In Our Image

The deity is a thought roaming the endless night, and a thought has no form. To see what it is, it needs a mirror. So it makes man in its own image and likeness, and looks: in man’s laughter and tears it finds itself, and in man’s dreams, the shape it takes. Man looks back, and gives it a name — God — and a face like his own; from then on, God is a he. Before long, who is whose image, he can no longer say.

The title plays on who makes whom in whose image. “In our image” is God speaking of himself as “us” — “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26, KJV) — and it is people making God in theirs: “If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated,” in the line attributed to Voltaire. Xenophanes said it first: if horses had hands, they would draw their gods as horses.

This was one of the last songs I wrote for the album. I wanted an operatic song, and that’s where the Italian came from. Scusate se non è proprio italiano.