Right Foot on the Roses, Left Foot on a Landmine (Sleep Token - Even in Arcadia)
I’m letting it all get to me.
The past few years have been challenging for me personally. Which isn’t new, I have lived through other difficult times in the past. But it’s been different this time around. When I go through a rough patch, I would work out, occasionally talk to my therapist, listen to music, jot some thoughts down, crack some jokes and be done with it and move on. I tricked myself into believing that I had found my one true path through the darkness to the other side. But what really happened is that as I get older, the darkness that takes over my life intensifies over time, and the things that previously brought me solace and peace does not affect me the same way. Much like when my medication no longer works, I need to either change the dosage or change medication completely. The pain no longer disappears when I just listen to one of my favorite artists. The feelings of inadequacy does not magically go away after an annual therapeutic check-in. My mental health does not improve with some self-deprecating humor. Not to say that my coping mechanisms don’t work anymore, it’s just that I cannot continue to rely solely on them to get by. As my issues grow, so do my ways of dealing with them. I have to adjust my medication. Up the dosage. Try new medication. Expand my potential solutions. The answers of yesterday are no longer solving my problems of today.
I’m the type that when I’m feeling down, I need to listen to songs that befit that mood. I’m not the listen-to-happy-songs-to-cheer-me-up kinda guy. Listening to happy songs when I’m up in my feelings only makes me angry. When I’m sad, I want listen to sad songs. I want to feel every bit of that sadness. I wanna drown myself in the melancholy until I am ready to come up for air. In therapy, I learned that I need to address and process emotions, not avoid them and hope they go away. Sad songs help me process emotions, while happy songs makes me feel like I’m avoiding my feelings. I don’t mean to shit on fun happy songs, but there’s a time and place for that. I’ll keep dancing along to the rhythm when the time is right, but it doesn’t feel right to be happy until I deal with the sad first. Sad is my main course, happy is my dessert. It’s my version of "“they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
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Then there are the rare bands that are versatile to do both. Sleep Token is one of the rare bands that I can listen to no matter how I’m feeling. They’re good when I’m in a good place, but so much better when I’m in a worse place. I’m listening to their new album Even in Arcadia and I am once again impressed with the musicianship and depth of lyrical content that Sleep Token provide. I was late to the Sleep Token party, I was turned onto them around the time of their last album Take Me Back to Eden, and I have been intrigued ever since. Their sound is tough to pigeonhole but you can hear the metal, progressive, alternative, and R&B influences in their music. The songs are sublimely structured, and as I’m digging deeper into the lyrics I am finding the type of inspiration and insight that I crave. Songs about identity, personal growth, the process of changing yourself (“Look to Windward,” “Past Self”) mimic the state of mind I have been in. “Past Self'“ ends with the line “I just don’t want to be lost again,” and I felt that. Now more than ever. Lead singer Vessel ponders his band’s fame and rise in popularity in “Dangerous,” “Caramel,” and “Damocles.” Between the emergence of his band and the price of stardom, it sounds like I’m not the only one struggling with their changing identity, consciously trying not to confuse self-actualization with self-destruction. Even in Arcadia is one of those albums that’s complex yet comforting; I can feel the music wrap its arms around me to prevent me from drifting away. It became the album I needed to hear, rather than the album I wanted to hear. The ultimate ‘right place, right time’ album.
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Not quite sure if I was born cynical, or if my attitude has been hardened over the years. I easily default to pessimism, and it takes a conscious superhuman effort to see the positive, especially when all I see is the negative. It’s difficult, but not impossible. I just have to adjust my dosage. Although exercise has been vital to my emotional well being, I overly relied on it to solve everything. When it came to mental health, I let my fitness routine do all the heavy lifting. Now reinforcements are on their way. I now have a team of therapists at my call, ready to tackle the demons in my head and attempt to help me undo all the damage I’ve done to myself over the years. I have notebooks and journals an arm’s reach away, ready to accept whatever emotion I am feeling that day. I have the support of my family and friends. And I have access to the most therapeutic music ever.
Every time I fall down the well with no escape, Sleep Token has become one of those bands that’s always at the top, throwing me a lifeline and pulling me back up to safety. I am forever in debt to any band that has that effect on me.
I owe it to myself to escape the mental and emotional walls that I have surrounded myself with. This battle will not be won overnight, this is a battle I will have to fight every day until I take my last breath. Improve myself by 1% every day.
I’m not giving up without a fight.
It’s time to emerge.
“When the river runs dry and the curtain is called
How will I know if I can’t see the bottom?
Come up for air and choke on it all
No one else knows that I’ve got a problem
What if I can’t get up and stand tall?
What if the diamond days are all gone
And who will I be when the empire falls?
Wake up alone and I’ll be forgotten
And nobody told me I’d be begging for relief
When what is silent to you feels like it’s screaming to me
Well, nobody told me I’d get tired of myself
When it all looks like heaven, but it feels like hell”
Sleep Token / “Damocles”
