I once met a man who trained himself not to dream   What he seems to have seen was a glimpse of everything   He's been painting pictures on canvas since age thirteen   And claims he only exists in the mind of a higher being   And I enjoy his work; mostly scenic landscapes   But each one is focused on an easel where the man paints himself   painting himself   And all that's in his visual field   He said this was the only way he could make himself real   Ever since he could remember, he had one nightmare reoccur   But until about ten years ago, it didn't matter   It consisted of loud, distorted sounds echoing off the concrete   He ran on top of it in attempt to reach a ladder   Now sometimes, he'd get so close but never touch his destination   Which caused him much frustration 'cause he didn't know what it   meant   And by the end of the dream, he saw the scene from a bird's eye   Only to witness his dead body laying on the cement      It was only to witness his dead body laying on the cement   At first it freaked him out, but after a while he grew content   So he thought, 'It's just a dream,' and kept living his life   Writing his soul on the canvas 'cause it sheds his planet light   And it goes on and on like space and time, ain't nothing odd   It's not that he didn't believe, he just didn't approve of God   His experience was one I couldn't comprehend   'Till I stopped being detective and listened to him as a friend   He said      [Chorus]   He once saw a painting that told his whole life story   It was then that he knew he was the art of divinity   He once saw a painting that told his whole life story   A brush stroke of the gods made him one note in their symphony   He once saw a painting that told his whole life story   He spoke for himself and not the rest of humanity   He once saw a painting that told his whole life story   And I realize that I'm not real   God just imagined me      It's like I said   About ten years ago, the event that changed his whole reality   Took place on his monthly trip to the local art gallery   It was there where he studied his contemporaries   And there where he nearly carried his sanity to a hole and   buried it forever      It was a very mysterious day   The place was almost empty   And he got chills down his spine just being present in the scene   On the wall, there was a picture that looked familiar   And when he got close, his heart stopped   cause he saw it was a painting of his dream   It was a painting of his dream   His body on a runway   By a ladder to an airplane with its propellers spinning   Which accounted for the loud noise   The match up was perfect   And that was the day he stopped believing in existing   He resented his creator   I mean, words can't explain   What must have went on in his brain while he stared into a frame   Of a work of art which he created and was at the same time   The mind can't handle that much, it's just insane   It's like reading a book where each words describe your thoughts   And in quotations, it reads whatever you say when you talk   You think it can't happen   But it did happen   I guess there's surprisingly wide cracks in each life's sidewalk   He stumbled upon an answer when he never had a question   And decided to stop dreaming to maintain his mental health   Now he hardly talks to people   Just stays in his basement   Writing infinity, by painting himself   Painting himself   This is a strange universe   Is it all just a blueprint?   In the real universe, is my consciousness useless?   Are we really something a higher intelligence made up?   A figment of imagination colored by a cosmic paintbrush?   Maybe all of our art creates the fate of other beings   Then every character in ever novel thinks it's alive and were   just gods   Ruling blindly   Just a theory   I don't know what it means   But that's the story of the man who trained himself not to dream      [Chorus]   He once saw a paining that told his whole life story   He witnessed the paradox of the word 'existing'   He once saw a painting that told his whole life story   He colored his world theirs, and concluded he wasn't living   He once saw a painting that told his whole life story   The hidden variable that all that is is art   And when I close my eyes, I see eternity as a story   A God imagined the God that imagined me   And I am God   And so on