Let the water hold me down
I am a repetition of the myriad of bodies of water that bathed me into being.
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
I believe that I got here through the waters and that I still bathe in them. I contain them, too. My ears are full of foamy waves’ hum, my eyes are full of salty tears. I wrap my hands around myself, comforting.
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
The sharp noise of the metro, the blunt political cruelty, the tired chaos—they flood me, passing over the wall I built around myself. My ambitions and fears are like waves colliding with extreme force. I am lost and I seek the blue.
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Yes, I desire for the water to hold me down, secure me in its overflowing abundance, wrapping me from each side. In search of water, I look down at my hands. I recognize the entanglement of veins, the blood pulsing in them, the water pulsing in them.
Biologist David Suzuki wrote that the salty liquid running in our veins should remind us of our maritime origins. We eat fish, we refuse to be anything like these gill-breathing creatures. Yet no matter how we evolve, we stay connected to the waters.
Born from my mother’s amniotic fluid, my womanhood is wet, is dripping, is humid. This is not a metaphor, it is my biology dragging me back to the Hyperocean. Luce Irigaray’s words resonate in my head: “Into the sea (you) are returned... Why leave the sea?”
The same water has existed on Earth for four and a half billion years—I am unable to imagine this amount of time. It came in little drops, trapped in asteroids. It stayed, it is here. Astrida Neimanis calls it the Hyperocean. We are in it and we are it.
Coiling in a hydrological cycle, the water passing through my body is the same as one that rose as steam from volcanic springs, carved canyons and carried glaciers across continents. Bodies within bodies, waters within waters.
Flowing inside of my body,
same as accumulating in cumuluses,
same as swirling in the depths of the sea, of the ocean,
same as running through rivers to my kitchen pipes, to my bodily pipes.
To embody water is to surrender to its shifting nature—to be neither fixed nor final, but seeping into forms which are not our own. Dissolve the rigid edges of self, spill beyond the human. If post-humanity bears any meaning to me, this is it.
Water dissolving and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
I close my eyes and I dream my dear friend’s dream.
I close my eyes and feel my body rocking gently on the water’s surface. I think that what surrounds me is an Ocean—I cannot see the limits, water merges with the undisturbed cerulean of the sky. I see myself from up there, as if my soul transcended and now hung above my body. Each wave is dissolving my flesh, layer by layer. I see the parts that compose me quietly disassemble. Liver, followed by tibia bones, slowly drown to the sandy bottom of the Ocean. I extend, I purify, my consciousness bathing in the eternal waters.
I become whole, I become peace.
Under the water, carry the water
Remove the water at the bottom of the Ocean
The very second I open my eyes, I miss the waters. I try to focus on the flows within my body, to drink as much fluids as I can, and submerge myself in the tub. I think of the heavy monsoons, of the tall icebergs and of the secret underground rivers. I imagine myself in them.
I try not to think of monsoon rains burning with pollution, or how quickly the icebergs dissolve. It feels almost pathetic and definitely futile to realise the extent of the tragedy now. I do not feel entitled to fall debilitated over platitudinous headlines.
Injustice. I do not recall anyone asking for my consent to set the climate action threshold at two degrees Celsius. There was no referendum nor international mourning period when we sentenced the entirety of the coral reefs to certain death.
Andri Magnason compares the abstraction of ocean acidification to how 18th-century Icelandic peasants struggled to grasp the concept of equality. I do not believe we ever did, if people are fighting for access to water, if the Ocean’s pH kills its inhabitants.
If realising our aquatic post-humanity bears any meaning to me, it lies in acknowledging our responsibility for the waters. Destroying the Hyperocean, we are destroying what we are made of. It is not decadence, it is suicide.
Time isn't holding up, time isn't after us
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Squeezed in a cylinder full of water, inhaling through a tube, Agnes Questionmark performs her artpiece Liquid Grounds. Her body becomes a repetition of the myriad of bodies of water that bathed her into being. I don’t want to breathe this way.
You may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?"
So before I go to work, before I sit rigid, before I optimise my brain and body power, before I make a living, before I buy a large automobile, before I get a beautiful house and a beautiful spouse, before I give in: I let the water hold me down.
And you may ask yourself, "Am I right, am I wrong?"
And you may say to yourself, "My God, what have I done?"
Rozalia Kowalska
intention:
“Once in a Lifetime” is one of those pivotal songs for me—the kind that awakens a certain consciousness I already had but couldn’t translate into words, let alone into a melody. So you can imagine my disappointment when I encountered some very confident individuals claiming that the song’s lyrics are meant to be extravagant or avant-garde nonsense. In an attempt to practice charitable interpretation, let’s assume these individuals reached their conclusion because the tour promoting the song was named Stop Making Sense. Either way, I absolutely disagree (a more polite way of saying that I perceive discouraging reflection on art as intellectually numb and, frankly, depressingly ignorant). In an attempt to counterbalance, I decided to interpret, or even intimately overinterpret, this piece. And so, I wrote about waters. About the Hyperocean, amniotic and vaginal fluid, the sea’s pH, the salt in our veins, coral reefs, pipes, icebergs, waves, hums, underground rivers… About how my body yearns to be held down, submerged, surrounded on all sides by the liquid eternal. And about how yours does too.
references in order of appearance:
Byrne, David, for The Talking Heads. 1980. Remain In Light, Once in a lifetime. Sire.
Suzuki, David. David Suzuki : The Autobiography. 2007. Greystone Books.
Irigaray, Luce. 1980. Marine lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Columbia University Press.
Neimanis, Astrida. 2017. Bodies of Water : Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Magnason, Andri Snær. 2021. On Time and Water. Open Letter.
Questionmark, Agnes. 2019. Liquid Grounds. HyperMaremma Art Festival Tuscany.
