Anniversary review 4

Maps Of Reality – Assemblage 23

 

Hello wonderful people,

It’s time for another Assemblage 23 review because it’s been over a year since I’ve reviewed one of A23’s songs. The first song I reviewed was “Breath Of Ghosts” from the Addendum album. I forget when I stumbled upon “Maps of Reality,” but I had the album Defiance on Itunes for ages but never really bothered to skim through it due to “Fallen Down” consuming my life. Thankfully AOL broke that spell the song had on me and here I am today reviewing it.

Defiance released in October of 2002 and it’s Tom Shear’s third album. Tom’s the main guy behind Assemblage 23 in case anyone forgot. I thought about reviewing Fallen Down, but I’ll get to that later, right now “Maps of reality” the ninth track on “Defiance” gets to have its shining moment of awesome.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with this song but it has a decent introduction and then Tom sings and I was sold even though I wasn’t quite sure what the lyrics were until I looked at them. It was one of those moments where you’re like I don’t know what is being said but I like it!

Verse One:

“I suppose in your mind you believe you were right
That the matter doesn't rest heavy on your shoulders
But be careful of the ones you wish to indict
Blame is merely in the eye of the beholder”

We all know a person like this, who someone who thinks they’re right no matter how many times someone proves them wrong. Often times their arrogance and ego end up affecting someone else in a negative way and they don’t even care. They’re so convinced they’re opinion is the right one and nothing else matters and there must be immediate action now that they’ve said ‘the truth.’

Verse two:

“Perhaps the time is right to look yourself in the eye
Take inventory of the world you see around you
Look at the allegations you were quick to deny
And ask yourself if they could possibly be true”

What happens to the idiots who have their head so far up their own asses they can’t see the crap their spouting is wrong? It comes back to bite them as hard as it possibly can. That obviously happened and now Tom’s telling this person to take a deep long look at themselves and what they’ve done, soak in all the crap everyone threw at this person and then look at everything they’ve really denied and see how much of a hypocrite they are… basically every crazy politician in the world ever…

Chorus:

“Distorted maps of reality
Are tearing us apart
Fan the flames of fallacy
And watch the truth depart”

“Belief is what you make of it
A creation of your own
If the outcome is unfit
Let your conscience take the blow”

The first part is plain and simple; a relationship can only take so much crap until someone can’t take it anymore. From the sound of the first half of the chorus, there are many people involved with this situation. So we’ll bring in crazy politicians and logic to make this simpler. Say you’re a TV station focusing on politics but you used to be credible and then somewhere along the line a bunch of conspiracy theory believers and crazy theorist took over and now your station went to shit. They might have been a credible news company at some point in time but they twisted themselves into spiteful and just vile humans and the smart people soon realize how full of crap they are and decide to stop watching once they realized how stupid some of these people are. The other percent of people who don’t believe in logical thinking and reasoning and being normal humans, decide to buy into the bullshit and forget the fact they’re being deceived, lied to, walked on, I could go on forever. See if you keep saying something over and over to the same amount of people eventually someone will believe it and then they’ll spread the stupid and a disease of stupid spreads around… The second half of the chorus backs that up one hundred percent. However when the stupid gets thrown in their face and they’re backed into a corner, they just swallow their shame and not care. They might apologize but they don’t really mean it and then they’ll go back to their sleaze ball ways in a few days or weeks.

Verse Three:

“It's everybody else's fault besides your own
But perhaps the finger's pointing in the wrong direction
Consider that the root of all that you bemoan
Is pictured in the visage of your own reflection”

This verse will take a break from crazy politics in case that’s not very relatable. If nothing else that I mentioned affected you in any way shape or form, think about this. Think of a chronic liar if you don’t know anyone pretend you have a friend who no one really likes and everyone picks on them because of a few stupid things they’ve said. You decide to be the bigger person and befriend them… At first everything is okay between the two of you and then you introduce them to your group of people you’re always around. Then drama starts and lies all over and it always goes back to this person. When they are questioned, they say it’s everyone else causing problems not them. This goes on until you now have to set up separate times to hang out with your regular friends and then you hang out with this person without your regular friends because everyone hates said person. Pretty crappy situation… well yeah I’ve been there before. They know who they are and what they did and I hope to god they stumble upon this review. This is a song for that type of person, the people who have no soul and just lie out their ass just because it suits them. They don’t care who they hurt but as long as they’re happy nothing else matters. If you decide to stand up for yourself then you’re the enemy too despite all the times you tried defending them even though they were in the wrong as well. Not that I constantly denied the fact the certain person was wrong, but when people started attacking this person (verbally) behind their back, I’d tell them to stop because the person isn’t there to defend themselves.

