A Stranger
by
A Perfect Circle
The song is about God. VERSE ONE is about praying ("cast the calming apple up and over satellites") to an inaccessible God for comfort ("to draw out the timid wild one, to convince you it's alright"). VERSE TWO describes the inner conflict between childhood religious indoctrination, and one's adult faculty of reason ("... while I formulate denials ..."). VERSE THREE dismisses God as a stranger for being so unknowable; condemns God for intentionally making things this way; begrudges the falsehoods that took root in the absence of any real knowledge of God (e.g. conflicting religions/beliefs/doctrines); then concludes with the realization that we're very much alone ("What am I to do with all this silence?"). VERSE FOUR continues the condemnation, equating God to a phantom, then to a coward, then to a force of destruction and ruin. The song ends by concluding that the cost of devotion to an absent God ("tearing my will down") is not worth the illusory benefits.