Three in the morning, covered in blood, I try to remember what I’d dreamed of.
Was I singing a lullaby? Between the silence of two eclipses, I hear Glass Animals’ latest single for the first time. Dave Bayley characterizes the song as emanating from an existential crisis. At three in the morning, lying on the floor of my apartment, it is igniting one within me. ● I awake not to alarms but the rhythmic footsteps of my neighbor’s son. Every day, time inscribes its travels in my sleep. On peaceful nights, when my unborn son visits me in my dreams, it appears as crows’ feet around my eyes. Mornings like this reveal a hidden fissure where there once was a nighttime frown. On occasion, my neighbors ask if I hear anything. My answer is always “no”—not out of the pain of politeness, but because I prefer to listen. As I confront my reflection in the mirror, I hear baby Rumi’s father singing to him at breakfast. His laughter brings tears of joy to my eyes, and I wonder when I might serenade my own son with my favorite songs. ● I don’t think I realized just how fast the time would fly. My love, until now, has been but a meteor shower. Each passing flame more spectacular than the last, fading slowly to black. In the embers of their embrace his existence and nonexistence merge. At three in the morning, as Bayley contemplates life’s meaning, I turn to the poet Rumi. When he writes, “Come settle with me / Let us be neighbors to the stars,” my thoughts drift to my mother. From her, I gleaned that love is a voyage across the heavens to bring forth life. As I mature, her sacrifices and our shared journey become clearer. ● It tears through my head, does it haunt you, too? Proximity and distance entwine like the sun eclipsed by the moon. It is you that I search for, everywhere, seeking to find traces of you in the space of your absence. I recognize you in the reflection of my morning eyes, in my lover’s laughter, in the imagined sight of your hand in mine. Each cycle of the moon, your life begins as a fire in my belly and ends as a somber trickle. I have not yet met you, Sam, but my love for you shines with the intensity of ten thousand suns. In Rumi’s terms, it is a love “beyond the stars and void of space,” that is “Transcendent, Pure, of unimaginable beauty.” I was always destined to be your mother. In that truth, I am fully me, already with you. It is you, who I live for. Your heart echoes in mine, calling to be broken in two. I hope whoever loves you knows how long I longed to make you. ● What do you think about when you think about love? Beams in the dark from your old M2? A choking rose back, to be reborn? Or being held so close, you nearly broke in two? Love mystifies and silences. For a decade, now, I have listened to Glass Animals’ music and learned much about love in the process. Each album, an undiscovered planet, each song an occasion to voice those three small words that hit so huge. Conspicuously absent from their discography are romantic love songs. Bayley once said that enough songs have been written about people loving girls. The rare love songs he has crafted are veiled in allegory that only his most privileged muses may discern. I do not know Glass Animals’ fourth album brings. But if it is, in fact, a compendium of love songs, I hope it reveals what the band has long taught me to be true. ● Bayley teaches us to understand the world around us, we must first look within ourselves. Love isn’t simply found in another person yet to be met. Love is the eternal light recognizing itself in another. Now, when I think about love, it is not of the kind that orders the cosmos and the heavenly bodies that claim it as their home. Instead, I think about my mother on an airplane and my father there to greet her. I think about my brother playing our favorite songs driving around in his car. I think about Rumi’s footsteps upstairs and the sound of his laughter in the morning. I think about my unborn children playing in the forests and fields of my youth. I think about their cries waking me up at three in the morning, and how I will lull them with my favorite Glass Animals’ songs. In the space between the song’s beginning and end, I find the vastness of you. It reflects Glass Animals’ vision—each lyric a star in the intricate constellation of love’s expansive form, as boundless as the universe itself, each note a touch of color to its complex, interstellar symphony. Glass Animals taught me that love is not that which dazzles and dissolves into stardust; it is the recognition of life growing inside me that longs to plant roots, like a dandelion in the wind. Until then, my children are but creatures in heaven. ● Stream "Creatures in Heaven" by Glass Animals now and pre-order ILYSFM. I LOVE YOU SO F***ING MUCH is coming July 19, 2024.
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