(forehead SMACK)

[gram_negative]

...earlier this year, it suddenly dawned on me (fifteen years after initially listening to the record and looking at the booklet before Ms. Vernon's English class with a certain Mr. Douglas Roark) that the artwork on the inside pages of The Downward Spiral is meant to be closeups of Icarus's wings, after he flew too close to the sun and the wax melted. Hence the broken wood-and-bone framework-pieces, the crumpled feathers with string wound around them, and the spatters of wax and blood. (Hence, in fact, the title of the record and eponymous song.)

I felt somewhat better when I casually mentioned this to Ian, last night, and he underwent a similar moment of revelation.