Transformation, like start, is disorienting and scary.
You assume you’re in a single place with every thing all sorted out, after which all of a 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 presupposed to do.
Briston Maroney’s “Skydiver” is a musical tribute to this sense, optimistic even within the vertigo of free-fall.
The tune opens with a muted drum rhythm and played-back-backwards (I believe) guitar. A stray acoustic guitar notice sounds because the opening builds, type of like a mistake on function, after which a beat or so later the massive, reverby electrical guitar proclaims the chord development. A driving, medium-tempo drum beat fills within the house between the chords, which move like clouds, whereas a gauzy, nearly 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 at all times knew you’ll
The times simply move 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 trying 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 type of linger, psyching your self up.
It’s additionally, because the singer would have it,
Like a chicken with no tune
Skydiver with no sky
We maybe lengthy to meld being with function, although which may not at all times work and even be fascinating. For those who’re sweeping the ground, how a lot do you wish to be thought-about a sweeper? For those who lack cleansing provides and have an embarrassing quantity of mud on the ground, do you turn into a sweeper with no broom?
However Maroney’s singer is just not singing about useful being however important being—the sense that every of us is somebody distinctive with a novel 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 presupposed to be doing on this earth (or up above it, because the case could also be)? It’s an necessary 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 viewpoint
Nothing like being airborne to provide that blazing orb one other form 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 tune’s pre-chorus places it:
All that I will be is what I’ve not fairly been but
Wasn’t I to do with no good cue?
Reeling within the concern like I’m not fairly human
A disorienting dilemma affords no “good cue,” and maintaining concern in verify can really feel prefer it requires a superhuman effort, to the purpose of being “not fairly human.” The play on “reeling” is good as a result of it evokes feeling caught and spinning within the concern, and reeling it in to manage it.
The refrain is fantastically 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, trying down on the plunge forward—we get the discharge of a single phrase in house, lilting upward as “sky” and again down as “diver.” The development of the tune permits for triumph right here, a way that every one this confusion and battle will probably be value 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 may 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 “dwelling simply to die.” In a distinct context, this might appear to be a downer, however right here it alerts acceptance. It’s what occurs after you lastly dive into the pool on the recent summer season day and the shock of the chilly water wears off: you swim simply to swim till you get out of the pool.