A song by Seraphino Aurelius Belladonna
Tower of Broken Glass
A portrait of insight becoming isolation: the clearer the view, the sharper the walls around the one who sees.
- From the album
- As It Ought to Be
- Album sequence
- Track 10 of 14
- First released
- Running time
- 5:01
The matter at hand
What the song concerns
The tower is built from perception rather than stone. Its inhabitant sees hypocrisy, danger, and contradiction with painful clarity, but each truth he recognizes separates him further from those who would rather remain comfortable.
Broken glass offers both vision and injury. The song resists romanticizing alienation: discernment can protect a person from illusion while also becoming a prison from which every human connection appears compromised.
In his own estimation
Seraphino, upon its composition
Clarity is praised chiefly by those who have not endured very much of it. To see through every performance, excuse, and convenient falsehood may appear a gift from below. From within, it can resemble a chamber whose windows cut the hand whenever one attempteth escape.
I wrote the tower not as punishment imposed by fools, but as a structure the perceptive man helpeth build. Each accurate judgment addeth another glittering wall. Soon he can see everyone and reach no one. Wisdom without mercy is an excellent vantage and a dreadful home.
“The solitary soul confined within his tower of glass.”
The complete text
Lyrics
He dwells alone within his mind, where all appear to smile,
Yet knows their laughter turns on him, concealed in careful guile,
Within a tower built of grief, of quiet, brittle years—
How long may one endure such height… surrounded by his fears?
In this life we chase our wants and name them truth we hold,
Clutching things that lose their weight the moment they are told,
But he who stands in glass above has seen what lies beneath—
He looks upon it day by day… no comfort, no relief.
A thinker tried to match his sight, then faltered in the strain,
A critic searched for fault in him, then found his search in vain,
For something in that distant gaze resists the common frame,
And bends the sense of what is truth beyond the reach of name.
He hears the words that others speak, yet finds them worn and thin,
A pattern played too oft before, with little held within,
Though spoken loud with fervent claim, convinced of what they say—
He sees the hollow shape of it… and quietly turns away.
In this life we chase our wants and name them truth we hold,
Clutching things that lose their weight the moment they are told,
But he who stands in glass above has seen what lies beneath—
He looks upon it day by day… no comfort, no relief.
He suffers fools with little grace, and lesser thoughts with less,
Finds little worth in idle speech or hollow cleverness,
He grants them time—a fleeting breath—then turns himself aside,
For he has seen too much of man to linger long and bide.
He needs them not, nor seeks their kind, nor bends to what they claim,
For weightier thoughts consume his hours than any passing name,
And so he stands, apart, enclosed, unmoved by all that pass—
The solitary soul confined within his tower of glass.
In this life we chase our wants and name them truth we hold,
Clutching things that lose their weight the moment they are told,
But he who stands in glass above has seen what lies beneath—
He looks upon it day by day… no comfort, no relief.
Within that fragile, fractured height, he watches as they roam,
The only one who sees it plain, yet cannot call it home,
The life he sees laid out for them is harsher than they know…
Best learn it soon… or learn it slow.
Further evidence