Dissect - S7E9 - Flight of the Navigator by Childish Gambino

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

We continue our season-long examination of Because The Internet with “Death by Numbers” and “Flight of the Navigator.” After attempting to take his own life, Gambino’s drug overdose sends him to a dreamy, intermediate world where he flies over everything and sees the connection and unity among all life on earth. Shop limited Season 7 merch: https://bit.ly/36ClxIV Dive deeper into the world of Because The Internet with our episodic visual guides (https://bit.ly/30EKbF1), where you can also read the BTI screenplay in full. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @dissectpodcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Today we continue our serialized analysis of Because the Internet by Childish Gambino. On our last episode, we dissected Act 3 and witnessed the boy go berserk at his house party, violently smashing everything in sight and kicking everyone out. He goes on a late-night drive to contemplate suicide as a means of escaping his existential struggle, and eventually returns home and attempts to kill himself by overdosing on an unnamed drug. As the boy slides out of consciousness, he becomes fixated on the disappearance of the brown

recluse spider on his wall, worried about the spider's friends and family. The act ended with the script fading out, mirroring the boys sliding out of consciousness. The next page in the script has no text or instruction to play a song. Instead, there's just an embedded film clip, an abstract graphic animation that envisions the boys' real experience of a world somewhere in between life and death. This animation is scored by BTI's next track, the beginning of Act 4, Death by Numbers. Death by Numbers was produced by Childish Gambino and Ludwig Gornson and has a running time of just 44 seconds. The song's title, Death by Numbers, seems to allude to the boy's suicide attempt through painkillers, drugs that

numb the sorrow that he's experienced. Thus, we can read the title as Death by Numbers. The The title also holds a duality of the organic and geometric, the natural and the digital. Death and life are the organic natural states. Numbers, on the other hand, represent the digital, the through lines of code and technology. The title represents the coexistence of the two, perhaps alluding to their interwoven nature in the digital age and the heightened tension between them. Amidst a dreamy haze of distortion, Gambino sings, Slide, Baby, I'm gonna let it go. No one has to know. so let it slide. Gambino here is letting go of his grip on the mortal coil,

sliding into another state of consciousness, perhaps even experiencing the beginning stages of death. We also notice here the use of the word slide again. Previously, we've seen the brown recluse spiders ask the boy, where are you? Who is this? Don't slide. Given the existential nature of those questions, as well as the extended metaphor of the spiders as a representative of our life in the web, The word slide appeared to mean an avoidance of the existential struggle. Instead of grappling with and confronting this angst,

slide conveys just letting go, which is what Gambino sings here. He's telling himself to stop wrestling with the pursuit of purpose as he gives up and slides towards death. Gambino begins repeating his initial lyrics, but interrupts this mini-loop by singing, wow. It appears this is the boy's reaction to the near-death experience he's going through. The experience is psychedelic. which makes sense given that he's attempted a drug overdose.

We might recall the shrooms of World Star and their exposure of humanity's interconnectedness. A similar revelation will occur in BTI's Nex Song, but here in Death by Numbers, this interconnectedness is expressed in the visualizer, the embedded film clip that were asked to play in the script after the drug overdose. The clip uses match cuts to string together a series of surreal animations, which brings together multidimensional circular and triangular patterns in an amalgamation of digital and organic, the same fusion we see in the title Death by Numbers. There's an old-timey numerical countdown to zero, a rotating pyramid, kaleidoscopes, a blood-red orb, and even a rotating

disco ball. While we have a more detailed breakdown of what these images might represent on our website, in short, it seems that they're symbolic of the algorithm, of the interconnected nature of all things. This is conveyed through the integration of symbolic shapes and patterns, where Gambino fuses the natural and digital building blocks of the universe. It's a surreal psychedelic experience brought on by the boy's overdose, his equivalent of the pearly gates and its near-death experience. These are the patterns, the loops that make up the algorithm that encompasses all. As the animation nears its end, the word life appears on screen, followed by a three-to-one countdown. This signals the boy coming back to consciousness, as death by numbers ends, and we hear the

same clicking slash loading sound we heard at the end of the song Crawl. After this mysterious sound, the script immediately instructs us to play the album's next song, Flight of the Navigator. Flight of the Navigator is produced by Childish Gambino and Ludwig Gawrinson. The track has an interesting backstory, one that Gwrensen explained on Genius.com. Quote, this is the first song I did on BTI. I remember coming to The Mansion and wasn't really sure about what to expect in terms of my involvement on the album.

