A long time ago I posted an opinion on this song, and it may have seemed contrived and silly at the time, but I have yet to see a definitive answer as to about what this song really is. I got a few E-mails about it, asking what was wrong with me, and I apologized, playing off my age to explain my opinion. But I've realized, "Fuck that. I should have stuck by my opinion." And this is my way of doing it, even though I know I’m wrong. I suppose that if anything, we should look at this interpretation as a way to understand how things can be misinterpreted, and let that give us the ability to understand when those misinterpretations do occur.
I assume the common theory is that the song is about drugs, which is certainly evidenced by the drug-related "samples" in the opening of the song, but I still can't shake what my original thoughts were, and perhaps still are.
It’s probably best to relay this view line by line (or stanza by stanza), so it’s a little easier to see from where my warped perception has come. But, first, I'd like to start with the theme of the album as a whole. Aenima is about cleansing and restoring and/or moving forward; it's about bringing things back to the way they used to be (Aenema); it's about doing what it takes to move through, and become a more evolved human (46&2).
Now, when I think "third eye," I think urethra. I hope I don't really have to delve into that any further; I expect people to pick up on that. Now, this being said, let's go to the first few lines of the song.
Dreaming of that face again.
It's bright and blue and shimmering.
Grinning wide
And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes.
The narrator of this song (you cannot always assume the writer is the narrator, look at "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain) is staring at someone's face. The blueness says to me that the person has suffocated, and the "shimmering" leads me to believe that the face in question is beneath water, hence another cleansing reference. The grinning, which is probably a face of despair, is comforting the narrator, because he or she is so warped that death is something pleasurable. The three warm and wild eyes are the two regular eyes, and the third eye aforementioned.
On my back and tumbling
Down that hole and back again
Rising up
And wiping the webs and the dew from my withered eye.
This shows that the narrator is somehow negatively affected by what he has just encountered. It seems as though he's been away from this feeling for a while, and the sight has brought him right back to where he used to be. “Rising up” signifies that the reader has bottomed out, and he’s back in a place he has once been to, hence the webs… he hasn’t been there for a while.
"In... out..."
Um… hello?
A child's rhyme stuck in my head.
It said that life is but a dream.
I've spent so many years in question
To find I've known this all along.
"So good to see you.
I've missed you so much.
So glad it's over. I've missed you so much
Came out to watch you play.
Why are you running?"
This is what leads me to believe that the "blue face" is that of a child's. The narrator is a pedophile. Also, it leads me to believe that this pedophile has spent time in prison (his prison term being "over").So, after he’s out, he comes out to watch them playing, but, they remember him, and they run away. The pedophile can't understand this because in his mind he has done nothing wrong, and in his mind what he is doing to the children is not something of which to be afraid. He spent so many years away because he was told that what he loved was wrong, but he feels he was right all along.
Shroud-ing all the ground around me
Is this holy crow above me.
Black as holes within a memory
And blue as our new second sun.
I stick my hand into his shadow
To pull the pieces from the sand.
Which I attempt to reassemble
To see just who I might have been.
I do not recognize the vessel,
But the eyes seem so familiar.
Like phosphorescent desert buttons
Singing one familiar song...
Now, this child is shrouding all the ground around him. He has gone back to something he has been forbidden to do, and this "holy crow" is his conscience. He describes it as black and blue, which is the color of a bruise. Again, the pain reference, and perhaps he is referring to the actual child (blue face). Then he looks deeper into the child; he's thinking. He's thinking about what he might have been had he not fallen "down that hole and back again." He doesn't recognize the vessel (the child), but the look in its eyes has not changed (fear). But, in his warped perception, they seem to sing to him:
"So good to see you.
I've missed you so much.
So glad it's over. I've missed you so much.
Came out to watch you play.
Why are you running away?"
He still can't understand why the children are afraid of him.
Prying open my third eye.
He's using his eye again.
So good to see you once again.
I thought that you were hiding.
And you thought that I had run away,
Chasing the tail of dogma.
The first three lines have already been basically explained, and the fourth line here can be interpreted as the narrator believes that the child believes that the narrator has run away to God and to what God says is right. But, this is obviously not true, just like the second and third lines. The children weren't hiding then, they're hiding now. The narrator didn't run away, he was taken away.
I opened my eye and there we were.
After the narrator opened his eye again, he was there, back in the feelings of old. He says "we" because he believes that the child feels the same way.
Chasing a trail of smoke and reason.
The narrator didn't want to listen to the reason. He wanted to listen to himself. Go deep within himself, and find what is right.
Now, this song is a perfect conclusion to Aenima mainly because it sums up many of the underlying beliefs present on the album. The narrator of "Third Eye" is listening to himself, and doing what it takes for him to move through, and onward to the thing in which he believes. He was forced to do something he didn't want to do, and he rebelled, returning to the things he once did.
-Cynicis (
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