Life is a waterfall[1]“How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up … Continue reading
We’re one in the river
And one again after the fall[2]“Adam fell that man might be, and men are that they might have joy,” reads 2 Nephi 2:25; such establishes within the Book of Mormon the Felix Culpa reading of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the idea … Continue reading
Swimming through the void,[3]“…And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after … Continue reading we hear the word[4]“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” -Romans 10:17
We lose ourselves, but we find it all[5]“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” -Matt. 16:25. It is worth here remembering that the L.A.-based members of System Of A … Continue reading
‘Cause we are the ones that want to play
Always want to go, but you never want to stay[6]If we existed before we were born, and chose to experience this mortal life in the premortal councils in Heaven, and will return to that same God who gave us life after we die, then logically, we are … Continue reading
And we are the ones that want to choose[7]The plan of Lucifer per LDS doctrine was to deprive us of our right to choose, to ensure that all would be “saved,” despite the fact that the word salvation would then lose all its meaning if it … Continue reading
Always want to play but you never want to lose[8]Of course, having the ability to choose also means having the ability to choose wrong. That was always the risk, that we would all inevitably lose our salvation through our choices—which we all do, … Continue reading
Aerials[9]adjective: existing, happening, or operating in the air. “an aerial battle”; that is, Aerials can be read as an oblique allusion to a war in heaven, which was fought for our sacred free … Continue reading in the sky
When you lose small mind[10]For these band-members and descendants of a literal genocide, the phrase “lose small mind” isn’t just a bit of hippie California stoner wisdom, but a literal matter of life or … Continue reading, you free your life[11]“…lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better.” -D&C 25:10
Life is a waterfall
We drink[12]“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of … Continue reading from the river
Then we turn around and put up our walls[13]It’s bad enough that the Fall and the sheer nature of our mortal existence estranges us from our Heavenly Father, but then we promptly estrange ourselves from each other, too. It’s why Christ has … Continue reading
Swimming through the void, we hear the word
We lose ourselves, but we find it all[14]“Let us here observe that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.” -Lectures on Faith 6:7; … Continue reading
‘Cause we are the ones that want to play
Always want to go, but you never want to stay
And we are the ones that want to choose
Always want to play but you never want to lose
Oh[15]That panged “Oh!” to my ear expresses our collective and profound regret that, though we might sincerely desire that not one person should be lost (even as we full well know that such was the key … Continue reading
Aerials in the sky
When you lose small mind you free your life
Aerials, so up high
When you free your eyes, eternal prize[16]In the context of both the “walls” of this song and the Gospel more generally, the way you “free your eyes” and “lose small mind” is by taking your eyes off yourself and seeing others for … Continue reading
Aerials in the sky
When you lose small mind, you free your life
Aerials, so up high[17]“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9).
When you free your eyes, eternal prize.[18]For those who consider these religious readings of the song a bit of a stretch, remember that on this same album, 2001’s still-popular Toxicity, they quote Christ’s own “Father into your hands … Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | “How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints” (D&C 121:33). Given that we are about to annotate a song by the descendants of the Armenian genocide, the fact this verse was originally given in response to a literal Extermination Order right here in the U.S. seems salient. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | “Adam fell that man might be, and men are that they might have joy,” reads 2 Nephi 2:25; such establishes within the Book of Mormon the Felix Culpa reading of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the idea that the Fall was ultimately a good thing, a happy thing, that fulfilled the plan of God. LDS doctrine adds to the Felix Culpa a further wrinkle via our unique concept of the premortal existence: the idea that we lived eternally with our Heavenly Father before we were ever born. That is, we had to fall—literally, become estranged from God and from each other—simply by choosing to come down to earth in the first place. Indeed, this Fall was necessary in order for there to be an Atonement, a reconciliation, even we return to and reunite with that same Heavenly Father after we exit this life.
That is, we were all indeed one in the river, and one again after the Fall. |
| ↑3 | “…And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.” -1 Kings 19:11-12; that is, we experience God in the void and the silences, not in the noise. |
| ↑4 | “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” -Romans 10:17 |
| ↑5 | “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” -Matt. 16:25. It is worth here remembering that the L.A.-based members of System Of A Down are famously descendants of refugees from the Armenian genocide—those Eastern Orthodox Christians who were forced to escape extermination in the old Ottoman Empire during WWI, when between 600,000 and 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were systematically murdered—and which atrocities the Turkish government still denies to this day. As such, the members of System Of A Down likely understand the full import of Christ’s words here about losing one’s life in the face of religious persecution, on a very literal and terrible level. |
| ↑6 | If we existed before we were born, and chose to experience this mortal life in the premortal councils in Heaven, and will return to that same God who gave us life after we die, then logically, we are indeed the ones who “always want to go but never want to stay,” confessing that we are “strangers and pilgrims” on this earth, restless, wandering, ever trying up get away from here as we yearn for our true home that is always permanently elsewhere.
