Koi No Yokan.

I uncovered this album in some post-humanistic state of narcissistic confectionery. Made sweet on myself, I slummed into the adverse (and unfounded) reality of my outright perfection. In the voices, I found compliance, a jury of brilliant minds damning me to correctness. I allowed it.

The supplementary whim of unknown admirers suffocated my understanding of a negative personal view. I knew not of my own imbalance, my jaded sense of harmony, or what frightful disintegration I'd made of myself. In retrospect, I likely have never had an entirely clear view of such settlement, however, in favour of progression, I have sided against regret.

What began as battery became empowerment in sorcery. I ran for the water when the tide would pull out, and the instrumental hands of aural gods placed hideous marks on my feet from the uneven ground. I was learning balance. And as the sound rose, I was perplexed to a point of trampling and the inward thrust took me off the sea floor, my cracked skull blinked into the debris of movement. The drowning was salvation for the feet, and immeasurable brutality for the psyche. 

This routine of injury has become an expectation with Deftones. When the ease of chronic dissatisfaction brings alienation of self, I am bonded by forceful adhesion. In otic consumption, I am tripped into confrontation, and, curious, overwhelming admiration. 

Soul Remedy

This began, I believe, with the inappropriate and abrupt anthem of voices too close. I gulped these tones and progressions the way that they should, for a cautious person, be sipped. Upon uncovering my weak knees and distortion, I steadied myself with childish wisdom: "Well. Do something." Despite my altercation with such simple resolution, no particular "something" seem reasonable. In reaction, previously, I was troubled with clarity. "Yes, of course," I told myself. "Do something. And yet, which something?" This something. 

Anthony Hamilton & Elayna Boynton | Freedom

If by no other of my unmentionable survey of qualities, I can always be caught by my ability to write. Not yet well enough to make stumbling fool of my reader, but I like to pretend that someday I might. I am a veteran to the sound of my own voice, a survivor of my own prose, a patient to my sense of purposeful verbosity.
Such freedom in release, and damnation in reflection.

Fink | Perfect Darkness

I stumbled across this song and dipped into my own skin. I was allowed melancholy without remorse. It soothed me the way that a voice from the west calms me in the night after terrors and moments of immeasurable hatred. My hands, shaken, prayed for rain and this night-whisper is close to such precipitant salvation. My own voice speaks ahead of me, coaxes my will differently. Sleep, wake, go on.

Eternal Morning | Love Is

In my times of weakness, I owe that same voice for catching my hand or foot before action. The breath which follows that moment belongs to it, and the next morning's breath as well. My feelings worsen, at times, but I last another day in its honour and at its request. And so, sleep. Wake. Go on.

Martina Topley Birc | Snowman

I have a friend from Korea I had lived with in first year, who would stay up late with me when, what I know now to be anxiety, kept me up at night. We would unearth music such as this and lay silently. The decision to cause injury in a way that quieted the second and third voices in my head, a pain similarly burdensome, was a welcome one. My alertness under the coming dawn suddenly carried purpose, and nights were no longer valueless. Still, in hearing this particular tune, my skin grows cold, I smile through torture, make friends with simple sorrows, and keep disparate contemplation at bay.

And so, forward. Explanations hold less beauty, it seems, than the drama of sweet undoing in between four-beat-single-bar symphonies like the ones found by the ears of an audiophile. 

Overwhelming understanding.

I sometimes wish I could return to years past and inform my younger self of things I now understand. My former selves would scoff at me now though, make game of my nature. "I know," they would say. "I've always known." In understanding this, I realize they have never needed me, and that I have always needed them.

Several years ago, someone said to me, "do what you like, and you'll be well for it." They spoke of money then, this memory, yet it falls differently upon me now. It matters not simply in regards to earning a living in some distant, invisible future, but also here, presently. In the time and space which I exist, I must do what I like. And when I am not well, do what I like. And when I know not what to do or how to cope, do what I like. In some ways, I understood this meaning even then. I trivialized the speaker by damning the words as
obvious:

"You should always do what you like," I had snorted. "What else is there to do?"

I knew it all, once.

Stay with me though, I may know it again.