There are few objects that are symbolically as potent as the rose.

Perfect in its encapsulation of the earth's ability to naturally produce beauty,

we have appropriately chosen the rose to symbolize love, the most powerful and potent of human emotions.

Roses are what we give our mothers as a gesture of appreciation on Mother's Day.

They're what we give our lovers as a gesture of affection on annivers.

We believe so much in the symbolic power of the

Rose that we think a bouquet of them will somehow correct a mistake we made and

help with the process of forgiveness. But because of their overwhelming positive

connotations, we often forget that in their natural state, roses have thorns, that if we don't handle them with caution, they will quite literally make us bleed.

And a similar thing can be said about wings, which

symbolically are commonly attributed to the heavenly transcendence of angels or

the freedom of flight. But Lucifer also had wings, so did Icarus, and their respective falls from Grace remind us that flight

carries with it the potential for a devastating fall.

Ever the complete thinker, Mac Miller has shown throughout swimming that he understands this kind of

duplicity. And in our episode today, we'll observe how Mack uses both roses and wings to reveal

that even the most beautiful things in the world have the potential to hurt us and what we might do

in the face of that reality.

From Spotify, I'm Cole Kushna and this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes.

Today we continue our serialized examination of Mack Miller swimming with its sixth track, Wings. So, Yeah. Macmiller's wings was produced by Alexander Spit and revolves around two chords that repeat throughout the entire track.

Like every song on swimming thus far, these chords are affected in such a way that they sound as if they're submerged underwater. Now in our last episode we detailed how the song Perfecto ended harmonically unresolved and how the first

court of self-care resolve that tension, harmonically binding the two tracks together,

something we saw reflected in the song's themes as well. And if you recall, we also noted last episode

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