The artwork for this record is very important to us. We would like you to know the meaning of it, and how it all came into place: When Charlie and I began our discussions about the artwork for The Sleeping House, it went without saying that we desired it to be as much an instrument of worship as the music and lyrics were. An intent and a hope for the glorification of Jesus has always been readily apparent within the music that Cool Hand Luke has released over the years, and our artwork for this album also needed to serve that purpose. With this in mind, I prayerfully approached the songs that Mark had given to me. I let them become my 'road music', accompanying me daily on mid-Ohio's back roads, thumping and keening fuzzily out of my car's failing speakers. They burrowed in through my iPod's headphones and laid the tempo for my typing strokes while I was at work. I let myself sit with these songs, asking God to paint at least some vague shape of what they were meant to look like while I listened to them. He did much more than that. He Who Loves Us, after all, is he who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or imagine. As a result, through listening to these songs, he first gave me strong impressions: immense space. Incredible age. Ancientness and holiness beyond what we are capable of truly grasping or wrapping our minds around. I also had a sense of "beneath", although not in some scary, hidden-in-a-cave sense of the word. Rather, it was something more along the lines of "providing root, sustenance, and basis". It was "beneath" in the sense of hidden depths, an antediluvian ocean that has spent so many millennia lapping against the bedrock of this place that even the very foundations of the continents are secretly worked through with caverns that hold its waves. There is no part of Creation that this deep, ancient water does not touch, seep into, and provide root for. In this mental impression, I was given a chance to understand a small part more of the holiness and mightiness of God, to touch with shaking fingers upon the sheer age and power of his Presence. He was, is, and will always be. He has no beginning, and he has no end. This is the holiness of God: that word-stilling hush that settles like a heavy cloak upon the head and shoulders of one who steps into the presence of something far older and more alive than anything that person has ever experienced before. There are almost no words for it, and those that do come to mind afterwards seem paltry, thin, and sadly lacking as descriptives. This is deep water, older than time, and the Presence of God is within it. As I continued to listen to The Sleeping House, these impressions solidified further. They gradually began to form a story, complete with discernible beginning and end. While I've felt led by the Holy Spirit within my creating individual pieces of artwork prior to this, I'd never before felt as though God had literally handed me an entire tale he meant for me to attempt to visually convey. I can only pray that in some way, these drawings serve to capture the "mental movie" he has played out for me every time I listen to this album.
The man, clad in layer upon layers of underwater armor, watches silently as the ship above him dwindles in size. It is his link to the reality of the world above, and even now, as darkness engulfs him, it recedes into the swiftly vanishing blue light. The deeper he sinks, the less light his surroundings embrace. Even through the steel skin of his diving suit, he can feel the slow hammer of ocean pressure increasing with each passing minute. This is the point where claustrophobia mixes like a seething cocktail with crushing separation, and he must consciously force his breathing to slow in order to prevent life-threatening panic. He has chosen this, this journey into the deep and hidden places. The bottom of the sea, after all, seems to be one of the last places where mystery remains, fascinating and threatening as it is. The abyss is a place of heavy silence. With him hearing only the sound of his own breathing, hollow and artificial as the air is pumped in through his laboring tanks, the man is fully conscious of how isolated he is. His suit's meager lights barely illuminate the dark ocean floor before him, and the sun above is visible only in vague hints of light blue-green far above his head. He can make out vague shapes in the blackness, rolling plains of grey sand, unmarked by plants or footprints; the occasional distant underwater crag or mountainous formation. This is a place separate and untouched, and yet he senses... something. It is evidenced in a tickle at the base of his skull, a flush in his cheeks, and the palpitations of his heart. There is both awe and fear within him, and he knows that it is not solely due to his current placement. Something awaits him here. He senses this in a manner deeper than sound, born out of a waking memory almost like a dream. He remembers... something, and knows that somehow, it remembers him. Through the blackness, a massive shape takes form. It looms before him, silhouetted against the slight brightening of distant sky. It is no natural formation, but something wrought with defined angles and carved edges, a thing seemingly made by the hands of men. And yet, that seems impossible. For, what age this place speaks of! It is a temple, ancient towers rearing high into the murk, elaborate shapes carved into its pillars and steps, its roof and its entryway. The doorway is open, towering over him and dwarfing him with darkness that makes even the blue-black water around him seem bright. His breathing is stilled, and his mind slows to a crawl, unable in the moment to even scramble for thought. What is this place? It reminds him of word-pictures from old adventure stories he read as a kid, and even the temple of Solomon described to him by his grandmother. It is a place older than anything in his previous experience - this he knows without a doubt. And as he enters its doorway, the man knows he leaves the outside world far behind. The entry dias stretches out before him, a giant stone half-circle marbled with filaments of bronze. His shadow makes him out to be something other than human, elongated arms, fingers, and legs stretching out down a central corridor whose end vanishes from sight. He looks upward, halting breaths momentarily fogging the glass of his faceplate, and realizes with a start that he cannot see the ceiling. Although the man can make out the bases of pillars, interconnected monoliths holding smooth walls upon their backs, he finds that he cannot find an end to the length of the temple. Reality shifts, for the space is incongruous with what his eyes have seen. How can a place be higher, longer, and deeper the further up and in he goes? The temple's interior space is exponentially larger than even the massive structure he saw from the outside... how? What? Wait! Suddenly, arguments with himself over measurements don't matter in the slightest. Looking out across the vast space, his eyes have began to adjust to the darkness. From the base of the dias that she stands upon, rows of rectangular shapes, approximately four feet by seven feet, stretch away into the black. He begins to attempt to count them, but quickly