Sunday 6 January 2013

Radioactive (Imagine Dragons)

If you enjoy this song, please be respectful of its creators by buying it.

More often than not, the songs I feature in this section are in effect gifts chosen for me by the universe. This is not the time to exhaustively discuss my religious views, but I will acknowledge gifts like these are central to substantiating my belief that more complex facets of reality exist than just the Newtonian world.

The sheer specificity of this song ‘randomly’ intercepting my path on YouTube, on the very morning of what I think of as a new phase of my life that can accurately be symbolised by the tattoo over my heart, far exceeds what I am prepared to dismiss as coincidental. Before consulting the lyrics, I thought the relevant line was ‘enough to make my systems glow’, which reflects my own self-perception of being alive with ionising electricity at moments like this, when my soul feels enmeshed so harmoniously with the infinite.

Another issue that resonates me is the theme of awakening. For a time, I was so unhappy in life that I suffered from what you might call a lite version of Cotard delusion. Because I was already aware of the way reality interacts with the individual, even though my understanding of this interaction was far more crude than it is now, this delusion manifested itself in the suspicion that my consciousness was caught in some kind of ongoing simulation.

I did not entertain the idea of cryopreservation very seriously, in the spirit of Abre los ojos, but the film did prompt me to wonder if I could not ‘wake up’ from whatever malevolent curse was keeping me trapped in an ongoing nightmare. (See, even then, I had an instinctual sense of the extent to which a person can make an overwhelming change through a persistent application of their will and determination.)

I have experienced three significant ‘awakenings’ since then -- the third of these cemented what could be described as an enduring sense of happiness, understanding, peace and stability. This comprehensively satisfies the need that drove my repeated pleas to anyone ‘out there’ who might be listening: I want to wake up.

This song represents a meaningful communication of faith from the universe that it is indeed time to once again leave behind a collection of shortcomings, to shed a skin as it were, and move forward into a new age. I feel it in my bones.

“When I float, weightless, back to the surface, I imagine I am becoming somebody else.”

I’m waking up.

Check it out on YouTube