Beneath the Surface

Beneath the Surface is the ninth and final track on Dream Theater's eleventh album, A Dramatic Turn of Events, and was solely written by John Petrucci.

An atypically soft coda, added because the band felt that Breaking All Illusions didn't offer the album enough closure, Beneath the Surface was written separately from the rest of the album, and was brought in by Petrucci as an idea that was already more or less fully formed.

The song features acoustic guitar and rousing orchestral keyboards. John Petrucci recorded this song using a 6-string guitar in standard tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E).

LyricsEdit

Is there ever really a right time
You had led me to believe
Someday you'd be there for me

When the stars above aligned
When you weren't so consumed
I kept looking for the clues

So I waited in the shadows of my heart
And still the time was never right

Until one day I stopped caring
And began to forget why I longed to be so close
And I disappeared into the darkness
And the darkness turned to pain
And never went away
Until all that remained
Was buried deep beneath the surface

A shell of what things could have been

Tired bones beneath a veil
Of guarded secrets all too frail
Sad to think I never knew
You were searching for the words
For the moment to emerge

Yet the moment never came
You couldn't risk my fragile frame

Until one day you stopped caring
And began to forget why you tried to be so close
And you disappeared into the darkness
And the darkness turned to pain
And never went away
Until all that remained
Was buried deep beneath the surface

I would scream just to be heard
As if yelling at the stars
I was bleeding just to feel

You would never say a word
Kept me reaching in the dark
Always something to conceal

Until one day I stopped caring
And began to forget why I longed to be so close
And I disappeared into the darkness
And the darkness turned to pain
And never went away
Until all that remained
Was buried deep beneath the surface

TriviaEdit

• Other tracks that were not written with the entire band present include Wither and The Silent Man by John Petrucci, and Vacant by John Myung and Jordan Rudess, although Vacant was based on an idea from Stream of Consciousness. You could arguably include the entirety of A Dramatic Turn of Events in this list, as new drummer Mike Mangini was absent from the writing sessions.