There’s someone at the bottom of the lake,
or so I’d heard.
Someone who’s worth diving for
after what we’d both endured.
The one thing I’d been missing,
Something that could cure.
She fit all the descriptions
of what I’d dreamt of at the shore.
There’s something in the water;
I saw it live and die.
I saw as much as I could bear.
Thank you, sorry, bye.Blurred vision and fading feeling
and all things untoward.
The cold reflective ceiling
and her captivating drawl
I drank all of her poison,
I sank until I soared,
I left with my new confidante,
my mother, and my whore.There was something in the water
that I saw when I came home.
Dripping with its own farewells,
and cartilage and bone.
That man’s a motherfucker
if he thinks he’s got it good.
Osiris, Chīmalmā, et cetera
bring a shovel, cross, and dirt.
This was written in an apartment I rented from a friend of a friend of my brother’s for a few months at the end of 2020, start of 2021 after fleeing Iceland. I lived alone with my dog (the greatest being in existence) and would spend my evenings (when not taking her on walks and playing in the empty park after dark) either watching BoJack Horseman (the greatest show in existence) or The Office, playing Baba Is You, or making music in the ad-hoc studio I had made in the little room through the bedroom. It was a claustrophobic little box, but that’s exactly what we want sometimes.
I remember listening to Satan and St. Paul by John Fullbright on something of a repeat, and I guess I have to give him subliminal songwriting credit. Hey John — I’ll buy you a coffee if I ever see you. That should more than cover your half of the royalties and a little extra for the emotional turmoil. Maybe that’s going a little far; the songs have little in common sonically or lyrically, but John did inspire me to step outside of my regular environs and into a sort of pseudo-folk storytelling territory. True to myself, however, I kept one foot firmly planted in the dark and upsetting, the buried and the hiding.
In the ‘poem’, the main character dives into a lake, in search of a siren-like entity that supposedly promises a solution to what has always ailed him. “Something that could cure”. He finds her, and willingly takes what she offers. Literally speaking, though, he simply commits suicide in the lake, later discovered by a third party. A passer-by, a farmhand or a groundskeeper, I’ve often envisioned. It’s irrelevant, but it’s someone who can piece together what happened, as demonstrated by their reaction. Not just what happened, but why, and how. And they speak with full comprehension of its supposed grandeur, but grounded by the knowledge that in the cold light of day it’s just mundane dirt and death, and any supposed gain is self-aggrandizing bullshit. I like how they speak, though. “Dripping with its own farewells, and cartilage and bone” is a line I’m quite proud of, as well as the overall juxtaposition of the stark and the grandiose in the third stanza.
The whole thing is a metaphor and it’s not, I guess. Death and suicide, in particular, have always had parts to play in my everyday thoughts, and I won’t pretend like this wasn’t an immersive exploration of those themes; a vicarious experience through poetry. In that sense it doesn’t serve the role of metaphor. It does, however, serve as a metaphor for how we let things take over us, telling ourselves stories of how they’re beautiful and pure and real and a final crescendo in the world’s great understanding of us.
Coming off the back of a crushing ““breakup””, there was that something rattling around in my head about what we seek in others or in the external, how we can be led and can lead ourselves into the mouth of some sort of beast, into death itself disguised as love. It’s powerful and it’s destructive, it’s intoxicating and addictive and all-encompassing.
It wasn’t cathartic. I guess we write to channel what we feel, to open the tap a little and relieve the pressure, and maybe some people really do find that it takes some of the weight off, or maybe reframes it to hurt less or to be more manageable. I don’t really think so, ever. The acid may flow from the tap, but the well is infinite. I’ve always resonated more with what Sufjan Stevens said, talking about recording the masterpiece that is Carrie and Lowell:
“I was recording songs as a means of grieving, making sense of it, but the writing and recording wasn’t the salve I expected. I fell deeper and deeper into doubt and misery. It was a year of real darkness.”
It’s the same when listening to emotionally charged music (let’s set aside the “all music is emotionally charged” remarks); to me it amplifies, rather than attenuates. But I guess that’s what I want. I want the pain and I want the suffering and I want the longing, because they’re real and they mean something. Joy is cheap and fleeting and can be faked, or so I often tell myself. Just hop on a rollercoaster and there you go! Sorrow, though… now that’s real. You gotta earn that shit and then you gotta carry it on your back until you either bulk up and don’t feel the weight, or until your knees give out and you collapse in the mud.
But while it may wallow in it, I wonder if it’s fair to say that the poem glorifies that sadness, or suicide? I don’t really think so. The groundskeeper’s reaction certainly doesn’t. And the fact that I have to make up a story and spend hours crafting the right way to tell it in order to let myself bask in the weight of its ramifications instead of quite simply taking action also certainly doesn’t. It’s real, though, in a way that only fiction ever can be. Like Sonny makes clear in his questions to Diane.
And maybe joy isn’t happiness, and happiness isn’t cheap. I wouldn’t know, I guess. But through the darkness of the time, I did have my dog (still do), and I did love her with all my heart (still do), and she brought me warmth and light and fulfilment (still does). Did I earn that?
Hopefully. Either way, it’s real.
