PEPPERS GHOST
I write this slightly rushed while waiting on a flight to Toronto, but I wanted to at least jot down some thoughts:
My current favorite song is PEPPERS GHOST by the band Cleopatrick, and I wanted to look through the lyrics and try to think about why it resonated with me so much, so attached is an excerpt:
Oh, that's when the whale devoured me entirely, I stood
Behind the teeth and tried to see through all the irony of being duped
It was all a ruse, I'm fucking screwed man
So from your point of view, does this feel like it's real to you?
Do you believe what you're seeing is full truth, fool-proof, no dispute
Does this feel like it's real to you?
I thought I could verify who was on my side, man
I swore I'd seen it with my own two eyes man
I guess I'm a fool for fucking fallacy
When Peppers Ghost gets smoking mirrors in my vicinity, yeah
Yeah, they look fucking real to me
(A bit of context, Pepper’s Ghost was a stage trick where using smoke and mirrors they could project a ghost from below the stage onto the stage)
For me, this song depicts anxiety pretty well, and it feels pretty damn nice to feel like someone gets it.
Oh, that's when the whale devoured me entirely, I stood
Behind the teeth and tried to see through all the irony of being duped
In my eyes, the whale is the overwhelming mental dominance of an anxiety attack, and even with the lucidity to know what is happening, that it’s anxiety it ends up feeling pretty futile when it just happens without any control of your own.
Without copying the rest of the excerpt I put above, I think Cleopatrick represents pretty well how real it feels. Even if you know that nothing is happening, or that what you’re thinking is objectively wrong, god damn does it feel real. In a weird way, it feels as if you were playing a super realistic VR game, where you get attacked or maimed. I think every sane person would react and flinch, even though they can recognize that it is not real. It’s pretty funny in hindsight to see how logically flawed, objectively wrong, and just flat-out incorrect anxious thoughts can be, all while feeling like ground truth.
I’m grateful for this song, to feel seen in this way.