Verse Four:

“I don't expect your view to change, my God, why should it?
You have yourself convinced that you can do no wrong
There's not a chance at all that you will ever admit
The cause of this is you and has been all along”

Scumbags I described before, pathological liars with no souls, selfish to a point of no return, those types of people never admit they’re wrong and they’ve been spouting bullshit for so long that they believe it now. Dealing with these types of people takes a special kind of patience that I don’t have. You have to realize that expecting them to change because you called them out on their bullshit every time you catch them is the stupidest thing you can do. They feel no remorse for anything they’ve done they don’t care who they’ve hurt or who’s reputation they’ve damaged even though they are well aware all the crap they’re putting everyone through is completely their fault.

The chorus happens again and I realize this will be a slightly long review, this is one of those topics I could blab on and on about, it all culminates to this: there’s a chunk of humanity that sucks and we’d all like to just kick the crap out of because they are begging for their teeth to be knocked down their throat. Beating them to a pulp makes you the bad guy and that’s what those people want so the next time you have the fortune to run into a person like this, argue with words and if they refuse to listen wish them the best of luck in their life of crazy and walk away. It will suck and you’ll wish you’d hit them but it’s better in the long run if you leave them physically unharmed because depending on the circumstance, words hurt a hell of a lot more than physical actions do. 

Verse Five:

“Distorted lines become an arc become a circle
The words entwined until the very meaning is gone
The truth is something for which you can find no purpose
It's just a starting point to drape more lies upon”

This verse is another simply put verse; one lie becomes another which spawns more lies. Those lies give birth to other lies until it’s a tangled web of a mess and the truth is nowhere to be found. If they manage to find the point of truth then it’s useless because that’s just another thing to lie about in the audience’s (or peers’) eyes. Nothing they say once they’ve been exposed will be taken with a grain of salt because they lie so much no one cares when they actually have something truthful or when they’re actually right. Their words mean nothing to the smart people who know to stay the hell away and not listen but for the idiots who refuse to see the bullshit their being fed, well they’re just as bad if not worse than the person their worshiping… or they’re like me and were naïve and stupid and believed that just because someone was your friend it meant they wouldn’t do anything to emotionally scar you or use you for their own personal needs. Then reality slaps you in the face and opens your eyes.

Verse six:

“I wish you luck, I really do, because you'll need it
You can't avoid reality for too long
And everything collapses into waves of regret
When you finally understand that it was you who was wrong”

The last verse before the final chorus arrives is the happy ending verse, but from personal experience life doesn’t always end up this way. Not to say that my life experience has been worse than whatever Tom was writing about, by no means am I comparing the two but in a way I am comparing it. However the contrasting has to occur at some point and maybe his situation ended with the scumbag regretting what happened. I honestly hoped my situation could have ended up this way but as I mentioned before, when you’re dealing with a pathological liar who lied about things you don’t lie about and tell someone they hope their babies are stillborn, that moment the person had to face realizing they were wrong might have happened, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. I don’t care because that means I’m still emotionally attached and I believe there’s some humanity left in this soulless person. I suffered from this person and I’m still hurting but they won’t care because they’re living a great life because as far as I know, jail was the rightful punishment for some of the shit this person pulled, but that never happened. I don’t really have much else to say about this verse…

“Maps of Reality” and “Breath of Ghosts” are on two completely different scales. One song might be about a paranormal event Tom experienced or not, it could be a random song he thought of just for the hell of it. “Maps of Reality” has a purpose for all the low lives in the world who think they’re bullshit is the end all be all, well you’re wrong and one day you’ll realize how wrong you are but by that point no one will believe you because everyone thinks you’re stupid and you have some people wishing death and violence against you so have fun with your life of misery, I’m washing my hands of the situation. I wonder if this song was closure for Tom or just a means of venting…

Part four of my Anniversary review concluded.

~Pugsly~