Hollow Again

Here are the lyrics to my favorite song of all-time (not just by Project 86 but literally of all-time), "Hollow Again."

"Somehow I lost my way
And now it's clear to me
All that I fought so hard to keep
Is all I had to leave

I know you can't hear me
And you won't believe me
But there is something I must say here
Before I fade away

(This is how the world ends again)

Forever we will be
Forever we will be hollow
Hollow again

So I'm left here waiting
So long I'm contemplating
And now I know how it is
But now it's far too late

How will we open the eyes of the dead
When we are hollow
Hollow

And all along here I was told
By fallen men in their charade
That we could find a hope inside
The safety of this empty place"

Anyone that knows of T.S. Eliot's famous poem, "Hollow Men," should see at least a bit of his influence on this song.  The song ends the album Truthless Heroes, an album written basically as a warning to people not to turn away from God or the path of good.  So here at the end of the album we find a person lost spiritually, and finally realizing that they are lost but have no way out.  Hollow and full of regret they find that the path of instant gratification is merely an "empty place."  And now they are desperate to tell others, those still with some hope, not to turn down the same path.

If you were to listen to this song you'd probably agree that it is extremely powerful.  The music itself seems to be full of regret and sadness and the vocals express anger and hopelessness.  I really encourage you to look this song up on youtube and listen to it. 

For me, the "Somehow" at the beginning of the song is really rather touching.  Have you ever had moments in your life when you realize all of a sudden that you are not where you meant to be and you ask the simple question, "At what point did it all go wrong?"  Because I believe in God and that all humans are created by God with a sense of love and compassion, I must also believe that the perpetrators of slavery somehow went wrong.  I believe that they, too, sometimes wake in the middle of the night and wonder how they lost their way and wishing someone would hear their hollow cries.  I believe that even the most evil of people do at least sometimes feel as if they have been led astray be fallen men in their charades.  I believe that they know they've become hollow and are full of sad regret.  So I ask that we have compassion on those who perpetrate and contribute to the cruelest of crimes.  They, too, are human beings in need of love and understanding and someone to listen to them.  If we don't also love them then they are likely to continue to try and find safety in empty places.

I also invite us to see in this song the story of those enslaved.  First they are tricked into thinking that the path of slavery is actually the path to a good life and soon they are wondering what went wrong.  As they see clearly their situation in life they also realize that it is not their fault for listening to the charades of fallen men, for losing their way, and for becoming hollow.  It is the fault of all of us.  We as a society have not listened to those who have gone before us.  We have not opened the eyes of the dead. 

I am often depressed with the lack of care many high school and college students graduate with toward history.  Once I was talking about the Civil War with a friend and she cut me off, saying, "I know it's bad but I don't know much about history," and then she laughed it off and changed the subject.  Though our Capitol building contains a number of quotations about the importance of history over its many doorways, we live in a country that simply does not care about where we have come from.  That is particularly scary given our horrible history with slavery.

Folks, the slaves in the world today are hopeless because they feel their hollowness.  The way they have been used and abused has left them with little to no feelings and little to no concern for their body.  They have become or are becoming machines at the hands of people who themselves have not been loved properly.  All I can say is that the hollowness of the 27 million slaves in the world today demand us to open the eyes of the dead.  We need to understand ourselves and the societies we live in.  We need to understand where we have gone wrong in the past and actually do something about it.  We have been given the power and the tools to create justice by those who have gone before us.  We need to claim that and start making a difference.