As was stated in the Noumenon Article, I took a different approach to writing The Darkness than I originally planned to. I was actually inspired by the Silent Ballet interpretation of the album, and specifically the references attributed to Garden:

“Garden” makes a sudden entrance with a dark interplay of clear-sounding piano, electronic ambience, and a heartbeat-like pulse that makes the piece sound slower than it really is; the representation of paradise in the Islamic tradition, this is a garden like no other in reality and where time is entirely malleable, but contrary to our expectations, the only thing we see and hear is ourselves, our own hearts filling up the aural vacuum of afterlife perfection.

While it is rare anyone can get a song meaning spot on, especially an instrumental one - I think David did a good job explaining what the song meant to him as a part of the Album. Truth be told it is somewhat geared in that direction - Paradise and a mystical "Garden of Eden" retreat in my imagination. It should also be known that I too sometimes don't fully understand what the song is speaking of until later reflecting upon it. I write things on impulse, but they do have basis in visions, imagination, dreams and daydreams I have, and Garden, originally "Our Garden", is no exception.

Garden sets the stage for a quiet retreat with a loved one - real and imaginary. I chose to create a echoing Piano lullaby to present the weak and fragile bond holding on with fear in an uncertain and confusing world. Imagine two children together playing in the shadows of an overhanging tree, the scene an almost brush-like stroke of a painter in motion. Innocent and lost inside their own imagination - free from the interplay of a dying paradigm. Then as the song progresses - see the children grow older, holding on to those memories of being together in that innocent state - now slowly feeling the outside world dragging them in and away from each other into separate lives. None of this has sound at first and flies by you as a vision with only sparse elements that present themselves as emotion and idea.

Garden folds up into a reflection near the end, with the drums going, the piano and ethereal synths flowing in a mild dissonance near 3:30. Then a subtle retreat into some unknown state of mind we might all experience after we have been given our time here in this life. The thing that makes these thoughts special to me when I envision them is not only the present, but the potential and possible past and future that reverberates with the drop of disturbance into this world beyond intuition. I almost worship intuition as a spiritual energy, a kind of guide that connects us in a way we don't fully understand yet with the noumenon. I am always amazed that my intuition presents itself in the many ways it does. There can be no greater inspiration than that of an apparition of a thought that just won't stop nagging you to express it.