Remembering Awake: Dreams of My Favorite Album (blog13)

Here in the dorms at college, I don't have a lot of physical objects from my past. Most of that kind of stuff is in my room somewhere, in boxes or collecting dust. So, for this blog entry, I didn't have whole lot of things to look at. I wound up going through my media library and looking at some of my music instead. Dream Theater's Awake immediately struck me as something I should write about.

Anyone who knows me and has been friends with me for some time know that my favorite band of all time is Dream Theater. It has been this way for many years, for at least half of high school and all of college. Dream Theater are my favorite band. I saw them twice this summer. No other band comes half as close as they do to my heart.

"Awake" was my first Dream Theater album. I bought it when I was in high school. Though I was incredibly obsessed with another band, Tool, at the time, I'd been told by many people on the internet that Tool weren't the rock band with the best musicians- Dream Theater were. At first, I couldn't believe it. Then, I bought "Awake" and I was convinced:

People on the internet are full of it!

Needless to say, it really took a long time for "Awake" to click with me. During my first listen, so many things stuck out like a sore thumb. The repeating samples over the first track, 6:00:

6 o'clock on a Christmas morning

6 o'clock on a Christmas morning

6 o'clock on a Christmas morning

And for what?

And then;

Well isn't it for the honor of God, Aunt Kate?

I know all about the honor of God, Mary Jane!

I'd learn later that the samples were a direct reference to James Joyce's "The Dead," and the theme of an artist struggling with the imagined futility of his own artistic expression an important one.

While I liked the next song, Caught in a Web, quite a bit, the next song, Innocence Faded, impressed me with it's Rush-ness but I hated the confusing lyrics.

Callous and vain, fixed like a fossil

shrouding pain, passionless stage

distant like brothers

wearing apathetic displays

sharing flesh like living in cages

condescending, not intending to end.

It wasn't until later, when I talked to some people online, that I realized just how deep "Innocence Faded" was, especially in the context of that album's "artist" theme. In fact, during the time of recording, the keyboardists and guitarist were not getting along. The guitarist wrote "Innocence Faded" as a reaction to keyboardist and childhood friend Kevin Moore's increasing social and artistic seclusion. The two may have begun competing with one another in healthy ways- condescendingly, two figures who used to be as close as brothers now beyond the point of caring, sharing a "passionless stage" with one another every night.

The instrumental, Erotomania, impressed me with it's guitar and keyboard parts, but the next song, Voices, is where I really started liking the album. Not only the lyrics, but the music too. I think the song speaks for itself. I had the opportunity to hear Dream Theater perform "Voices" live twice, flawlessly, this summer, and it is a song that I hope they play at every show. The Silent Man, which concludes the three-part suite, is a nice acoustic change of pace and I love it's thought provoking lyrics.

A question well-served

is silence like a fever?

A voice never heard?

Or a message with no reciever?

Pray they won't ask

behind the stained-glass.

There's always one more mask.

Has man been a victim of his woman?

Of his father?

If he elects not to bother

will he suffocate their faith?

Desperate to fall

behind the great wall

that separates us all.

The next duo of songs, The Mirror and Lie, never really stuck out, and still don't, though Lie is growing on me and hearing them is fantastic live. The lyrics compliment one another, though, the first dealing with lying to one's self about addiction and the second dealing with a relationship built on a falsehood. Musically, the songs contain a variety of themes which seem to be revisited elsewhere in the album. Moore's piano in The Mirror is echoed later, in Space-Dye Vest.

The Mirror & Lie are a heavy, balls-to-the-walls storm that happens to be the centerpiece of the album. The next song, Lifting Shadows off a Dream, is an ambient but equally as lyrically heavy change of pace. Like all the songs on the album, the lyrics deal with a disconnect between people that either does or doesn't get resolved. This time, bassist John Myung uses his only lyrical contribution on the album to present us with the nature of male/female relationships.

He seems alone and silent,

thoughts remain without an answer.

Afraid and uninvited,

he slowly drifts away.

Moved by desire and fear-

breaking delicate wings-

Lifting Shadows off a Dream once broken...

She can turn a drop of water into an ocean.

Next, we have Scarred. What can I say about Scarred? Nothing that can't be heard by listening to the album, I think. Again, the theme of distance is prevalent.

Do you feel you don't know me anymore?

Do you feel I'm afraid of your love?

And how come you don't want me asking

and how come my heart's not invited?

You say you want everyone happy.

We're not laughing.

And how come you don't understand me?

And how come I don't understand you?

Thirty years say we're in this together

so open you eyes!

People in prayer for me, everyone there for me

sometimes I feel I can't face this alone.

My soul's exposed, it calms me to know that I won't.

But also thinly hidden in Scarred is guitarist John Petrucci's next message to Keyboardist Kevin Moore. Again, as we saw earlier in Innocence Faded, Petrucci seems to be addressing a life-long friendship that is being torn apart. Petrucci's song ends "I'm inspired and content," while Kevin's song which closes the album, Space-Dye Vest, ends with the lyricist rushing into complete isolation, "I'll never be opened again."

I hated Awake at first, but there's so much depth to it. So much to listen to and think about. In retrospect, Awake is now one of my favorite Dream Theater albums. I know most people won't, but I do hope some people look at some of the links to these songs (live boots mostly because of copyright issues) and maybe wind up liking Awake as much as I do.