Originally Posted by
Kris
Thank you, that's very flattering. It just occurred to me as I was also thinking of the particular lyric in Now I'm Nothing where he said, "All that I could do! Is break myself in two!" back in 1991, which could sort of count as the beginning of the Broken era as Trent was working on Broken at the time. When I look at it this way, it is Trent realizing that he's obviously Broken, but it is the start of him destroying himself, as shown in Wish, Last, and Gave Up. It makes me like to view Gave Up and Mr Self Destruct as the top of The Downward Spiral. And by the bottom, which is Hurt, Trent is finally broken up in two. His Left and his Right side. He really is a genius in terms of story-telling if he really thought all that through and built up on it from 1991 to 1999 and so forth.
It's also interesting how the ending of Hurt sounds like a crash, which finally breaks him up into two parts. And it's just getting harder and harder for him to tell them apart, considering how they overlap each other so well.