Colossal - Intellectual

The attachment patterns in which we engage is both comforting (“lullaby”) and is a harbinger of certain doom (“wretched news”). This pattern of going out with and fucking people we do not actually like is soothing but ultimately gives us nothing.

As we have somehow become aware of this tendency of ours, this pattern is ending (“sinking sun”).

After the night of intimacy ends, they always leave at dawn, following their own paths that take them from us. They call us down – that is, they bring us back down to reality, reveal to us that the projections were never real, that this is not working.

Therefore, we know that the pattern is ending and we sigh with exhaustion and resignation, anticipating what comes next.

However, though it is ending, it is not yet over and so we continue pursuing our old patterns. We still do the dates, we carry on pretending, even though it is clear that it is over.

All we know is that we are slowly being nudged closer to the shift, whether through therapy, integrative work, or something else. We do not what it is but we are being pushed closer to it.

Now, however, we are trying to be present. Instead of dissociating, we are trying to be present with the experience, attempting to actually see people as they are and not merely as we wish them to be.

Their sighing, their departing is what creates our feeling of depression, this acknowledgment that we are stuck in a pattern.

When one sees everyone as just a reflection of the own self, there is nothing that exists, it seems that everyone and everything in the world is not real. This feels terrible – everything is wrong.

The lullaby is the numbing patterns that we follow – the drinking, drugs, dates with people who do not actually excite us. We engage in all of these activities to seek to distract ourselves from the loneliness and pain that we feel.

Dressing it up is to make things look better than they appear. This is what we do when we call our infatuation with projections ‘love,’ when we call numbing ‘connection.’

It is notable that the sun is sinking. This means that the patterns in which we have been trapped are finally ending. We are finally beginning to escape, to transcend.

Alfons states that he is tired of the pattern repeating. Moreover, he is sick of hearing the truth about this (perhaps from therapists or friends), these insights that tell us that we are unable to connect with others, unable to love, that we only destroy, that we cannot see others as real, that the wound that causes us to behave in this way will not heal readily or quickly.

The “numbing metal” symbolizes our defense structures. Metal is something that is hard and impenetrable. It helps us become numb – to dissociate, to project, to take up regency in our kingdom of mirrors. Alfons sings that it is all he knows – that this has been his entire experience of life.

Indeed, attachment patterns form in childhood and generally stay that way for a lifespan (unless intensive work is completed to shift them).

The attachment style being confessed seems to be disorganized (fearful-avoidant).

In other words, how quickly do the women we pursue reveal that they are not real, that they are mere projections? To pull the blinds is to show their real selves, thereby destroying our illusions, the mirages with which we have sought to obscure their true selves.

At the close of the song, Alfons reveals to us what it is that was riding over the clouds.

It is not the grasping illusion that we have called love all this time. It is not a fantasy of power and possession. It is not conditional love.

It is love that is spread out, that rather than being concentrated in a fantasy (that is, ourselves), is connected to everyone, even the people toward whom we do not harbor romantic feelings (random platonic encounters, neighbors, cabbies, etc).

All of this love is connected to us – it is coming toward us and is not something that we cannot grasp.

This is the transition – from “numbing metal” which is isolation that is guaranteed by our projecting tendencies to a “love diffuse” which means seeing others as real, connecting without greedily grasping, the ability to be present without needing to possess.

This shift does not come in one dramatic moment but rather a gradual DIFFUSION of love across all of our interactions. It is about slowly learning to see others, learning to connect without trying to use this as a means for validation. It is presence without graspingness.

Respecting the corrosive shine means to go after the projections which is something that precludes the possibility of true connection. Though we understand that it is corroding our ability to experience true love, we keep doing it.

The colossal represents the overwhelming nature of the attachment wound that prevents us from seeing others, that makes it impossible to truly connect with them.

Breathing it out symbolizes expressing this fact over the course of The Destroyer project. Simultaneously, we seek to blot it out by our default behaviors, through our numbing patterns, the warning signs that we do our best to ignore.

Here, a hope is expressed that the pattern is shifting, that something new is coming. Though it is distant and has not yet arrived – it is “over the clouds” – it is nevertheless coming to us. There are a number of things that this could be – it could be a new love interest, the long-awaited healing, the capacity to see others, or integration. The point is that we do not yet know what it is – it is a ‘something.’

When we are faced with the possibility of real connection with someone whom we actually desire, when we are offered love, we freeze, dissociate, evacuate.

Despite the lack of clarity about what is happening or the eventual outcome that this work/transition will bring, we still are not running away from it, we are not giving up, we are staying with the process.