Octavarium lyrics

@Bohema11: If you listen VERY closely to the "Intervals" section, you can hear brief sound clips from each song playing in the background as he speaks each "step" of the scale... it's exactly as you described it. Each "step" represents a song from the album. ;)

In interviews, DT have stated that the "Medicate" section of the song was inspired by the Robin Williams film "Awakenings," which in turn was based on real-life events. The common thread between all 3 stories is that they feature a doctor using a drug to bring a patient out of a longstanding coma, only to have the patient relapse shortly thereafter.

And yes, in the end, it ties back to the overlying Octavarium theme: "The story ends where it began;" in this case, the story ends with the patient relapsing into the coma they had been pulled from.

Look at the songs in order on the album and compare them to the Intervals Section:
Our deadly sins feel his mortal wrath... (Root of All Evil)
...The answer's been right in front of you (The Answer Lies Within)
We try to break through... (These Walls)
Loyalty, trust, faith, and desire... (I Walk Beside You)
Tortured insanity... (Panic Attack)
...Drain all of your lifeblood while begging for more (Never Enough)
Innocent victims for merciless crimes... (Sacrificed Sons)
...When we finally start living it's become too late (Octavarium)

Woah

I love every lyric these guys write!

A good writer doesn't intend for one to only interpret a single meaning from their lyrics. The same goes for anyone, whether writing, speaking, or illustrating, one intends to allow the observer to derive several meanings from just one sentence. Notice how many metaphors pop up in just one DT song.

My interpretation of the beginning:

Growing up - As a child or young adult, people tend to view the lives of their elders as a life they would not enjoy. They don't understand how people can live each day like the last, content and fully aware of it being the same.

Realization of what you will become - One tends to accept their fate when they see it coming, I'm 24 and I can say that I have accepted death, old age, and loss, but I have not yet completed this stage... In due time...

About Medicate:

It may be difficult not to get a lot of different meanings from this one, as it seems to be one big metaphorical circle. I picture the doctor as my conscience, and the medication is my harmony with life. As I harmonize with life, I realize that it is not a cure for me, as human desire seems to be infinite, but it is the only thing I know so I go with it.

I think for them it was purely related to a drug addiction, possibly prescribed medication, maybe therapy even, but I have not experienced their lives so I cannot say how it was meant to be portrayed.

About Full Circle:

It could be about recovering from an addiction, and it could be about falling back into one again. It sucks but people tend to keep going back to something even after seeing how much it hurt them before. It's hard to say but I think this was meant to be the realization stage of an addiction. Possibly the one stated in medicate. Maybe the doctor they were talking about was alcohol, but like I said, they use a lot of metaphors to leave the interpretations up to the observers.

Intervals:

I don't want to go over each one, but this is the prime of the metaphors, and all eight are capable of so many different interpretations that I don't have time to go over each one.

I think about the finally start living it's too late part, which takes me back to the beginning, where he realized that he wanted to be someone just like the person who he had not wanted to become. The idea is that people have everything they need to be happy, yet they don't realize it until they are older.

Razor's Edge:

If the rest of the story doesn't tie together, this part seems to do it for me. - He keeps trying to be different from the rest, but keeps going around in a big circle, of realizing that it can't be done. We are doomed to ride the razor's edge for eternity.

This song isn't about a story, I don't think...

I think it's about a concept, the idea that everything ends where it begins. The opening storyline is about a man trying to be like people of the past... then it continues to the storyline of a man waking from catatonic sleep, then falling back into it. It continues with similar ideas, of the end being the beginning (or the beginning being the end)

It's about the album, about life, not about a continuous storyline (at least in my opinion)