Annotations for Thoughts of a Dying Atheist

Lyric: And I know you’re in this room, I’m sure I heard you sigh
 Floating in between where our worlds collide
Annotation:
The narrator feels – or at least thinks he feels – an otherworldly presence in his room as he nears death. This presence could be God, or it could be the physical embodiment of Death, come to carry him from one world to the next. This line could be him trying to convince himself that God does exist, that it isn’t all over, that he will live on; but evidenced by the chorus it doesn’t work and he knows that whether he likes it or not, it is the end.

Lyric: Eerie whispers trapped beneath my pillow
 Won’t let me sleep, your memories
Annotation:
The line yields numerous interpretations, all pertaining to an overwhelming existential dread. Explicitly: (1) The line could represent a ‘life-review’ of memories shortly preceding death. It is commonly said that one’s life passes in front of their eyes when they’re dying. In these lines (“Won’t let me sleep, your memories”), the narrator’s memories and lifeline are running through his head as his death nears him.  (2) The narrator is having trouble sleeping due to these perturbing thoughts. The fact that the speaker is an atheist likely makes these “eerie whispers” not supernatural, but rather thoughts racing through his dying mind. Beyond this, the status of these “eerie whispers” being trapped beneath his pillow suggests that the speaker is attempting to cope by burying his head under his pillow. He feels trapped like this because of the overwhelming fear of death.  (3) The overwhelming existentialism could be instigated by the death of someone dear; as the persona tries to comprehend his loss and what it means, he is also forced to confront his mortality. The persona revisits memories, recalls the person’s voice and struggles to understand how something so ‘constant’ can no longer be anywhere.

Lyric: Look through a faithless eye
 Are you afraid to die? Yeah
Annotation:
He is, alright. He asks you a question along the lines of “If you were in my shoes…”  Looking through a faithless eye (being someone who denies the existence of a God, thus having no faith in that perspective), would you be afraid of what death brings you?

Lyric: Scares the hell out of me
 And the end is all I can see
 And it scares the hell out of me
 And the end is all I can see
 Yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, woah
Annotation:
An atheist is someone who is absent of the belief that deities exist. They do not hate God, but they don’t believe in one or in an afterlife. Thus, he believes he can’t be heaven-bound (or hell-bound). He believes that neither of these places exist. So what do most atheists believe happens after death? Well, most would say nothing. A complete lack of everything that you experience in life. Consciousness disappears without even a warning. You as a person, an individual, cease to exist. Your body begins its decomposition. His own belief scares him — he considers the stress and pain of not living his life to the fullest, of not being able to wake up again. Death is all that he can think of: Void, Emptiness, Oblivion, as opposed to the typical white tunnel to the afterlife. Indeed the End is far more scarier than the binary choice between good afterlife and bad afterlife. There is also some irony in the line “It scares  the hell out of me”, considering atheists don’t believe in hell.

