Listening to the song ’Starburster’ by Fontaines D.C. on repeat, learning the words and feeling the aesthetic, my interpretation lay with this idea of becoming real, the devotion and relationship one might have with a higher power - the spiritual plane.
The momentary blissness being one found in the release from overcoming trials and tribulations - an escape earned. When stars seemingly align, complete surrender is found and freedom is felt - nothing matters, the brain recedes and sensation takes the foreground. Oh, the bliss of transcendence. For a moment.
Then, when looking into the meaning of the song, I discovered that the lyrics were inspired by a serious panic attack that Grian Chatten had at London’s St Pancras Station. The singer and band are notoriously aloof when speaking of their music and any associated meaning. There is suggestion that the song is somewhat criticising the modern condition of excess and instant gratification, leading to intense overwhelm and misplaced fulfilment. I believe this to be so…
And yet….
There’s such duality in the song. Undertones of acceptance and hope weaved through the debilitating condition of modern society. A way out, released from anxiety and empty, false existence to find momentary blissness - not the ‘blissness’ of gratification, but the beauty of nothingness, complete spirit and nature, when the tangible world melts away, completely in the hands of what may come, without control: limply floating.
There was one conversation with Chatten where the interviewer described a feeling from the song as one of finding light in the darkness. I think this is an apt description of the emergence that can take place after a harrowing experience, such as a panic attack, where you might find your Azrael - your guiding light. Momentary blissness - released from the world to escape, for a moment, to the invisible hands/rope/chains/control of an incomprehensible force.
A reminder of what you are and who you belong to. Duty to the Other. A reality check found in non-reality, in the recesses of your spirit and the whispers of the wind.
The lyrics read like a prayer and reminder of returning Home, staying true, falling outside of perceived needs - ‘rightness’ - and leaning toward a profound level of acceptance and grace.
“I wanna move like a new Salamander
I love the carrion who’s a real Scavenger
It’s moral tyranny keeping me from thee
… Hit me for the day
For the light
That you suffered
To come by
Take to my sky
Never wanting
Only wonder
To live out of reach
Sloping family
Short to tall
One to three
Swallow the key
In their footprints
I will follow”
It’s so easy to fall into the everyday traps of participation. A never-ending calibration across the spectrum - a little less, a little more, stay focused, let go.
And my questions to myself are:
What do I need, what do I do, to embody wonder, and not wanting, through much of my day?
Where do I push and where do I let go?
What rituals allow me to transition easily from state to state throughout my every day?