Mercury & Lightning // Picture Of Mercury’s Back (Commentary)

So the original album cover for this record was supposed to be a picture of Mercury’s back.

Mercury is the Roman equivalent to the God Hermes.

We found a picture of his back that we were gonna use.

But I decided against it because it was hard to tell who he was and I thought it was important to me that he’d be someone recognizable, some recognizable features we’ll talk about it later.

But originally it was Mercury’s back because I think it illustrated a statement or statements of this record on a couple of different levels.

The first level for me, which is almost always personal is that I felt like if I’m being honest I’ve been chasing God all my life and can never quite catch him.

And I found myself at a stage in life where this began to bother me, I felt like my whole life have been looking at God’s back like he’s always a couple of steps ahead of me and just when I think I haven’t figured it out, he seems to disappear.

So the first reason to have Mercury on the cover is to begin this conversation.

It's the beginning of a conversation I'm having with God essentially the record opens up with me.

So I'm pointing at this picture and asking God something like, "So, is this you?"

'Cause you know sometimes it certainly feels that way.

I need a new religion, or a new lie.

Or am I doing something wrong or what am I missing here?

I've always felt like I was missing something.

And it seems like it would be easy on Sundays just to lay down my ideas of God and move on.

And many people don't do this because of some deep seeds of guilt or existential fears but for me, it's neither of these.

There's just something beyond me that calls me out into "unknown", like a dream you feel when you wake up but you can't remember the details of the dream.

Or when you have a word on the tip of your tongue that you can feel in your gut but you just can't immediately articulate it.

Like I feel that and any time I try to simply put God away, this voice seems to reverberate throughout the universe, reminding me of my existential need for God.

So I can't easily walk away from that.

Obviously we're on the scratch and the surface here when it comes to a real conversation about faith.

But I never wanted to do much more with this song.

I never planned on resolving anything here but rather opening up the conversation on this record with this sort of questions and this sort of tension.