Vibes of the Nether

“When you sleep do you see an angel in dying lights?
Or can you see someone standing outside trying to set you alight?”

– In Bad Dreams, Crippled Black Phoenix

Life that we know of this world seems to exist as a continuum for most of us. Stars line the skies and the waves crash on the shore; birds fly across the sky and ants crawl in a line. The world around us seems quite objective without much of an insight. Work worries us and the breath of a partner lingers behind our ears. The smell from the roasted chicken that one had for dinner lingers around for the night and we go to bed after a fag. That seems to be median of consciousness around which our lives revolve. But what do you see when you close your eyes? Do you dream of things that you cannot remember when you wake up? Or do you simply stare into the blankness of the eyelids that plays back your reasons to smile and weep through days and years. In such a case, do you see me?

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—”

– The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

Hours pass by, and sleep plays a game with you, tricking you into a realm that feels like a dream, but somewhere you can see clearly the room that you are in. You can feel your hands against the bulge of your cheeks, cold, unmoving, like a stone, only blood pulses through it and you can feel it receding, a slight tingling sensation. You shift, you turn, the illusion remains, but you can remember that you are sleeping on the floor today. You can still here the unmistakable sounds of the boots of the night guard as he passes by on the street, a loud clacking and the clanging of something that rings every night at 2 am. You had searched for the source of the sound on many nights, but comfortably concluded it’s probably a ghost. Let it be.

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

– The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

Life for some rolls on. For you, it assumes a new shape when you listen to your midnight music after the dose of poetry. Your closed eyes sees a weeping angel. Somewhere a winged creature of the dark with serrated wings with holes in them, and eyes blacker than darkness perches on the roof of a tower. It settles down pensively and stares into the moon, as if preparing to sing to it. A creature in a black robe down below carrying a scythe walks past the tower. On his free hand, he holds a Walkman. The black cords of the headphones are almost invisible by his robe. He walks by, vacant eyes on the ground, head bobbing softly to the music that plays in his Walkman. Behind him there is a trail of smoke, and in it you see the smiles of those like you, caught in the trail of pleasure in their own despair and acceptance. Blessed bliss, they mouth at you, asking you to join.

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.”

– I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day, Gerard Manley Hopkins

It is no dream, you soon realize smiling. You look for more, you yearn for more. A soothing voice fills your ears; a pleasant vocal that turns into a sweet shriek, a growl, and dissipates in the distortion of the guitars and the underlying layer of the piano. You can feel the dark’s stillness, its melodic silence and the hushed conversations that never erupt into anything beyond a thought but don’t subside until they have taken over the travails of your day. The darkness swallows your bitterness in its infinite belly and leaves you devoid of your shallow consciousness. You feel yourself tumbling into the depth of the unseen and the unfelt as you hit an intangible asphalt. You can still feel the numbness in your arms, but as you walk behind the scythe bearing creature holding a Walkman, you take in the sights. Gremlins wave at you stoned, curled in the corners of gothic buildings. Strange abominations in purple smoky robes stand huddled along the streets seemingly watching something within the circle in silence. A lost angel, only a child sleeps on the pavement; you see the trickles of tears on his cheeks but he seems to have grasped the calm deep below. Winged creatures continue to perch and fly away far above you, but they do not bother you, they only look at the moon with an incomprehensible sadness in their absent eyes.

“Where has the tree gone, that locked
Earth to the sky? What is under my hands,
That I cannot feel?”

– Going, Philip Larkin

Indeed, what is underneath your hands? Perhaps you can’t even feel it anymore. The room feels distant; yet you can feel the numbness in your arm. For the last time, you turn and then you can no longer hear your own breaths. The only thing you remember for the night is stepping in a trance within the smoke that trails the Walkman and hence, you fall asleep listening to a melody of the Nether.