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Transformation, like beginning, is disorienting and scary.
You assume you’re in a single place with every part all sorted out, after which all of the sudden you’re at sq. one, or sq. negative-a-million because it generally feels, with no thought the place you might be or what the heck you’re alleged to do.
Briston Maroney’s “Skydiver” is a musical tribute to this sense, optimistic even within the vertigo of free-fall.
The music opens with a muted drum rhythm and played-back-backwards (I believe) guitar. A stray acoustic guitar be aware sounds because the opening builds, kind of like a mistake on objective, after which a beat or so later the large, reverby electrical guitar proclaims the chord development. A driving, medium-tempo drum beat fills within the area between the chords, which cross like clouds, whereas a gauzy, virtually banjo-ey acoustic line shimmers on excessive.
I suppose it’s too simple or too apparent, nevertheless it looks like a aircraft at cruising altitude, proper when the pilot turns off the fasten-your-seatbelt signal and the views are crystal clear.
The voice dives proper in, angelic and androgynous, declaring:
Like I all the time knew you’ll
The times simply cross me by
Maroney’s singer-protagonist is articulating that almost-nostalgic feeling for misplaced time, besides it’s extra inert than even nostalgia. The precise act of wanting again is absent, however the sense of stasis and loss induces one thing like a trance, which will be its personal suggestions loop, staunching movement earlier than it begins. It’s like that feeling you get earlier than leaping into the pool on your first summer season swim as a result of that water’s going to be chilly, so that you kind of linger, psyching your self up.
It’s additionally, because the singer would have it,
Like a hen with out a music
Skydiver with no sky
We maybe lengthy to meld being with objective, though that may not all the time work and even be fascinating. When you’re sweeping the ground, how a lot do you need to be thought of a sweeper? When you lack cleansing provides and have an embarrassing quantity of mud on the ground, do you develop into a sweeper with out a broom?
However Maroney’s singer shouldn’t be singing about purposeful being however important being—the sense that every of us is somebody distinctive with a singular contribution to make. Whether or not that is mere sentimentality or an existential conundrum, most of us have puzzled at one time or one other, simply what’s it I’m alleged to be doing on this earth (or up above it, because the case could also be)? It’s an vital query to ask as a result of with out it, we have a tendency to simply listlessly do no matter another person expects of us, and we begin to give off that gloomy perpetual teenager vibe.
That is the place change and perspective will be so very important:
By no means thought I’d see the solar
From fairly this standpoint
Nothing like being airborne to offer that blazing orb one other sort of mild.
And perhaps the subsequent time it rises, you’ll be a brand new you.
However change, actual change, is scarier than leaping from a aircraft. Because the music’s pre-chorus places it:
All that I will be is what I’ve not fairly been but
Wasn’t I to do with out a good cue?
Reeling within the worry like I’m not fairly human
A disorienting dilemma affords no “good cue,” and retaining worry in verify can really feel prefer it requires a superhuman effort, to the purpose of being “not fairly human.” The play on “reeling” is excellent as a result of it evokes feeling caught and spinning within the worry, and reeling it in to manage it.
The refrain is superbly break up as “sky” and “diver.” After the relative density of lyrics within the pre-chorus and its rising rigidity—I envision that skydiver standing within the open biplane door, wanting down on the plunge forward—we get the discharge of a single phrase in area, lilting upward as “sky” and again down as “diver.” The development of the music permits for triumph right here, a way that every one this confusion and wrestle shall be price it.
And certainly the singer emerges into one thing new:
Like a dream I by no means had
From a damaged breath I drew
It appears typically to be the case that when a dream comes true, it doesn’t resemble the dream in any respect. How might it? Goals make awful maps, however they do come true generally. And after they do, it tends to not be due to the sweat or the self-help books, or it doesn’t really feel prefer it. It looks like destiny, like an impossibility, like “standing on the solar.”
And perhaps that’s why the singer closes the second verse with “residing simply to die.” In a distinct context, this might seem to be a downer, however right here it indicators acceptance. It’s what occurs after you lastly dive into the pool on the new summer season day and the shock of the chilly water wears off: you swim simply to swim till you get out of the pool.
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