Drowning in Excellence
Dive in and (nearly) drown - it's how you learn to swim.
“This summer I went swimming
This summer I might have drowned
But I held my breath and I kicked my feet
And I moved my arms around
Moved my arms around”
- Loudon Wainwright III, The Swimming Song
Stroke stroke stroke, breathe.
There. Feel the might of the drown looming far off and close by and everywhere all around. Above and beneath.
Kick kick kick, flip.
A speedy dive, a languid leap, immersion in the weight. The water grabs to keep you in, dripping its protests to towel and concrete and riverbank as you depart. Flesh goosing and braille-ing its objection at both your entry to and exit from the liquid.
Float float float, glide.
Open water kelp touching slippery skin to your agile form as you glide by. Swimming pool Band-Aids signaling their threat from the depths far below. Sunlight broadcasts salvation as you hold your breath beneath the surface, looking up at the glassy ceiling of it.
Look look look, feel.
Learning to swim is difficult. All that water in the ears, gumming up the equilibrium and suppressing thought. The nose drumming up business in the tunnels to stream live and uninterrupted as you motor.
Thrash thrash thrash, settle.
Wild arms and purposeful kicks and breathing out your eyelids and it’s everywhere compressing, pushing in, and gasping in the undertow.
All all all, silence.
Breathe in the drown. The might of it. The chance that it will take your life—all of it—leaving no receipts.
Darkness comes and a peace settles in the movement. Quiet. Calm. A thought generator kicks into gear as you complete another lap.
I am swimming! I have swum! I am a swimmer!
Learning to swim is difficult.
Devotion—that’s the key.
Some people never get there. A gap in the knowledge no 10,000 hours can ever fill. Never to feel the exhilaration of floating and the propulsion of the human form in liquid life. Never to know how to captain ones’ own survival. To risk it all. To play an active role in saving yourself—of saving both body and soul.
Left on the shore or the deck or the beach.
Too afraid of the water.
Afraid of the might of the drown.
It’s a metaphor. Swimming. Breathing in the water of creation and filling up your lungs with it. To go to the edge of saturation—the very brink—and discover what’s there in the words in the paint in the movement. To spend a summer or three seasons or a lifetime or a decade devoted to the learning, the acceptance, and the pushing off of the might.
You must study the swimmers to graduate in the drown.
I think a lot. Too much, sometimes. Not about this or that, but very specific things. The how. The why. Cogs turning as ancient machinery, processing, producing an opinion—or another question. Always another question. I think to the edge of my scream. To the reaches of a glass teetering to the potential of its smash. To the very limits of your tolerance, probably.
Some people call it overthinking.
Actively drowning in the excellence of others. Thrashing about in the might until the stroke becomes smooth, the float becomes natural. Until I learn to swim in their work as a way of surviving in my own.
Pools and oceans and bodies of water are everywhere. Music, movies, books; libraries, theatres, galleries; even on street corners with a single amp, a guitar, and a dream. The people who sing, write, direct, and perform—they are giant swimming holes of potential lesson. An expansion of your creativity can be absorbed by taking a breath in the water if theirs. By accepting that chance to drown.
Dive dive dive, panic.
And then swim.
A summer, a year, a lifetime, a day. Dive in. Learn all the strokes. Dissect the techniques. Swan dive, cannonball, dog paddle to the edge. Different styles. Different locations. Different genres. Rivers and streams and dams and pools and oceans and lakes and reservoirs of water. Of art. Of creation.
Hold your breath, close your eyes, open them underwater and feel the sting of the lesson. Get to the nearly of the might drown, then kick away with your new knowledge.
Learn to fucking swim.
Devote yourself to the task. Don’t just dip a toe in to check the temperature, declaring it too cold, too frightening, too dark. There is no cursory—not if you’re going to learn how to swim. Not if you’re going to nearly drown.
Might might might, breathe.
Fill your lungs and heart and brain with the liquid of it. Bathe in the work to absorb the excellence into your skin, your psyche, your confidence. Thrash about until absolutely consumed by the raging waters of Oeuvre River.
Book jackets, liner notes, film credits, how-to manifestos. Use your listening ears and your seeing eyes and your thinking brain and your beating heart to suck in the rage and stillness and agitation and churn and eddy of the whirlpool. Then hit repeat. Rewind and play at half speed. Do it for a week, a season, a year, a lifetime.
Drown. (Almost). Swim. (Always).
Every stroke, every note, how they grew up, why they create the way they create, what they meant by this or that, how they think. Oh, they’re dead? Oh, they’re alive? Are you prepared to nearly drown to discover these secrets? How long can you hold your breath? What’s your capacity?
The deeper you go the more engulfed you are in the might of it. The panic. The struggle of keeping your head above the complexity of this pool, this body of water, these works. There is always struggle followed by the calm and peaceful acceptance at the edge of consciousness and then suddenly, the kick of instinct. The instinct to survive, to swim, to triumph. You, gasping back to life taking giant gulps of fresh air—so, so, fresh. Revived. Invigorated. ALIVE!
Might have might have might have, didn’t.
Learning to swim is difficult. Thrown into the deep end or open water and churned by the waves and held under for too long by the invisible hand of doubt trying to drown you with the might of it. But you must learn to swim. You absolutely must.
Study the swimmers. Graduate in the nearly drown.
A summer, a month, a day. Ten-thousand hours or a lifetime in the water of it. Devote yourself to the potential terror of the water.
Don’t be afraid of the might of the might drown.
Just hold your breath. Just kick your feet. Just move your arms around.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
This week’s amends…
“I don’t like people talking when I sing and so my would kick people out of shows and so I did that at Dylan shows. […] And this was just what it always done. I didn’t think a lot of it, but after about five nights tour manager came up to me and was like, Mr. Dylan has been watching your shows and he wants to meet you. So I go down there and he’s like, So. I hear you’re kicking people out of my shows? I was like, “Yes, Sir.” He loved it. He loved that I was this kid that was like, Nope, get out. And it intrigued him and was what made him listen to my music. It wasn’t even my music, it was that I was kicking people out.
But he ended up mentoring me and really taking me under his wing, and I was really faltering at this time. And he was like:
Are you a folk singer? Are you a singer songwriter? Do you have a choice? ‘Cause you have a choice. Maybe you’re not and maybe you should do something else.
And I was like [salutes] “Yes, Sir. I am a songwriter, Sir, I am.” And he was like You may never be famous. And I was like “No, Sir, I may never not, Sir.” And he gave me books to read and music to listen to. And I just remember being like, “You know what? If Bob Dylan is the only one that likes my music, we’re done. Like, we’re good. We’re done.” And he really encouraged me to keep going. And he’s like:
Don’t get a band. Stay solo acoustic. Stay with that record. It’s who you are. You don’t have a choice to be who you are like it may not work, but are you or aren’t you this?
- Jewel, recounting advice from some guy. Bob Dylan. Mentor. (and he did some other stuff too.)
This is just another hash house on the road to success you get out there and you show them no respect.- Neil Young’s advice to Jewel opening for Crazy Horse at MSG.
Full excerpt below. I love this. Bob Dylan AND Neil Young. What a bounty.
Via the algorithm.
On Rotation: “The Swimming Song” by Loudon Wainwright III
So peaceful. So cold.
Winston Churchill had some falsies. One such set is up for auction on Feb 6. (By the time this is live, that will have already happened.) I hope whomever won the bidding is chuffed. Apparently these chompers are among the false teeth Churchill used when giving inspirational speeches such as the "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech, though how you’d verify that I don’t know.
Via Neatorama
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple