#333

Today's album--

for it is, fuck yes and hell hard--

ALBUM WEEK 2022

concluding at last...in May, twenny twenny FREE! Wow. Time.

The album is Sink / Swim, by Cutting Room Floor. This is a heavy decision for me, but there are things one has to lift precisely because of their weight.

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At one point in this blog it was very briefly and obliquely mentioned that Sink / Swim, by the band Cutting Room Floor, would be released, and that this event would be emotionally significant to me, though I did not mention the album or the band by name. This is because I was hiding. Am always hiding; in order to protect privacy in general and especially the privacy of the people and places I must needs write about in order to be honest about myself, disclosing as little as possible in order to disclose as completely as possible. In this case, though, hiding more completely, the difference between standing up straight and looking you in the eye while smiling knowingly and occasionally winking, and crouching in the shadows of the undergrowth like a hunted animal. 

So, the standing up straight is this, such as it can be: I am a fly, and as a fly, I was on the wall for nontrivial and especially privileged portions of Sink / Swim's genesis.

Years of memories; journeys, live shows, conversations, berths, meals. The color palette of Sink / Swim's cover art, the songs themselves, the artifact in its own time--just the sheen on the roof of the house seen from the outside. It might be said that it is professionally improper of me to even write about this record, given the privilege of insight.

Yes, it might be said, but what might be said sometimes has to be risked and endured for the sake of what must be said. For example: God, how I miss them. God, how the gulfs have widened indeed.

So. Sink / Swim. By Cutting Room Floor.

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Unclear whether it will be possible to even talk about a single song; there is so much to say about just the first thing to discuss, which is the first of many before we can even begin our interpretations. Perhaps it is indeed this inordinate closeness of mine to the material that fosters this thinking, but come with me for but a mile or two, and see if you can agree with me concerning the nature of this odyssey. 

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We begin with water. When it comes to this record, we must be as Thales, and regard water as the prime element from which all else arises. It all ends there, too. 

Water. If you're lucky enough to be able to do so, maybe draw yourself a clear glass, drink part of it, and continue reading with the remainder at your side. Glance at it occasionally. Don't know if it'll help anything, but it cannot hurt. 

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Water.

Three atoms arranged in a tetrahedral structure; a triangular pyramidal shape. Quaternary phase diagrams of mixtures of chemical substances are represented graphically as tetrahedra. A tetrahedron's dual is another tetrahedron. The net of a tetrahedron  can be drawn as three upward-pointing triangles surrounding downward-pointing triangle, or three downwards-pointing triangles surrounding an upwards-pointing triangle--the Triforce, or the kamon of the Hōjō clan.

One of four possible archai in Greek Presocratic philosophies; the roots of creation: basal components from which all else arises. I mentioned Thales. In Plato's Timaeus, water's corresponding solid is the icosahedron, twenty equilateral triangles. Water is the identifying element in the phlegmatic humors, embodying the feminine. Its alchemical symbol, mercury, is a downward-pointing triangle. Its elemental weapon is the cup. 

Mercury is also, of course, an element, a planet, a god. The aspects of Mercury/Hermes/Thoth that interest us here are the connections to divination, reconciliation, magic, communication, sacrifices, music, healing, the tortoise's shell, and--especially--boundaries and boundary markers, and the link between this world and the underworld. Mercury, being mercurial, fluidly crosses boundaries and in doing so makes the boundaries themselves fluid, and makes the identity of the formerly bounded no longer so in any case. 

The Black Tortoise in the tenth mansion, the house of Aquarius, the house of the Girl. Yin Water, the Ruinous Star. Cetus, the Whale, who guides spirits to the underworld--between dimensions.

Tiamat, Goddess of the Sea and Salt Water, the chaos of primordial creation, whose body makes up the heavens and the earth. 

Incidentally, just by the way, water has a high heat capacity and high latent heat of vaporization, as well as the ability to moderate neutron decay in radiation. That tetrahedral structure I mentioned involves the two hydrogen atoms separated by an angle of about 105 degrees, both located to one side of the oxygen atom. This atomic arrangement gives the molecule polarity, and that molecular architecture in tandem with that property grants water the properties of adhesion and cohesion--she sticks to everything, and also to herself--and the ability to form weak hydrogen bonds, which, in tandem with polarity, is what makes her a famously universal solvent. Give her enough time, and she'll dissolve any rock or mineral you care to name.

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Water.

Drawn from multiple raging oceans, brought forth from deep within the earth, gathered from the sky, attracted and repulsed by the moon, pouring into a hollow downwards-pointing triangular pyramid containing three solid icosahedrons, this water thus structured pouring from the tip of the pyramid into three cups, overflowing into the shell of a black tortoise where a serpent swims. 

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It's important for me to talk about all this big shit because I can't really tell you about anything specific or important about this album itself. This has made itself clear to me over the long span of time between the genesis of this post and its completion, which may not even be the same day I'm typing these particular words, though they are definitely closer to it that the preceding sections. 

