Spinning Black
Let me tell you a little bit about this thing called "spinning black". It is an expression I came up with a few years back to explain what it feels like when a dark mood slips over me. There is a period of time before I am engulfed by the mood when I can feel myself entering it - that threshold, that twilight time, is the time I refer to as "spinning black".
I can feel myself falling into that dark and cynical mood and it feels like I am spinning down into a bottomless well. It is not depression - I don't feel either depressed or sad or helpless or hopeless. (One of my brothers suffers from clinical depression - he describes it as being covered in wave after wave of excrement - spinning black in no way resembles that feeling.)
There is no bottom in the well. At least I have never hit it. I simply spin black until I am through spinning black. One of the curious things is that, when the process of spinning black is finished, I am generally in a good mode. I am cynical and skeptical, but basicallyin a good mood. Not really gallows humor (though I can have my moments of gallows humor), but more of a sense of the physicality of the world stripped clean of its illusions - a pure state.
Horace always pops to mind - "we are dust and shadow". When I spin black I spin into a world of dust and shadow. There is a tremendous amount of clarity there, so the possibility has occurred to me that the physical sensation I describe as spinning black is my inner thought process clearing away the cobwebs and dross of our multitasking world to allow that clarity to surface.
I tend to write prolifically - non-fiction, fiction, poetry or lyrics following a period of spinning black. I suspect that it also flows from the clarity that accompanies the sensation combined with deep emotions that are stirred by it.
The simplest things can set me spinning black. There are a variety of triggers to the feeling. As I right this, I am on a cycle where I have spun black several times for the last couple of weeks. Mostly it has been triggered by spring and spring related sensations.
I was walking at work, on lunch, when I passed down a corridor of white flowering trees. As I walked through that corridor a breeze ruffles the trees and I was engulfed in a swirling storm ofwhite petals. It was visually beautiful - and set me spinning black.
I was doing laundry and as I sat outside on the hood of my car, drinking a soda and watching the clouds try to crest the Santa Cruz Mountains, I started spinning black.
I was talking to a friend who was struggling with a personal challenge and I started spinning black.
When I am primed and the mood is near, many things can trigger it - and off I go, spinning black. For this round of spinning black I have tried to capture the feeling in lyrics, though I am not entirely satisfied with them.
The first attempt resulted in this:
Spinning Black I
I woke up Sunday and the world was spinning black
Halfway between the dream and the day
I looked around and the world was spinning black
I closed my eyes and I tried, tried to turn the clock back
But I woke up Sunday and the world was spinning black
I've been lied to and I have been betrayed
I've been twisted, I've been tangled, I've been swayed
I've put my head down, I've bulled my way through
I've kept on, I've fought on, I've been true
I've been lied to and I've been betrayed
I've been twisted, I've been tangled, I've been swayed
I woke upSunday and the world was spinning black
Halfway between the dream and the day
I looked around and the world was spinning black
I closed my eyes and I tried, tried to turn the clock back
But I woke up Sunday and the world was spinning black
Now, I kind of like it - it expresses the cynicism that comes with the feeling. I am not entirely comfortable with the rhyme and meter, but that is more a question of careful analysis and rewriting. So, I carried this around in my head for a while. (This was originally written having been triggered while doing laundry.)
The second attempt looks like this:
Spinning Black II
Six o'clock in the morning
I am tangled in a dream
A single chord reaches me
And pulls me into you
I am spinning black
The world is not real
I struggle for the core
To find something to feel
The second chord slices me
So swift I burn and bleed
Like a cutthroat razor
That opens up my need
I lay there in the darkness
Touching the ghosts of you
The lingering core of heat
That fades away like dew
The third chord rings out
And wraps me in the strings
Thin and tasting of steel
The welling tears it brings
I am spinning black
The world is not real
I struggle for the core
To find something to feel
There is a final chord
That simply waits to be
I know that when it echoes
It will spin the end of me
I am spinning black
The world is not real
I struggle for the core
To find something to feel
The trigger behind this version was slightly more complex. We have all had the experience in our lives of having friends or loved ones in a place of pain - either physical or emotional - and known that sense of helplessness because there is really very little we can do except express to them our love and support. By luck of the draw and cycle of the world, it seems that several people close to me are in those places. All I can do is express my support and love. So, if you are one of those folks, and you happen to read this, just know that you are in my thoughts and prayers - even as I am spinning black and dreaming of Horace's "pulvis et umbra summus".
Now, besides some expansion and rewriting on Spinning Black I and II, I suspect I have not quite yet managed to wrap my thoughts entirely around spinning black. There will be a Spinning Black III…maybe even a IV and V. We'll see.
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