I hadn't seen Donald in a while, and I felt I had something to prove in terms of being creative and coming up with new sounds if I was going to be good enough for BTI. We had talked about the movie Flight of the Navigator earlier in the day, so I named the song file Flight of the Navigator even before we started writing the music. First thing, I sat down with Donald's shitty acoustic guitar and played some sweet chords. He recorded it on his iPhone and then sent it to my email. I put it into Ableton and timed my playing and also pitched it down like seven steps. I found a crazy sound with someone going,

Oohie. It sounded so strange, so I just had to put it in there. Then I had this old 70 synthesizer movie sound that I put in the beginning. Donald sang a melody into his iPhone. In fact, all the vocals on the first half of the song are sung into his iPhone. A cool layer that comes in around 330 is strings and Donald humming running through a side chain with the kick drum. and almost sounds like hummingbirds. Another unique thing is the whistle solo in the end.

It's Donald whistling. He's not a very good whistler, but I told him not to worry, because I'm going to pitch it down like an octave. It sounds like a saw or a theramine or something out of space. I really like how it came out. Also, Donald's vocals and the melody he wrote is just magical, unquote. On the deep web tour, flight of the navigator was preceded by a monologue from the boy's mother,

voiced by Gabrielle Union. This time, instead of being represented on stage by a white, moon-like projection, her presence is glowing rainfall. The boy's mother says, quote, You were so scared of the thunder, I had to hold you until it was over. I used to sing something or say something to you. I don't remember what I used to say. Neither does your father.

So let's make it up. How about I say, rain is the earth's forgiveness. It's always trying to make everything new again. It's always trying to forget. So we have to fight for what we want to keep. That's what death is. We have to choose what's going forward. What's worth saving. I choose you, unquote. The symbolism of the weather here matches the dark storm the boy is going through, and the idea of someone holding someone else for protection resembles what we heard in 2005. The mother, as a guiding

figure, provides the boy with words of comfort as he's at an extreme low point, mid-suicide attempt. She positions the rain he's experiencing to an opportunity for a new beginning. and death is a tool for evolving, for keeping only what you want, what's worth saving, and leaving the rest behind. What's worth saving to her as the boy. By given the ambiguous phrase I choose you, and that the boy represents humanity as a whole, we come to see the statement on a larger scale as choosing each other, as choosing humanity. Given the climate and danger of technology, it's a powerful statement that asserts the honor and capability of human beings, understanding that our connection, our empathy for each other, can be what keeps us going and is the one thing worth saving.

Gambino begins recounting a vision, I had a dream, I had a dream I was flying over all of us. There were so many pretty people, so many pretty faces. In tandem with the vocal effects and misty chord progression, it's clear this passage depicts a dream sequence, an out-of-body experience as he flies over all of us, a group that includes himself. The pretty people in pretty faces paint a picture of utopia, beauty, and bliss. The flight also refers to the title of the song and gives us a sense of Gambino taking the perspective of a navigator, someone who is able to look ahead to map out where to go. Gambino then details the dream singing, I talk to some birds, I fell in love again. The birds match the flying concept of the dream,

while falling in love again alludes to the myriad of failed relationships we've seen the boy grapple with. This phrase I fell in love again might also allude to the opening line of the song Chicago by Sufion Stevens. If you remember from our very first episode this season, Glover is a massive Sufion Stevens fan, even dedicating an entire mixtape of remixes to Sufion's songs, including Chicago. In Chicago, Sufion details numerous road trips, celebrating the freedom and mistakes he makes, all the while acknowledging the influences of everything surrounding those journeys. Thematically, it's this concept of journeys as a means for discovery that Gambino might be referencing here on flight of the navigator, as the boy will take something from this unconscious revelation.

