This must be the end, my life long lived. This must be the day I fade away.
Falling through a plain,
everything is strange.
All this time and I find along the way,
these are not really songs (after all),
these are not really songs at all,
just singing to a phase.
The senior realizes his senility, giving himself an answer to his question posed at the end of the preceding song. The fourth wall is broken when he acknowledges the existence of the album’s songs and that they are not for the usual purpose of enjoyment or entertainment, but that they simply tell of his deterioration.
The vocals of his hallucinations return but are now harmonized with tritones, commonly known as ‘the devil’s interval’ because of the restlessness it creates. In the 18th century, cathedrals would cross out or alter any tritones found in their sheet music. His hallucinations leave him feeling insane, the senior is heard laughing halfway through the stanza. All of the sound effects that come into the mix are symbolic. The ticking clock signifies the time he’s losing, a slowly rotating pill tray alludes to the use of medications in attempt to slow down the disease, and aggressive scribblings relate to “all the pages colored black” and its meaning of blocking out the past. Beneath all of it, the nylon guitar in the background has become out of tune, messy, unintelligible, and demented. The more ironic lyrics from ‘The Time That We Take’ surface and continuously echo. Static begins to fade in to symbolize loss of communication, and the lyric “No one near, the only one that’s here” from ‘Root Beer’ emerges as a reminder of his solitude.
Saggy eyes, dusty lips, waiting for a mutter back
feel at home inside a book with all the pages colored black.
And all the time I’ve left to spend, after all, is purely drab when lost in places I used to know, drawing blanks and turning mad.
All this time and I find along the way,
All the time that we took, taken away.
Am I still the same?
The leitmotif is stressed on the words “taken away” by the drums, bass, and vocals in unison. The senior’s final words echo and fade away. The female vocals intensify heavily under the Theremin during the outro.