loses track... there must be hundreds of them! No, wait... thousands? More than that, even? As his brain begins to approximate a tally, he feels his mouth gape and eyes widen in awe. "There must be millions of these things in here." His eyes adjust further, and widen all the more. These shapes are tombs. Millions upon millions of rectangular, elaborately carved sarcophagi stretching back for miles, their tops reaching to just above his waist as he begins to walk among them. Atop each of the sarcophagi lies the stone sculpture of a person, every one distinctly unique. Their faces are startlingly lifelike, stone lips seeming about to part, shaped eyes about to open. They seem peaceful, and yet, expectant. All wear armor, delicately filagreed with the shapes of plants, birds, and what seems to be roaring lions. The lion motif is continued onto the main body of the tombs themselves, a roaring lion engraved beneath the armored feet of each person. Some old history lesson tugs at his mind: a dog at the feet means they died at home, a lion at the feet means they died in battle. The sheer number of people begins to numb and overwhelm him, but something familiar catches his eye. His attention is not merely demanded - it is focused, and he is overcome. Tears well and make their way down cheeks already marked with sweat, and his hand rests on a carved stone knee. Through tears, he struggles to focus again on the statue's face, but it does not change. His eyes remain his eyes, his mouth still his mouth. His features look rested and prepared, smooth in anticipation, and his breath slows as he reaches to touch the stone cheek that is his. How did he come to be here? What does this mean? Shaking his head as he attempts denial, his eyes lock with something in the distance, something that paints his face with coruscating light. The temple with no end appears to have a center point, or focus. The rows of tombs move toward a raised dias in the middle, steps lofting a flat platform above the temple floor. The man moves slowly toward it, his thoughts dreamlike and his feet seeming to float. The platform is square, its four corners designated further by the wooden poles that rise from them. Drifting downward and encircling these poles are banners, their length seeming endless as they float, barely moving, surrounding what he knows now to be an immense altar. They appear to be made of finely woven cloth, bright white even in the darkness, and his eyes are able to make out letters stitched along them. Some of the languages he recognizes - Hebrew and Arabic - but some seem alien. "Ancient", he murmurs, correcting himself, and he finds that he knows their names despite knowing he does not: Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic. Ancient and storied tongues, some long-dead, all whispering the same sort of phrase, again and again: Glory to God. To God be the glory. Glory to God alone. Light flares brighter, and he whispers the phrase himself, his lips unable to say anything else. "Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God." In the center of the altar, light and color coalesce between the wings of golden seraphim. It is a light that suddenly seems to fill every inch of the room, spilling over and into all things. The man is filled with delight, but then finds himself on his knees in fear. Joy beyond description fills him even as his tears continue, and he is profoundly aware of a distinct truth. Somehow, far beneath the ocean waves, deeply set apart from all he has known, he is in the Presence of God. The Presence that dances atop the golden chest before him, shifting throughout the color spectrum into new shades he never knew existed. The Presence that seems to sing without sound throughout the water around him, curling all of reality into itself and back out again. The Presence that is holiness defined, a holiness within which he finds himself want to remain forever, day after day without end. His tears dry as he gazes in awe upon the Spirit of God, moving in all directions and yet remaining still before him. He is aware of many things in this moment, and yet acutely conscious of his lack of knowledge. He knows himself to be nothing compared to the glory before him, and yet the glory... sees him. Knows him. Acknowledges him, and calls him. Somehow, he knows that within the Presence, who he truly is and has been made to be waits for him. His true identity is hidden there, within that ancient light that speaks his name, a light whose name he knows now, too. The light is the Word of God, He Who Is What He Is. The light is the Presence and Spirit of God, King of Creation and Creator of All Things. Within the light is someone named The Prince, The Son, The Lamb, and the The Lion. His true self is hidden with the Lion within the Presence, and he knows that he wants nothing more than to be there too. The man pulls his eyes away from the altar momentarily, looking back across the vaulted hall of the temple to where his armored self lies in state. He looks back again at the golden ark that rises before him, feeling the thrum of a thousand silent voices singing within his chest. His words form theirs, and he raises his hands before him. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who Was and Is and Is To Come." The man looks again between the two points, his eyes scanning from death to life and back again. He is aware suddenly of the choice before him, and his eyes look back to the door through which he entered this place. Out there, the world from which he came awaits. Who he was is there, and here, within this place as well, still wrapped in a whirring suit of steel, plastic, and rubber. His body is surrounded by a machine that works to hold a wall between he and the water around him, a frantic attempt by the best mankind has to offer to sustain a life that he now knows as so fragile. The man now knows this: to be truly here, in this place, in this Presence, to truly know He Who has made and knows him, this old life must die. Who he was can be no more; the old must be gone for the new to come. His gloved hand finds the knife at his belt, its edge ground diamond-sharp above the waves in preparation for whatever need he might have below them. His other hand seeks the rubber hose that joins his helmet to the air tanks he wears on his back, pulling it in front of him. He feels the dry, faintly chalky air he is breathing pulsing through the tube, and looks again to the altar. He smiles, raising the knife again, whispering to the Lion and the Lamb who beckons him atop the altar. "I choose you." There is no sound as the helmet drifts to the floor. Bubbles push out and past it, moving upward as their air seeks the distant sun. The helmet connects with the floor, a small metallic clang sounding within the mammoth space surrounding it. Holy light sparkles across its steel plates as it rests before the altar, never to move again. It serves no function but symbol now, dual in its purpose. It is what was, and it is what was given. Atop the altar, the Presence of God surges and pulses, a luminous and holy glow whose beams drift outward, delicately touching upon the engraved faces of millions. There is anticipation, and there is hope. The Spirit waits, and the Spirit sings.
|