Gambino continues singing, and none of this ever ended. Everything just kept going and going and going. This utopic vision is infinite, an all-encompassing quality of the dream we're experiencing with the boy, one where we are free from limits. Gambino sings, and even when you laugh, you cried, and even when you were sad, you were really happy, because you were here. Both crying and laughing appear here intertwined. We recall a similar idea in 2005, when Gambino rapped, kind of sad, but I'm laughing.

It was also in the song No Exit, when he said, laugh for a minute, couldn't cry for the life of me. Previously, the boy was unable to express his emotion, but now he dreams of doing just that. This ability to express emotion is, quote, because you were here, a statement that emphasizes a realization that he's not alone. Gambino sings, and I got to meet every star, every planet, everything that made me. Continuing the fixation on celestial bodies and no exit,

the boy meets stars and planets and becomes intimately in tune with the scientific knowledge that our bodies are composed of stardust. It's a formal recognition of his connection to the universe and displays the unity among all humans. If we're all made of stardust, if we're all just tiny bits of the universe, if we could zoom out far enough like Gamino is on this track,

we would be able to see that we're all the same. Symbolically, this seems to stand in for everyone's influence on each other. Who we are, our identity, only exists in relation to each other. We may try to be a certain thing, but that thing can be perceived differently by different people. and our environment and the people around us also affects who we are. There's no fixed true self because we're always at the will of someone else's perception. We are therefore only the experience of the connections between us.

Gambino's dream is helping him realize these connections, both to the universe and to each other. Hence we get the next lines, and we all kissed and became the same. We became the same. Here Gambino shifts pronouns, you and I, have come together to become we, a culmination of the unity of his dream. This is a genderless, boundless kiss. In this dream, there's also an implication of ego death, that is, a space where any individual sense of self-identity

dissolves into an experience of interconnectivity, of oneness with the universe. We've previously noted that Glover crafted the boy as a universal applicator, a character that we can all find ourselves in. Here the boy discovers he can find himself in everything, else, and the death of the ego breaks down those walls and separations that once made him feel lonely. Instead of thinking of himself as an individual fixed identity, now he understands the constant change and influence that everything has on each other. Similar to this concept of ego death is the

Buddhist concept of a bardo, a state of existence between death and rebirth. This intermediate, surreal state offers the chance for transcendental learning and growth, similar to the impactful lesson of oneness the boy is experiencing here. Given the motific presence of the Buddha statue and the mansion, and the parallel between the boy and the Buddha we discussed last episode, the bardo seems a fitting representation of the boy's experience here. As flight of the navigator continues, Gambino comes out of the dream and shares some of his newfound knowledge. That's right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, Gambino described his dream of oneness and connection with the universe and all the things within.

As flight of the navigator continues, Gambino comes out of the dream and describes what he learned. Coming out of the distance, we've almost been been having been been been. Coming out of the dream, Gambino sings, Who would have thought this, we almost lost it. He's astonished by his experience, both by the sheer beauty of interconnectedness, and how close he came to losing sight of it all. He reminds himself, when he lie inside the darkness, it's hard to see. The sadness and existential angst he felt made it difficult for him to see his connection

to the universe and to others. Gambino then notes that he wasn't alone in this darkness, singing, and we sleep in tradition, keep him off in the distance, to tell you that we haven't been. Here it seems that tradition, the way things have been, refers to the systems our society has in place, and those systems are the darkness obscuring our connections. Our society imposes inequitable law and justice practices and an economic system that requires some people to lose

in order for other people to win. This keeps us separated, or off in the distance, as Gambino puts it, denying the connection and equality that are the basis of our existence. This is further emphasized by the symbolic use of sleep in the line we sleep in tradition. To be aware of injustice is to be woke, and to be asleep in tradition implies a kind of mindlessness of just going along with the systems because that's the way things have always been.

