From the album Remember The Humans
This is about someone who mistakes being told what to do for transformation. The narrator frames another person as a holy guide pulling them toward aliveness, but every line shows them staying locked in observation mode. They describe her rebellion, quote her instructions, catalogue their own physical reactions. They never actually become the thing she told them to be.
She said not to just describe, but / Be something holy
The entire song violates this instruction. He calls her his favourite rebel instead of rebelling himself. The imperative lands, but he responds by describing how it landed rather than doing it.
Forget the mind, the body's growing thin / Your bones and your skin / And you must follow them
The logic collapses on itself. Forgetting requires mental effort, and a body growing thin suggests deprivation, not embodiment. The command to follow bones and skin sounds urgent but points nowhere specific. I'm not sure he knows what this instruction means either.
Glistening sweat on the back of my neck
This is the only concrete physical detail in the whole song. Not action, just sensation. The sweat suggests arousal or fear or both, but it stays stuck on the surface of his body. He never moves past registering that he's reacting.
Let me hear the call, 'We're going!' / Either restless or reborn
The call itself never gets quoted beyond two words. We hear about hearing it, but the content stays vague. Restless or reborn might be opposites or they might be the same state. He treats the ambiguity like profundity.
Something about the claim of the breath / She's my favourite rebel
The song ends by admitting it can't finish the thought. 'Something about' repeats like a mantra that replaces meaning. He loops her rebel status instead of claiming any rebellion for himself. The breath that claimed him stays unnamed.
The tragedy here might be that he genuinely believes describing the call counts as answering it. Or maybe he knows it doesn't and that's why the outro can't finish a sentence. Either way, she told him to be something holy and he made her holy instead. Easier to worship than to change.