About
Lyrics : Mark Jansen
Music : Mark Jansen, Ad Sluijter, Yves Huts
Versions
Album Version (09:00) – The Phantom Agony album, Consign to Oblivion 10th anniversary expanded edition 2LP purple
Single Version (04:35) – The Phantom Agony North American album edition, The Phantom Agony single
Orchestral Version (09:00) – The Phantom Agony 10th anniversary expanded edition
Live at 2 Meter Sessies 2004 (09:02) – We Will Take You With Us album
Live in Miskolc 2008 (10:30) – The Classical Conspiracy album
Live at the Klokgebouw 2013 (09:22) – Retrospect album
Lyrics
[I. Impasse of Thoughts]
I can’t see you, I can’t hear you
Do you still exist ?
I can’t feel you, I can’t touch you,
Do you exist ?
(The phantom agony)
I can’t taste you, I can’t think of you
Do we exist at all ?
[II. Between Hope and Despair]
The future doesn’t pass
And the past won’t overtake the present
All that remains is an obsolete illusion
We are afraid of all the things that could not be
A phantom agony
Do we dream at night
Or do we share the same old fantasy ?
I am a silhouette of the person wandering in my dreams
We are afraid of all the things that could not be
A phantom agony
Tears of unprecedented beauty
Reveal the truth of existence
We’re all sadists
The age-old development of consciousness
Drives us away from the essence of life
We meditate too much, so that our instincts will fade away
They fade away
What’s the point of life
And what’s the meaning if we all die in the end ?
Does it make sense to learn or do we forget everything ?
We are afraid of all the things that could not be
A phantom agony
Tears of unprecedented beauty
Reveal the truth of existence
We’re all pessimists
The age-old development of consciousness
Drives us away from the essence of life
We meditate too much, so that our instincts will fade away
They fade away
Teach me how to see and free the disbelief in me
What we get is what we see, the phantom agony
A te spiritus noster devoratur et nostra anima capitur
[III. Nevermore]
The lucidity of my mind has been revealed in new dreams
I am able to travel where my heart goes
In search of self-realization
This is the way to escape from our agitation
And develop ourselves
Use your illusion and enter my dream…
Translation
| A te spiritus noster devoratur et nostra anima capitur | Our spirit is devoured and our soul is captured by you |
(translation : source)
Trivia
- The band likes to play a “party-beat”/disco version of the song on stage (e.g. in Retrospect).
“[The song] is dealing about dreams, sometimes it’s hard to say if a memory is a dream or if it happened in reality. […] With lucid dreaming you can get control of your dreams and create a new world within the unknown.” – Mark Jansen