These would also be very relatable sentiments for the children of Armenian refugees—or any refugees for that matter. But then, to paraphrase King Benjamin, are we not all refugees? Should we not therefore love all refugees as ourselves? |
| ↑7 | The plan of Lucifer per LDS doctrine was to deprive us of our right to choose, to ensure that all would be “saved,” despite the fact that the word salvation would then lose all its meaning if it was merely forced upon us (given how many Armenian Christians were not only massacred, but forced to convert to Islam, one suspects that System Of A Down also has very definite views on what a forced salvation even looks like). Not that the promise of total security has never been a seductive one: A third of the hosts of Heaven still followed Lucifer after all. Furthermore, despite the fact that everyone born on this earth are the ones who did not follow Lucifer, far too many of us still fall for his temptations anyways, in endlessly forcing “salvation” upon each other: the Turks upon the Armenians; the Spanish Inquisition upon the Jews and Moors; the Spanish conquistadors upon the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans; the English upon the Irish and the Aborigines; the French upon the Haitians and the Vietnamese; Europeans and the U.S. upon Native Americans and African slaves generally; Hindus against Muslims in Modi’s India; the Chinese government upon the Uyghurs even today, and etc. Oh the immense irony and abject tragedy that all of these diabolical atrocities were committed by the souls who rejected the plan of Lucifer—by those who, in the premortal councils, declared that they “want to choose”, then refused to extend the same right to others. |
| ↑8 | Of course, having the ability to choose also means having the ability to choose wrong. That was always the risk, that we would all inevitably lose our salvation through our choices—which we all do, constantly, brazenly, without fail. The Armenian Genocide was just one monstrous crime among countless, committed by all peoples among all religions everywhere, right down to the present moment (including among those chanting “Mass deportations now”). Hence the inescapable necessity of an infinite Atonement, the only thing that could even hope to cover such staggering scale of sins. |
| ↑9 | adjective: existing, happening, or operating in the air. “an aerial battle”; that is, Aerials can be read as an oblique allusion to a war in heaven, which was fought for our sacred free agency and the accompanying right to progress and become more than what we are. |
| ↑10 | For these band-members and descendants of a literal genocide, the phrase “lose small mind” isn’t just a bit of hippie California stoner wisdom, but a literal matter of life or death: genocide, after all, is at its core the final logic of small-mindedness, the insecure conviction that the world would be better off with fewer people in it, rather than embracing the full breadth and complexity of humanity beyond one’s self. It’s the same small-mindedness that fuels anti-immigrant animus, pogroms, and the concentration camps. It’s why Martin Luther King, Jr. said in “The Other America” that the ultimate logic of racism is genocide. To be small-minded really is to be murderous—for which, per D&C 42:18, there is no forgiveness in this world nor in the world to come.
That is, small-mindedness really is death, for everyone involved, while broad-mindedness is life eternal. |
| ↑11 | “…lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better.” -D&C 25:10 |
| ↑12 | “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” -John 4:13-14 |
| ↑13 | It’s bad enough that the Fall and the sheer nature of our mortal existence estranges us from our Heavenly Father, but then we promptly estrange ourselves from each other, too. It’s why Christ has to command us to judge not, to care for the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, the stranger in our midst, to sell all that we have give to the poor, to love our neighbor, to even love our enemy—because our natural man tendency is ever to do the exact opposite. We put up our walls against each other–Berlin Walls, Border Walls–when we should emphatically be tearing them down. |
| ↑14 | “Let us here observe that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.” -Lectures on Faith 6:7; and what precisely are we to sacrifice for life and salvation? Our Satanic, natural man tendency to dominate and force others—the hardest thing to sacrifice of all. |
| ↑15 | That panged “Oh!” to my ear expresses our collective and profound regret that, though we might sincerely desire that not one person should be lost (even as we full well know that such was the key selling point of Lucifer), yet still we know that we will lose–not just that we will fail and sin individually, but also that we will irrevocably lose, just, so many of our fellow Spirit brothers and sisters during this mortal probation–and what’s worse, will deserve to be lost. (Certainly the perpetrators of genocide, we acknowledge with heavy heart, merit no such promise of salvation—at least, not without the blood of their victims crying up from the ground.) As Helaman 12:25-26 reads, “And I would that all men might be saved. But we read that in the great and last day there are some who shall be cast out, yea, who shall be cast off from the presence of the Lord; Yea, who shall be consigned to a state of endless misery, fulfilling the words which say: They that have done good shall have everlasting life; and they that have done evil shall have everlasting damnation. And thus it is. Amen.” |
| ↑16 | In the context of both the “walls” of this song and the Gospel more generally, the way you “free your eyes” and “lose small mind” is by taking your eyes off yourself and seeing others for a change; to seek not to dominate or exterminate them, but serve them; to not only see them as fellow human beings every bit as complex and passionate as ourselves, but moreover as fellow children of God, possessed of the same eternal potential to become Gods as well.
That is, paradoxically, the one way we gain divine exaltation–our “Eternal prize”–is by not focusing on ourselves at all. This shift in perspective, incidentally, is also how we prevent further genocides. |
| ↑17 | “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9). |
| ↑18 | For those who consider these religious readings of the song a bit of a stretch, remember that on this same album, 2001’s still-popular Toxicity, they quote Christ’s own “Father into your hands I commend my spirit/why have you forsaken me” on their signature song “Chop Suey!”, they cite the “sacred silence” on the title track, and the CD hidden track that follows “Aerials” is adapted from a traditional old Armenian church hymn. For all their songs about cocaine and groupies, System Of A Down are at heart a deeply religious-minded band—as is also shown by their strong sense of ethical outrage against the abuses of the US prison system and the wastefulness of war generally. These are the stances that we should also choose to take, if we are to follow the Prince of Peace, and He who let the prisoners go free. |