This is similar to the revelation of World Star, that the way our system is set up, our entertainment and profits come from the exploitation of the disenfranchised. We must realize that we are bonded to who we exploit, that our struggle is shared. While our plight is not always the same, we still ought to help each other with our struggles. Gambino sings, We Were High, in a High Pitch Floor. undercut by cold water delivered in a lower, almost speaking tone. We Were High continues developing the motif of partying and inebriation. The boy came to feel that drug use is meaningless in the face of death,

a high that distracts us from the existential questions we all face. By contrast, the high he is experiencing flying over all of us made him realize the unity among all things, a potential answer to his questions. The interruption of cold water is one of shock and rebirth. Coming out of this dream, Gambino is going to have to change. But we also recognize that cold water has been a subtle motif used throughout BTI. In the song Shadows, we saw the cold water of a shower snapped the boy out of his somber recollections of failed relationships.

In sweatpants, the deluge of cold Gatorade brought his bragging to a halt and forced the boy to reckon with the undeniable influence shared between himself and others. Recently on no exit, the cold water of Pellegrino was used to consume the unnamed drug in his overdose attempt. Here in flight of the navigator, the boy is vulnerable to the cold water, and it leaves him asking the existential question plainly. He sings, why try at all? Why bother? This is what preoccupied the boy after Jay's death and World Star. Why are we here? Does our life matter? What is our purpose? In the aftermath of his visions, the boy is beginning to understand that we have each other, and so Gambino finds the following response to his questions, to his existential

dilemma. Gambino pleads, just hold me close, my darling. He knows things are bad, that we lie inside darkness, that our highs will ultimately be cut by our lows, that we've lost the vision of our unity and equality. to the point where it can only be seen in our dreams. To get through this then, we need to hold each other close. We are not alone in our state of loneliness. No matter what plights we face, we have each other. Gambino is begging us to hold on to him, to each other, to ourselves, so that we might make it through. It calls back to the choice as mother made in the live performance

prelude when she declared, you have to choose what's going forward, what's worth saving, I choose you. This isn't necessarily an answer to the existential question, but it is a choice in the face of it, a moral stance on our duty to each other. We all contend with existential terror and dread, and seek purpose as a means of confronting what can feel like the meaninglessness of existence. As we journey on, we can support each other, understanding that we share the same state of being in our collective and individual struggle, that by being alive, all of us are dying, and thus

we ought to cherish life while we can and cherish each other in the process. Gambino this, you couldn't mean this. Gambino questions, who would have dreamed this, you couldn't mean this, you couldn't mean this, it would be some type of meanness to where you are. surely the state we're in where we feel disconnected and our basic rights are impeached by the structures we've created would be some kind of sinister dream. For it to be intentional would be mean-spirited, and yet it is our tragic condition. We have an increasing number of tools, growing reservoirs of information and technology, innumerable powers and advances,

and yet we fail to help everyone. We're not using our tools right. Gamino then admits, because I don't know where to go, and no one else seems to know. Even as he assumes the role of The Navigator from the song's title, he admits he doesn't know where to go, just like his mother in the live preface. In a song that embodies so much vulnerability, these lines grapple with Glover assuming the role of the Navigator, abusing the boy as a model for us to learn and grow through. In interviews at this time, Glover would speak about his adoption of this role

and his responsibility in our collective evolution. I just want people to look back and be like, okay, this was somebody who was taking responsibilities of the time. And maybe I'll make mistakes. I mean, I'm sure I will. Yeah. Like the person who's like, are these berries poisonous? Okay, I'll try. It was poisonous.

Like, that guy looks dumb because he died. But like all of us know now, like these berries are poisonous. Well, I feel like people are afraid to create. Yeah, because you can't be vulnerable on the internet. Somebody's going to tear you apart. Exactly. Yeah. Like, you can't be.

