LYRICS:  Forty-four divide, another year gone by, but rarely satisfied, & in my life the range is wide, the joys & pains, both different sides of the same thing, from what it seems, to live this process patiently.  Forty-four divide, another year gone by, but rarely satisfied.

INTERPRETATION:  There’s an intense irony in experiencing the passing of time, all without comprehending what time is in & of itself, objectively.  Within a Kantian philosophical framework, time is an inherent intuition, a construct of the mind which is contextualized in congruence with other intrinsic inferences such as space & synthetic mathematics.  In presupposing time & space as forms of experience rather than forms known from experience, a foundation is established from which all further notions of sensory perception can be understood.  Given that time & space are essentially sensorial spectacles through which all experience is filtered, it’s seemingly impossible to know if time & space exist independently, objectively, or transcendentally apart from the mind.  Sifting through the vast implications of Kant’s pure reason critique is enough to humble even the most ardent of certitudes, acknowledging our limited frame of reference regarding the ultimate nature of reality.  Proust best expresses this daunting dissatisfaction in an excerpt from Swann’s Way:

“Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence & of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.”

INSPIRATION:  Throughout all of my twenties, I wrote a poem for each passing year, two of which ended up in song form on Shadowlands.  Forty-Four Divide was penned for my 22^nd birthday, & attempts to vaguely reference the frustration of enduring time’s effect on nature (aging), without apprehending time’s ultimate nature (?!).

INSIGHT:  Given the physical & philosophical magnitude of concepts such as time & space in comparison to our limited comprehension of them, I wanted the songwriting & production to mirror a limited aesthetic.  Lyrically, the song barely spans a few sentences.  As for duration, the song originally was only 90 seconds long, intended to imitate the brevity of a passing thought, one too lofty to dwell on for any length of time.  Matt eventually suggested that we extend the song structure, adhering to its minimal arrangements while expanding on its sonic depth.  The result evolved Forty-Four Divide from a passing thought to a lazy daydream, featuring sparse acoustics, meandering lead guitar, deep synthetic bass tones, aerial reverbs, filtered wave frequencies, & auxiliary track nicknames like Sub Nasty & Sky Rail.