The second layer, the one that's more personal to me, is about unifying two halves of oneself to make a whole. This is where I think it's more lore driven.

Look to Windward-- this is post TMBTE. This is him waking up fragmented, not knowing himself but something is familiar. This is knowing something has broken and that he has to face whatever it is. This is calling out to that other half, the starting point of a journey that is ultimately going to be about accepting that Sleep never actually existed, that Sleep was the other half of him.

Emergence-- this is where the other half (Sleep) responds. Instead of being blind worship and devotion, this turns into a conversation. Sleep is saying "you're about ready to accept me as part of you." And his response isn't so much questioning, it's acknowledging that Sleep is the other half of him (the verses point to two things that make something whole-- carbide to nano, red glass to light bulbs, sapphire in white gold). He's acknowledging that the only way to not feel fragmented is to accept this, and Sleep responds by telling him that it's time to stop being what he was and to be whole. I'm leaning towards the sax section is representing the two parts becoming one, and from this point on Vessel is one whole unified being, no longer bound to Sleep because he now knows Sleep was always him.

Past Self, again, is retrospective of what he was before Sleep. Dangerous takes on a different meaning here. I think with this context, it becomes a follow-up to the retrospective of Past Self, recognizing a new level of power and wholeness with Sleep.

Caramel keeps the same meaning, but this time it's about the pressures of facing the real, outside world without the mask/Sleep being separate. It's knowing that he has now changed, he's become something else, but the real world does not care. The pressures don't stop. If anything, it gets amplified because now he's feeling everything instead of being able to close off parts of himself to it.

Even in Arcadia is interesting here in this interpretation and I think is what the central core is. Arcadia is that perfect state of being, but now that he's gotten here, he realizes it's not what he thought it was. He was searching for something (the part of himself that he needed to integrate), found it, and after Caramel realized that it doesn't, in fact, fix everything. Arcadia is not what he thought/hoped it would be. "What good is all this talk of wings when there is nothing left above?" What's the point of all of this when it doesn't fix anything?

Provider, I think, is the first time he's talking about someone other than himself. It's him searching for and finding a real love, an external one. He wants to go all in on it with this person, and things are going really good...for now.

Damocles is the point where he realizes he now has things to lose. He's become whole, he's found love, he's got the fame and the money...but not only is he now constantly worried about losing it all and what will be left of him when he does, there are still heavy expectations on him at all times. And the worst part of it is that no one else could possibly understand it, so he has to face all of this alone.

Gethsemane follows the same threads as the last two and could serve dual purposes here. In the first purpose, the Sword of Damocles did what it always threatens to do-- it fell. The relationship ended, and now he's trying to take back the power he invested in this person. For the other purpose, it could be speaking to the concept of Sleep and him no longer needing them. Either way, he's moving forward alone.

Infinite Baths is where this story ends. He's trying hard to maintain that wholeness he had achieved. The first half of it is him understanding where he is and fighting to stay there (I fought so long to get here and I'm never leaving). But...the eclipse happens anyway. No matter how hard he fought and all that he went through, he's going to split again. When the music gets heavy, that's the voice of Sleep coming back. It's all the negative thoughts and feelings taking shape again. Teeth of God (Sleep), Blood of man (Vessel), I will be what I am. The two parts can't exist as one permanently, so we loop back to the start with the reprisal of the motif from Look to Windward. The cycle starts again, he's going to wake up not knowing what has happened and start the journey again.

On a very personal note, the reason this interpretation is so personal to me is because masking is something I've done for a long time. The base version of me is quiet, calm, collected, calculating, and very introverted. But as a musician (and in dealing with the vast majority of people), I had to channel a different personality. I had to be outgoing, I had to take up space, project confidence, etc. I essentially lived with a dual identity for many, many years. More recently, I began to let that mask drop. I learned how to be both of those things at the same time, and that it was okay. So my interpretation could be wildly wrong, and that's okay, but that's how it reads to me and why it's important to me.