I was listening to Periphery's self-titled album once again and I seem to find new things about it that I like every time I listen to it. It's just one of those albums that grows on me more and more, from great to outstanding to unbelievable. Regardless, one of the tracks on the album is Icarus Lives!, and it tells symbolically about Icarus' death and personality. Icarus, the son of Daedulus, is originally from Greek mythology and it's one of the few Greek myths I've managed to read at some point of my life. (I should read more them.) Icarus' story basically goes:
Daedalus, Icarus' father, kills a Greek man for inveting something better than he could by pushing him off the Acropolis, the Citadel of Athens. This resorts into Daedulus being exiled from the country. Daedulus is sentenced to exile all the way down to Crete, an island in the Mediterranean, to the arms of King Minos. While in the service of Minos, Daedalus has a son, Icarus. Daedulus, being a talented craftsman, builds a labyrinth on Crete to trap the beast, Minotaur, as a wish of the king. This ended up being a bad thing for Daedalus and Icarus as they end up in the labyrinth themselves due to some issues with King Minos and his enemies. In order to escape from the labyrinth, Daedalus constructed two sets of wings made of feathers and wax for him and his son. He told his son, Icarus, not to fly too high with the wings or the rays of the sun would burn them.
As we all would've done, Icarus, being the young experimentalist here, flew up high to escape the island of Crete, but tragically too close to the sun. The sun melted the wax off from the wings and Icarus fell down from the skies.
The story is said to symbolize how magnificent dreams can fall down and sink to the bottom of the sea, as well as symbolizing the heroic audacity of flying high to chase the impossible.
I think the story of Icarus is also great description of how us humans in general work. We are given a set of rules, no matter whether it's the Bible or the Constitutional Law, and we simply cannot live by those rules. We have to defy these rules, instructions even, just to see that we are able to defy them. Icarus probably knew that the wax would melt and that he'd die because of his own stupidity. Who knows, if he had just obeyed what his father had told him, he might have led a good life and maybe have been able to fly to the skies later on in his life.
Then again, if you had one chance to fly so close to the sun and that you would feel its warmth, wouldn't you?
.eyes full, eyes full, eyes full of stars
Also, screw you writer's block, you're out.
Also (Part II), started interpreting my dreams today. See Sleepwalking Through My Dreams for more.
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