Review Summary: I started hearing a sound.
Two years ago, the back of my head hit the concrete.
I was gone.
My consciousness was, for a while, reduced to nothing. I was lying there on the middle of the road while a tiny stream of blood slowly escaped through the back of my head, and yet, I wasn’t there at all.
I had always expected it to be like this if I ever were to lose consciousness: Pure nothingness and no subsequent memory thereof, until I would somehow snap out of it and wake up.
But I didn’t snap out of it.
Instead, slowly and steadily, some pieces of the puzzle that makes me what I am started coming together. If I ever were to start doing a puzzle, I would start with the edges and work my way in to the center. The edges would be the foundation to build from. I felt the edges my consciousness being pieced together and, instead of nothing, I started seeing and feeling darkness.
I started hearing a sound.
Now, generally, darkness is viewed as negative. However, this wasn’t like regular the darkness, it wasn’t like the darkness that envelops us when the light are turned off and the sun spitting its rays on the opposite side of our globe. No, this was another darkness: It was dense, but welcoming, distant, but warm.
That’s the sound of the darkness contained in Eliana Radigue’s Trilogie De La Mort.
Kyema (Intermediate States)
I will never be able to adequately describe the state I found myself in – which is quite a shame as it is what I’m trying to do. There was only the darkness and the sound, both of which constantly changed and yet remained the same.
But there was also so much more.
Kailasha
Everything was as it should be. I was held, I was enveloped, I was embraced.
However, as more and more pieces were gathered, the puzzle of my consciousness was taking form. It became easier to fit the individual pieces together: My name next to my family members, my address and home next to my girlfriend, my education next to my interests.
The whole picture became clearer.
Koume
Slowly, the darkness became wobbly and distorted. The sound increased in volume, intensity, and pitch until a point where it would either stop or break or wake me.
And then, at what felt like the breaking-point, the sound peaked and started fading, and with it, the darkness. Voices called my name, and, while I was reluctant to leave this place, the puzzle was nearly finished.
So I woke up.
I still felt it. It kept fading for quite some time. I looked at the clear sky, the worried faces of my friends, and I smiled.
Trilogie De La Mort
A few minutes later, I wasn’t smiling.
I fought against my concussion for about a year. Most of the time I couldn’t do much but sleep, look at the ceiling, and listen to music. I could not do anything I used do to: I couldn’t think, make choices, be creative and I couldn’t walk or run. Uncertainty about the future and doubt of the healing process weighed me down. I went to several neurologists and got multiple brain scans taken. All concluded the same: Time was the only healer and patience was my only weapon.
I have never since experienced the darkness of that day two years ago. The closest I’ve come is listening to Trilogie De La Mort.
The Trilogy of Death has, paradoxically, come to represent the closest I’ve ever experienced to bliss: All I have to do is allow it to hold me, to envelope me, to embrace me.
