Deathbed - Intellectual

Given this realization of their mortality, our characters just want to take seize the moment of right now, where they can still have that passion and that love that we’ve heard so much throughout the rest of the album.

On some level, I think that my character knows of some very immediate danger that will break these two people up. So they’re just trying to provide some kind of calm and solace while they wait for what is going to happen, to happen.

This is another recognition of the lack of time that my partner and I have to be together. Daylight is typically associated with the creation of something new, whereas Night is seen as the end of that creation.

I imagine so much chaos wrapped up in the end of the world, but my partner is the only beacon of solace. They are the only thing that isn’t constantly shifting. In a world of noise, my partner is calm and quiet.

The warmth of the fire is symbolic of the time we all have left. And while it is a comfort, that light will fade and die out.

There’s so much romance that takes place during the narrative of Atmosphere, that it’s easy to forget that the apocalypse is still going on around our characters. This line brings us back to that reality, and also brings up the very real possibility that one or both of them could die very soon. This could happen in several ways, whether it be from some environmental cause or from collateral damage from the political struggles that have come during the aftermath.

I love the opposition that this line provides. I’m able to depict a partner that is idyllic, but then immediately describe that those same qualities as being so forceful and godlike that they could bring the same apocalypse that we’re living in now.

I think, for as fleeting as it can be, I wanted sex to be framed as a sort of way out of the chaos. Having sex with someone until Never, which here is the concept of timelessness, is going to be soothing salve for the pain. Also shouts out to Kendrick Lamar.

I was thinking about the literal monuments to white supremacists that have been built in the United States. We have erected statues to slave owners, war criminals, and colonizers, and we’ve done so in a way that praises them. We glorify the violence that they’ve committed. But in a world in a world that has been destroyed, largely by extensions of that violence, the monuments take on a different meaning. They are now looked upon with shame and regret, both of which come far too late.

There’s so much going on in just this one line. It references one of the previous tracks, Rain, and the sorrow that that rain represented. I’m saying here that my emotions are no longer obscured by rain, which is an absolute positive. That being said, there’s still the very real absence of rain that has come as a result of environmental devastation. Even still, rain can also be interpreted here as “reign,” meaning that there is no more law in this post-apocalypse.

Even though this song was written long before Wildfire, this line still references that same heat of passion that that track brings forth.