#according to jim
A Post That Doesn’t Fit In Any Of Our Regular Categories
(Whatever, Man.)
Music Of The World - “Dolphin Vision Quest”
This is a post about how a cassette tape about dolphins made me cry.
Last week, I was cleaning my apartment and decided to play an album I’d downloaded from the great new age music blog Sounds of the Dawn. I needed a unobtrusive soundtrack for sweeping, and I’m an admitted fan of new age bullshit, so it seemed like the perfect idea.
Now, the thing about new age bullshit is that there’s an inherent roll of the dice you make whenever you throw on a new album. The line between good new age and bad new age is a thin one. Sometimes you get a perfect synthetic ocean to sink into, and sometimes you get a tacky curglaff right to your embarrassment glands.
The difference often hinges on the involvement of a rainstick.
When I first put on “Dolphin Vision Quest” I was immediately sure that I’d found the latter. The sample SotD posted was from the b-side, “The Deepening Mystery” which gave a good indication of the music on both sides, glacial synth hums, gentle exhales, and a backdrop of tape hiss. What the b-side lacks, however, is the a-side’s guided meditation journey into the land of the dolphins.
When the narrator first informed me that I’d be “having a rendezvous with beings of intelligence…and feeling…and sentience…” I laughed. This wasn’t just bad new age; this was hilariously bad new age. A guided meditative encounter with dolphins is like something that a woo-woo therapist would try to foist upon Jim Belushi’s character on According To Jim.
But I left it playing.
As I swept, the narrator explained how I need to prepare my energies to meet the dolphins. (Various chakras were involved.) He shepherded me to the beach, where I met the dolphins, who gave me a sand dollar that allowed me to breath underwater. We dove into the depths and I followed the dolphins to the sunken ruins of an ancient city. There among the worn pyramids and crumbling arches, it becomes clear that the dolphins are taking me somewhere special. That’s where it happens.
You enter through a low arch.
And there in the center
in a glowing, golden-green light
is somebody you have once known
and have always loved.
You move towards the figure
as the figure moves towards you.
Such love fills you.
Such memories.
Such wonderment.
Such beauty.
Then one
suspended
wonderful moment.
The light and you become one.
Maybe it was that I’d actually accidentally entered some sort of weird meditative butler-zen state, cleaning my energy while cleaning my bathroom. Or maybe it’s just that a quarter century of life has left me a fragile, emotional being who has wept at no fewer than three wrestling matches. Maybe dolphins really are beings of intelligence, feeling, and sentience.
But whatever it was, it absolutely punched me in the gut. I was wholly, and undeniably wrecked.
The phrasing of “somebody you have once known / and always loved” conjured a person to my mind so perfectly that I was imagining them before me before I even had time to comprehend what the narrator was saying. It’s a near perfect distillation of the feeling of losing a person who means a great deal to you. You once knew a person, but even now that you no longer do, you love them all the same.
It’s especially effective as a invocation for people you’ve lost, but still hope to have closure with one day. Even if true reconciliation is impossible, perhaps you hope to one day apologize, or to just share a moment to reminisce.
But the real reason that that section kills me is that the scenario it presents is one of closure, standing before a person who you love, but no longer know, and accepting it.
That’s a helluva heavy thing to plop in the middle of exploring a underwater city with a bunch of cetaceans.
- TWG
PS: Is this the first Dolphin/Shark post to reference actual dolphins and or sharks????