It's clear that in expressing his dream, Gambino is embodying a level of vulnerability in the song. He's doing so to try and show us what he saw, that we're all here suffering, struggling to find purpose, and that we need to realize our connection to move forward. Gambino sings, We were high, nights fallen, why try at all, dark calling. Again, the high is interrupted by reality. Knights fallen is a homonym, as it means both the dark of nighttime taking over the sky, but also of nights, as in warriors dying. The high is ended by the overwhelming despair of existential angst. When we think of the boy's narrative, we remember that at the start he was high, enjoying a lavish life and not thinking

twice about trolling strangers on the internet. So what was it that made nightfall, that made him start to question life's purpose? It was back in World Star, and the death of Jay he filmed outside the club. A fallen night slain on the street. As Jay lay dying, the boy stared at him and watched the sidewalk turned black with blood. It was only then that he started to feel something like a connection for the first time. This then led to many calls, the boy's friends calling him and picking him up from the murder scene, Gambino receiving Stevens phone call midway through the song, and most importantly, the call to action in our narrative, forcing the boy to confront his underlying despair and finding meaning in his life. This idea of calling now continues in flight of the

Navigator. Gambino sings, so we're left alone. No one. left to call upon. The dark calling, the fallen night. These are stand-ins for death, the inevitable outcome of life. This illuminates that when we die, we are alone, with nothing left to do. We're all alone in the end, so it's good. Wow. That's the way it has to be.

Really? Yeah, I think so. But that's okay. You're alone in the beginning, too. I guess. You won't be there for me in the end. I'm just going to be alone. No one will.

No one. No one. Thank you for you for. Not in a bad way. No one will be there for me. No one. While this reinforces the loneliness of death, the use of call in both the dark calling and no one left a call upon

reveals the impetus for purpose. A calling is a purpose, a reason to live that is first felt and then responded to. The dark calling of death is a reminder that the end result of our life will be a lonely death, and that this fact is very dark. But this reveals that while we can, we must call, must find our calling, our purpose. and it appears that the ultimate most universal calling is that of each other. The suffering of having

no one to call upon, of being lonely, can be abated by the inherent calling we have for one another. Gambino continues, Be still my broken bones as I travel on. He feels broken by the pain, mistakes, and failures he's experienced, yet he will travel on, he will keep going forward and hope that he can heal and grow. Previously, the only broken bones we've seen in BTI were in the cast of Naomi, the girl who halted the boy's rampage at the party momentarily. This foreshadows the connection he will realize with her, but for now, the navigator sets his course forward, asking for just one thing. Gambino again pleads, just hold me close, my darling. This is a call for connection,

for unity, for solace. It's incredibly vulnerable and tender, typifying the qualities we need if we want to make space for each other to heal and grow. Gambino is looking toward the future, trying to show us the way forward. While he may not know the specifics, it's clear that we need each other to go on. As the song ends, having asked to be held close, Gambino's final words are cold wa. It's cold water cut short, with a couple of implications. First, by cutting it short, Gambino makes the phrase a hominin for go on. This is yet another lyrical vagary on the track, and

It highlights the importance of moving forward, of navigating the future. It also highlights the symbolic cold water, something intricately woven throughout BTI. The cold water has been the wake-up call for Gambino on this track, and by ending with these words, the track itself becomes a wake-up call, something we see reflected in the scene flight of the navigator scores in the screenplay. The boy slowly awakes in a hospital bed wearing a medical gown. His eyes are heavy and Golden Girls is playing on the television in his room. The script notes that sitcom laughs have always freaked the boy out because the laughs come from

people who are now dead, so the laughs themselves are dead, and yet they carry on, queuing future audiences to laugh with them. A nurse enters the room and tells the boy that his friends brought him to the hospital. The boy interrupts saying that they're not his friends and that he can't trust them. The nurse responds by telling the boy he should talk to a professional, as in therapy. The boy retorts that the nurse doesn't really care about him either, and that our lives are not precious. The nurse pauses for a moment and asks, You done?

To which the boy says, I was trying to be. The nurse dismisses this, saying, no, you weren't, because guess what? It's not hard to do. The script then flashes forward to the boy leaving the hospital. His crew is in the waiting room. The boy requests that they not talk about the whole thing and go be awkward at Chipotle together. The crew is silent. Then Swank tells the boy that his father has passed away.