My confidence that thinking about all this information I've provided would enrich one's listening experience and multilevel analysis of Sink / Swim is fairly high, but I think a child whose head is as beautifully empty as only a child's can be could bang along very happily to most of the record without a tangible thought in their head--certainly, happier than I can be, burdened in the extreme as I am with waves and waves of viscous, heavy memory every time I listen to this album. This I have done so many times that I can see through my copy of the disc, and a few of the tracks skip so bad they've become unplayable. Thank the lord they've put it on iTunes, since I'm too much of a coward to buy a new one from them, revealing my address and continued existence in way too general and, simultaneously, personally baring of a way. Guess I could just have Ezra do it for me. That verges on a trick, though, and it feels like cowardice. As cowardly as needing and wanting a CD and not getting it? More? Less?

These are the murky waters one might find oneself in when it comes to some albums. Conflicting currents abound, the closer one gets to the deep end of things.

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This is the part where I really wish Alyssa would put Contingency on iTunes too. I run into much trouble getting my digital copy to play on anything reasonable, and this saddens me. Contingency is one of the greatest albums ever recorded, and I will someday write a post about it. I've been working on it in my mind since I first listened to it, and it's a cross between the Divine Comedy and guided mediation.

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But anyway, I don't have the emotional tools to write about the meals I cooked, the teas I brewed, the lunatic strength instant coffee for the three creators of this album while they were banging out tracks like holy harpies armed and blessed by God and Gabriel, standing on the neck of the devil himself and pulling tarot out his guts. It is not within my reach to go as high as the mountaintop we lived on, the cigs I smoked with Alyssa on her side house porch, the bald eagles flying at head level in the mornings, the snow, the pines and boulders and ravines. The main house, half-dilapidated even after months of work, the painting of the crowned pig's head on a background of blazing stars and nebular gases, the old piano, the creaky stairs. The texture of my thoughts as I ruefully tried to wash greasy dishes with dish soap made of little more than water and plant saponins, a manufacturing decision which did little to offset the simple fact that it was sold in a plastic container. The warm uncomplicated comforts of the classic-ass little diner in the classic-ass, old little town at the foot of the mountain, the incredible, astronomical sales tax on cigs--I believe that location holds the all-time record on what I have paid for a pack of American Spirits even to this inflated day, and imagine one could currently pay over twenty dollars for one. How could I tell you what it meant to recieve the news of a new Mountain Goats album--Goths--with Alyssa, the feeling of grasping each other's forearms and dancing together in a circle, chanting "GOTHS! GOTHS! GOTHS! GOTHS! GOTHS!" loud and gleeful? The profundity of playing a Super Mario World emulator on her PC with actual Super Nintendo controllers hooked into the machine when everybody else was asleep, smashing through the early levels and ripping through the shortcuts to Star World and the Bonus Levels (maybe you know this, but Alyssa Kai knows a thing or two about videos game). The nightmare I had, a fucking bad one, and waking up in a frigid sweat to the warm and immediate comfort of Fiona and Ana Mei Li. My hemorrhoids getting so bad I finally had to be like "Guys, I gotta get something for these hemorrhoids." Walking around in the national park that comprised much of the rest of the mountain on which the house rested. Sharing long talks, intricate and simple, about trauma, about the past, about the future, about magic and art and cartoons and sonic power and ghosts and paintings and desserts and God and queerness and significance. That trip was the last time I saw my passport, which I didn't even need to bring. Hours and hours of tinkering with poems and drawing pictures, reading my books and making them laugh or helping them with whatever as the three of them rewrote lyrics and reframed purposes, sketched out drum patterns which sometimes required fairly complex equations, laid out and practiced chord structures, drew new sounds out of amplifiers, planned many and varied time changes, and just generally worked their asses off. I went home after just over a week of labor and love and the gift of sitting in on that and they stayed to take what they'd made to the studio. Three years later, everything was different, and the album came out. When the release tour brought them near enough to me to see them again, I lacked the courage to do so. It's taken four more years to write about it, another sterling demonstration of my brand of cowardice. 

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This fucking post needs to get published already. There comes a time. It's not finished. Not suitable. A failure, really, when it comes down to it. I suppose there's one last thing to add, if I wanted to be useful to you, dear reader, and it is a version of something I told the band themselves when they wondered about the point of it all, as all creators do. 

This album is important. It is not important simply because a lot of fans anxiously anticipated the band's second album, nor because the subject matter is vital. It isn't important because of the success it might or might not have. The music and lyrics are important, because they are amazing and spectacular and represent a power that transcends space, time, physics, and earthly limitations, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's important in the way that years from now, people who have no clue will pretend they've known about it for a long time even though they haven't listened to it yet, and that tickles me, but it's not what I mean either.

This work is important because it needed to happen. The universe needed this record so bad it brought together this triad, a sacred union of three, whose six hands were the only hands, whose voices were the only voices, whose minds and hearts were the only minds and hearts that could have produced this medicine. And that last concept is what's important. Some albums are very very good, some albums can even keep us alive, but it is a very rare record, a very rare work of art that is true medicine. 

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Hail, High Furies.

--JL