Carve Away the Stone: Background

It’s easy to tell people who keep making the same mistake to come to terms with their guilt (chip away the stone), but it’s another matter to take your own advice and apply it to your own repeated mistakes (if you could just move your stone, I could get working on my own).

There are competing interpretations of the Sisyphean myth, but the one that seems to make the most sense in the context of the song is Albert Camus’ in his book The Myth of Sisyphus. In this extended essay, Sisyphus is seen as personifying the absurdity of the human condition but is ultimately heroic because the task of carrying the stone up the hill is meaningful to Sisyphus while he’s doing it, which is about all you can ask for in life.

“The subject of idols (as in ‘Totem’) comes up in the line “make a graven image with some features of your own.’ In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a wicked king whom the gods punished by having him push a giant rock up and down a hill in Hades. Every time he’d get to the top, the rock would roll back down again.”—Robert Telleria, Merely Players

Other rock bands have tackled Sisyphus. Chicago released Stone of Sisyphus a few years ago, although the core tracks were recorded in 1993 but never released. And Pink Floyd released a four-part imstrumental called Sisyphus in its 1969 album Ummagumma.

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