The boy simply says, okay, and the scene ends. As the boy sits in the hospital bed, he's groggy and wearing a gown. It's a definitive change from the outfit we've become accustomed to him wearing, and the desaturated paleness of the gown and medical setting convey a sense of rebirth of starting anew. Golden Girls playing on TV adds to our growing list of 90s sitcom references throughout BTI, which includes sister sister, Clarissa explains it all, The Little Mermaid, The Fresh Prince, and more. These 90s classics are symbols of internet nostalgia,

indicative of our resistance to moving forward. But we're afraid to move on. That's why there's so much, like, nostalgia on the internet. Like, everything is always like, remember Ninja Turtles? Like, because we don't want to look forward because that's scary. Like, stuff is really scary. There's, like, 3D printed guns and stuff. Like, it's scary.

we got to move on. Like, it doesn't make sense to stay here. Given Glover's comments here, it's clear that the dead laughs of Golden Girls highlight the need to move forward. On the surface, there's comfort in enjoying the laughs that have held true for years. That's why hospitals play reruns on TV, for comfort. But if we think about it, those laughs are not what they once were. They're simply emotions of the past preserved. Like a past relationship that's now gone, we need to let go of the comfort of the past to evolve. We need to stop trying to recreate the past in order to move forward. When the boy talks to the nurse, their conversation is not timid or even sensitive. It's direct and unforgiving. When the boy

flippantly dismisses the nurse's suggestion that he talked to someone, the nurse doesn't coddle a boy. Instead, he points out that if the boy really wanted to leave, he would have done so, a statement echoed by Glover in interviews at this time. First of all, suicidal is kind of dumb to me. Like the idea is like, if I want to kill myself, I will. It's not hard to die. I could do it like right now. But like number two. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. No, but that's real. Like you gotta be honest. Like, why is everybody pretending like everything's okay? Everything's not okay. Like we're like we, this is, we are more connected than we've ever been. But I feel more alone than I've ever been. Like no one should.

Glover points out the obvious fact that we're all going to die. But this is something we generally avoid talking about. Death is right around the corner at every moment. It could happen in an instant in infinite ways and the absolute. truth of that demands our attention. We must find a way to live with death, to live with the fact that we're all going to die. The boy's suicide attempt requires him to face this head on, as does the sudden and unexpected death of his father. With his mother already gone, with the feeling that he can't trust his friends, the loss of his father makes it unavoidably clear. The boy is alone.

Yet his experience of flying over the universe and his vision of unity with all things will force him to reconcile this duality of being alone together. Just hold me close, my darling. Let me close my darling. Conclusions. When Gambino announced the Because the Internet Live show, the Deep Web Tour, it came by way of an online poster on his website. Included with this poster was a written passage that gave context to the tour and

BTI more generally. The passage begins, quote, where's the ground? Where's Earth? Where's Mom? She left, and now we're headed somewhere, moment to moment. But we don't know where, and we can't stop living. The internet, our new earth, moves forward only, leaving behind a curated record.

Because the internet was made to be the soundtrack to this new coding, the reworking of our humanity, trying to find each other and ourselves again after the Big Bang. Every soul looking for each other, like every drop of water looks for the ocean, unquote. Both this passage and flight of the Navigator convey the experience of journeys after the loss of a mother and call us to action after the realization that we are all one, all looking to connect with each other. Like I believe that all of us, all humans, we're trying to do, we're trying to get, we're like all the water on Earth.

Like, they're all trying to find each other. It's all streaming, they're all trying to get to each other. We're all trying to understand each other. We're all trying to get there. According to Glover, water is both who we are and our call to ask. action, a movement towards more fully realized togetherness, something the boy experienced in his drug-induced vision. Gambino's written passage continues, quote, The rules of the internet are the rules of our new universal language. Like the Bible,

like the Constitution, we make rules to break later and be better, pushing forward until we're all just a bodiless conscience, buzzing through the air, trading information, conversing, testing ideas without fear or violence, free from, limit." Glover again here imagines a world in which humanity becomes a formless, bodiless conscience, a harmony and unification only made possible through the free exchange of ideas without the fear of being judged by others for being wrong or making mistakes. Glover often compared this modern push toward freedom to the civil rights movement, daring people to take a stance, free from the fear that they might be wrong later.

