You’ve Got Me Up In a Frenzy Again
The Madwoman
It sounds so sweet. That’s what’s bothering me.
I’ve listened to it again. And again. Louder this time, because apparently I solve problems by putting them directly into my skull.
It doesn’t sound angry.
It doesn’t even really sound frenzied.
It’s light.
Airy.
Mobile.
There’s this fluidity to it. Nothing fights. Nothing catches. The whole thing just sort of moves.
And then it gets bigger. Not messier.
Bigger. More pressured.
And the bigger it gets, the more frenzied he becomes.
I can’t stop thinking about that.
Because there’s a point where he’s asking for the impulse of love and the instinct to kill to entangle into one thing.
And I think I’ve been hearing that wrong.
…Or maybe not wrong.
From the wrong side.
Because I kept hearing two things.
Love.
Kill.
Opposites, brought together. There’s the contradiction. Very pretty. Very Sleep Token. Love hurts, desire destroys, blah blah blah, everybody go home.
Except.
Entangle to one.
One. Not love fighting rage. Not tenderness interrupted by violence.
One thing.
And now I can’t stop thinking about smothering.
Fuck.
Not because I think he’s literally choking someone. I don’t know what he’s doing. But because smother is one of those inconvenient little words that can quietly walk around carrying multiple meanings at once.
You can smother someone with love.
You can smother someone until they can’t breathe.
Same fucking word.
The need gets bigger.
The grip gets tighter.
And nothing has to stop looking like love.
That’s the part I couldn’t see before.
I was waiting for love to turn into violence.
But the song never asked it to. It asked them to entangle. Maybe there isn’t supposed to be a moment where I can separate them again. Maybe that’s why it can stay so fucking beautiful. Maybe that’s why it can sounded like being held… right up until I noticed the lungs.
And now I can’t unsee them.
Because sometimes the difference between holding something and smothering it isn’t the shape of your arms.
It’s whether the thing inside them can still breathe.
But wait, there’s more.
Sweat.
Blood.
I kept treating that like escalation. Sweat becomes blood. Things get worse. Nice and clean little progression. Except sweat doesn’t become blood. Sweat is what comes out of you when you’re working hard. Blood is what comes out of you when you’re wounded.
Those can happen during the same act.
You don’t have to start doing something different.
You just have to keep going.
…
Oh.
Oh… I don’t like that.
Because the music keeps going too. It doesn’t suddenly become violent. It doesn’t give me some massive ugly rupture where I can comfortably point and go, THERE. That’s where the bad thing started.
It stays sweet.
It stays fluid.
It just gets bigger.
And he gets more frenzied.
More.
More.
More.
Until sweat turns to blood.
Except it doesn’t, does it?
The act stays the same. The body doesn’t.
And suddenly I have a question I really don’t fucking want:
How do you know when holding something becomes restraining it if the movement never changes?
Because if you love something, you pull it close. If you’re afraid it’s going to leave, you hold on. If it tries to leave… You hold tighter.
…And he already knows they’re going to leave.
He says so.
That’s the part I kept walking past.
He knows.
And then he asks anyway.
Say that you will.
Even if you won’t.
That’s not hope…
He isn’t asking because he believes the promise. He is asking after acknowledging that the promise isn’t true.
So maybe that’s what he’s holding onto.
Not them.
Not even love.
The lie.
And suddenly the frenzy makes terrible fucking sense. Because if you know something is leaving and you cannot make it stay, there is still one thing you can try to keep alive.
The version where it isn’t a lie.
Say you’ll stay.
Say this is love.
Say we’re still inside the beautiful part.
Say it even if it isn’t true.
And then hold it.
Hold it tighter.
Love it harder.
Keep going.
Sweat.
Blood.
It doesn’t matter that the thing in your arms is dying as long as you can keep calling what you’re doing love.
… Fuck. Maybe that’s why the music never has to become ugly.
Neither does the lie. It can stay sweet. It can stay beautiful. It can keep moving exactly the way it always did. You can keep holding it long after you know it isn’t true.
Until the impulse to love it and the instinct to destroy it are impossible to separate. Until the same hands that hold it are the hands that hurt it. Until there is nothing left to hold.
And still:
Say that you will.
Even if you won’t.
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Caught Between Black and White
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