Sundown
This song represents the transition from yang to yin. The day is coming to an end and the senior believes he is ‘coming down’ from his trip. In reality, he is beginning to experience what is known as ‘sundowning’. Sundown Syndrome, a group of symptoms that can often arise in Alzheimer’s patients during the evening, include anxiety, delusional thinking, visual and auditory hallucinations, wandering, disorientation, and aggressive behavior.
A little black, a little blue,
don’t miss the stars, don’t miss the moon, But pools of black pull me back
and minutes bleed into years.
The senior describes the night sky, and since he can’t escape dusk, the symptoms of Sundowning begin to plague him.
And just how long until I find why it is I feel this way? Time runs out and I come down from such a beautiful morning.
Long live the sunrise in my eyes,
the only one I recognize,
the only thing to make me smile,
the only thing to make me cry.
One last time I reminisce,
one last time I can relive,
one last time I can recall
what it all was like before it fades.
The sun made him happy, and now that it’s leaving, it upsets him. He savors every last moment before it sets completely, and tries to remember how it made him feel before. The leitmotif, now lightly swung, is tossed back and forth between the guitar and organ after the first chorus.
Deep in dreams I don’t belong,
nostalgia’s been gone for so long.
Deep in dreams I don’t belong,
there’s nothing else I can recall.
Once again referring to his dramatic hallucinations as dream-like, he recognizes his inability to remember anything at all. The leitmotif is played on the drums once more, and then used as the main motif of the guitar solo, which itself can be viewed as the very turning point to yin - specifically when the guitar ricochets out of control between the left and right sides of the mix and into the endless looping outro where the sun is gone and the atmosphere of nighttime presents itself.