Review Summary: immediacy and empty space
I’ve always struggled with immediacy. On the one hand, I’ve always been hesitant to let my guard down – a product of struggle and self-perceived inadequacy, sure, but equally a testament to how unforgiving the world is. I’ve been afraid of judgement ever since I was singled out as gifted; I’ve been afraid of consequence ever since I saw the callousness at which it is doled out. I’ve spent years in therapy trying to let the guard of nihilistic cynicism down, just so that I could, even just for a moment, relish a moment and the feelings it brings, rather than tearing it into a million homotopic pieces, rearrangeable into every single possibility.
I actually truly believe now that I’ve lost touch with emotional sensation. Everything is analytical; every action a response to stimuli; every motion thought out, with every possible consequence accounted for, or otherwise written off as harmless. People tell me I’m a social chameleon: able to adapt to fit the situation… free to dumb down my frenzied incoherence to talk about
bitches and
cars when at work, surrounded by tradespeople and likeminded bogans… able to engage in
meaningful discourse when the need, if ever rarely, arises. To this extent, it’s hard to say anybody really knows me for who I am. Just the same, I don’t think I quite know myself either. I don’t have to grapple with positive or negative emotional reinforcement anymore; missteps feel as hollow as victories; life is but an endless cycle of going to sleep and waking back up, just to make more decisions that, as time stretches on and on, dwindle further and further into nothingness.
I’ve also struggled with immediacy in the sense that I’ve never understood punctuality. Whether now or tomorrow or three weeks away means nothing to me. I’m fully aware that this mindset is really just an offshoot of untreated,
unhelped attention deficit disorder. I’m forever stuck in a moment, the shape of which changes second by second, minute by minute, yet the tangents of these moments don’t really lead anywhere in my mind. I exist in stasis, yet find myself horribly crippled by the pace at which things change.
I type this sitting in a room that I can’t call my own. I’ve been delivered the blissful reprieve of working from home today, yet the room doesn’t feel much like home. It is homely, sure: populated by things I share with my partner of 7 years, the woman I intend to marry. There’s some element of comfort knowing that I’m no longer out in the open; vulnerable to the elements and everything brought with them (
homelessness really deconstructs what home means). I’m grateful for the roof over my head, and the bed I sleep in, yet I’m totally detached. This is just a nook in space, filled with things that should bring me peace, yet sit in their predestined spots, hardly ever touched.
I’ll pick up a book once every three weeks and attempt to read. I’ll make progress, yet the words slip into a void. I understand them, but they mean nothing to me.
Right now, I’m sitting, trying to recapture some long lost expression that made me feel valuable. It’s track three and what sounds like the discombobulated ringing of a bell echoes tunelessly in my headphones. A swell of what could be strings, or could be organs, coddled by tape hiss, and warped to just a point that the features no longer stick out lingers much like the thought that I’m wasting my time. In reality, what could be easily pigeonholed as a less patient exercise in Basinski-ism now fills a hole. I can think clearly, only because my thoughts are drowned out by light metallic clang and humming tones.
Whenever I try to conjure a mental image of home, I picture an attic; unpainted, unfinished and dusty. A single window with a view of the prettiest nothing. A bed in the corner and piles of books. Red wine stains and overflowing ashtrays. To know that eventually my time will come to an end is soothing. It ameliorates any need to try or to step outside of this hapless hollow I know as existing. In the next few moments, I will forget about that and feel liberated; not invincible, but free enough that maybe a few decisions will err experimental, the fear of consequence evaporated. Eventually I will re-realise my own mortality and give up again.
It’s the cycle of existence: growth and decay. Much like tape loops, life builds from nothing, then falls into a groove, where it will linger until the seams begin to crack and the magnetic coating wears thin. It then becomes dysfunctional, slightly warped; the original tune still there, but it will earn some character, for each detuned warble, skip and stutter will define it as different. When attention wanes and the image falls out of focus, it seems the same; the idiosyncrasies of failing hardware are neither bothersome nor endearing. It’s only in those brief respites, when one can take stock, that the strange jump in volume in the right channel 8 minutes into track one seems of any importance. In those moments, there’s a lucidity and clarity to feeling that, for a long time, has been absent.
It's in those moments where the imperfections reveal themselves that life reveals its true beauty: in vulnerability and brokenness. For a brief moment, a lush hum backboned by a near subsonic rumble, bordering on metallic, gives me the impetus to believe that maybe I don’t need to expend so much effort and strain protecting myself from the outside world. Maybe I’m better off falling victim to it and letting what will be play out. At least I would’ve given myself the ability to actually
live, rather than exist as a cog in a machine, spinning til I can muster no more.
But then it’s lost. The beauty of what was dissolves into another lifeless drone. The clarity of moments before is lost to the sheer weight of the immediate. To that extent, I feel like existing is uncannily similar to no-name drone… You might stumble upon something truly valuable, memorable, worthwhile, but it will be swallowed by the endless mediocre moments that surround it. Minutes after getting lost in the volume of A Swell of Winter Memories, I crash back to reality and realise that once that has passed, what remains is more of the same. I could buy 15 bargain bin drone releases from bandcamp and relive the experience 15 different ways.
But perhaps that is the real struggle I have with immediacy: it is constant and unwavering. As soon as you find that beauty in the immediate, it is no longer there. When you become attached to that moment and that sensation, you try to put everything else off, try to live in that moment… but its power wanes. You can only restart the track so many times before it becomes too much effort.
At least you got to candidly experience the initial discovery. Journal it before it the memory fades.