We were like, man, people talk a lot about the civil rights movement and all that stuff. And like, because there's a movement happening right now, too. Like, that's happening right now. And the thing is, most people during the Civil Rights Movement, like, they weren't like, yeah, we hate black people or like, we love black people. Most of them are like, let's see how this works out. Most of them were at home just like, well. Let's see how this shakes out. Yeah, they're like, I'm not going to go on any marches.

I don't necessarily hate black people. I don't live near that. I don't really have a stance. I don't really care. I just want to live my life. Like, it's like, that's most people. So, like, when you're asked to make a stance, because it's like, man, I got to do research. search, I got to, because I got to tell the future and see, is this going to be cool in the future?

Is this going to be okay? How am I going to look? Because everybody's afraid. And that's the thing. It's like, we live in a time right now where it's not okay to say the truth and then learn you were wrong later. While the internet offers us the tools to make infinite connections, theoretically moving us closer to unity, it also has the potential to freeze us in our worst moments, ripping us apart. If we can't escape this trap of the web, then we'll never be free. and will never grow up. This is what the boy's online trolling comes to represent in the album's narrative,

someone using his tools wrong, propagating conflict and profiting on people's mistakes. His personal crisis thus represents our own collective crisis as global and national tensions intensify and we attack each other like school children on the playground of social media.

The good thing, according to Glover, is that we have the ability to choose our collective destiny in the age of the internet. It's up to us to how we want to use our new tools, for better or for worse. Quote, we have reached a moment where there is no real because we don't care anymore. We can curate what's real every day on our timeline or feed. The boundary of what's real and what we want to be real is as volatile as the worth of a Bitcoin

or a human heartbeat. This is an important moment, but be aware and beware that we're all making it up as we go, together, our human collective unconscious, our deep web, learn to code, Learn the code. Flight of the Navigator is because the Internet's vision of the human collective unconscious, as the boy, our Navigator, gives us a tour of Glover's beautiful vision of the utopian state of true unity and total freedom. A state Glover believes we could eventually achieve if only we use our tools correctly. From the song's first line, I Had a Dream, which subtly nods to Martin Luther King's famous vision of equality and freedom.

Glover similarly conveys an experience of unity and oneness. Glover expresses his vision through gorgeous, arpeggiated chords and elegant singing, the beauty of his abstract vision amplified and clarified in a way that is only possible through music. More than the words Gambino sings is the way he sings them, as we slip into his optimistic dream of the deep web of collective unconscious and are embraced by a weightless divinity translated through his lush, elegant harmonies. Like all experiences that transcend language, the splendor of Gambino's vision is felt more than it is understood. It's something you envision but can't quite touch, like some shimmering destination just beyond the horizon, far away but close enough to just barely make out.

Glover invites us to embrace each other as we navigate toward this horizon, coding the future, deciding our collective fate together. We have to fight for what we want to keep, said the boy's mother. We have to choose what's going forward. what's worth saving. I choose you. She chose the boy, her descendant, and as evident by the boy's symbolic status as a universal figure,

she chose us, meaning we ought to choose each other. It's an absolute of like there's always going to be change and there's always going to be each other, so why are we not helping each other? So I think that's very special. So how do we use the web to engage empathy and create a better future for ourselves? When we're so divided, is it possible for us to feel and act on our inherent connections?

Now an orphan in the aftermath of his father's death, we'll see the boy try and find connection in reality in Zealots of Stockholm and Earn. Songs will examine note by note, line by line, next time on Dysect. Today's episode of Dysect was written by Camden Ostrander and me. Remember, you can go deeper into the warlord because of the internet through the supplementary guides on our website, Dysectpodcast.com. While you're there, be sure to check out our limited season 7 merchandise. Also be sure to follow us on social media at Dissect Podcast.

Today's episode was edited by Eric Bass and me, screenplay score by So Wiley, theme music by bureaucratic. Okay, thanks everyone. Talk to you next week.