Call the other two in here, and let everyone ask questions so we all understand it. Let everyone equally contribute to this album.
PAUL:
I would be thrilled. I've always felt that my concepts were the weakest in the band.
DEGAN:
What?
PAUL:
It's the arrangement of concepts that I think I excel at. I can make structures out of them.
[REMY enters the lounge, carrying the lyric paper.]
DEGAN:
I mean, yes, absolutely, you're great at arrangement, but your concepts are great too!
PAUL:
I can do a solid introspective piece, but we want more than that. We need some gripping action, and multi-character interactions. We need everyone else's ideas, as we always have needed them.
REMY:
If we're gonna get the whole band involved, can I still.. read these lyrics now?
PAUL:
Please!
[REMY reads through the document.]
REMY:
The last human. Shit, dude.
DEGAN:
Is it good?
REMY:
I swear his lyrics just get better and better.
DEGAN:
Let me see!
[REMY passes the document to DEGAN.]
REMY:
So which part does the Rise section happen during?
PAUL:
The last human looking back over his life, seeing what led him to this point.
REMY:
Introspection, classic.
PAUL:
Introspection in the face of death. He's laying in the sea, he's effectively drowning, as the whole world drowns. He's much "larger" than our Rise narrator; the last human is larger-than-life, as he has in fact caused the death of the entire human race.
REMY:
The lyrics mentioned "summer," is this the world after Summer Sucks?
PAUL:
I am thinking that.
REMY:
'Cause we can do something with that, we can do things with connectivity. That stuff you were talking about before.
PAUL:
Yes, I think that would be an interesting subject for our album.
[DEGAN finishes reading, places the document on a table.]
DEGAN:
Riveting stuff. Seriously. I can tell you're trying to blend your strong introspection with something that suggests action more directly. Do you wanna, maybe, make a rock opera out of this? Use this as the basis, I mean, and tell the story of how the world ended, but from this guy's perspective.
PAUL:
I'm.. thinking of something far more complex than that.
DEGAN:
Oh, duh, because that would have just been Summer Sucks again but from someone else's perspective.
PAUL:
I'm thinking the last human is actually the narrator from Burning Books. That's what I had in mind. I had always thought that narrator could use more development, and, if we're going to bring back motifs from past albums so blatantly, it might be wise to say something artistic in the process. Motifs are reprised, yes, and reprise beckons memory, and our Burning Books narrator was heavily associated with memory. So maybe this can be a memory album. What that means, I'm still mulling over.
REMY:
I see! And we have a song here about someone looking back over his regrets. Yes, I can see how that would resonate with Mythology motifs... I can see your line of thought here.
DEGAN:
We really need to get Fin and Elsie in on this. I'm gonna go get them.
REMY:
Impromptu band meeting!
DEGAN:
Should I ask them to meet us in the office? Or just bring them here?
REMY:
Bring them here, this space is much better for conversation. The office is too stuffy for all five of us.
[DEGAN leaves to look for the other two.]
[ getting tired. must resume later. get to The Human End. Rise lays the foundation for The Human End, and therefore for The Eight Colors Trilogy. in this conversation The Human End is written but not the album as a whole, this conversation tries to define what the album ought to be. so, life after death, the end of the human being, The Last Human is someone who has been through these subjects himself. ]
[ if Rise is an EAT song, then what does it say about EAT? ]
[ no idea what the full shape of this piece would be. ]