Songfacts®:

• Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci penned the lyrics to this song about a count that scared him during a visit to Tuscany.
• Four out of the six songs on Black Clouds & Silver Linings are over 10 minutes long. This one at 19 minutes and 16 seconds is the longest. When we asked Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy about this, he replied: "We always have a couple of songs that deal with heavy topics, but not necessarily an entire album. This particular album, because there was only six songs, because the lengths were very long, it meant that there were only going to be six subject matters. Normally if we have more songs on the album, we're able to cover more lyrical ground. But with only six songs, inevitably the topics are heavy."