Loop in the Evening Calm
Infinity
The time left to me,
the answer that awaits me,
is “infinity”.
In the title track for “Loop in the Evening Calm”, which just went on sale, the word “infinity” makes a marked appearance. I wrote those lyrics.
This word elicits feelings of endlessly expanding hope while at the same time carrying a sense of terror like that of a chasm so vast it seems bottomless. et as this sensation sinks in and threatens to fetter me, I conclude that “infinity” must be the rule upon which this universe is built. It is said that when a dying star explodes, the debris gradually coalesces to once again form new stars. So it is with this world, where the end of anything brings with it a beginning.
This infinite loop encircles us all. Life and death, morning and night, hello and farewell, end and beginning. What name befits that fleeting instant found in the gap between one thing and the other?
Take for instance that feeling one finds in gazing at the twilit sky on the verge of morning. Though pressed along by some boundless current, that one moment is still and solemn, as if the wind had ceased. That sensation of having lost your identity in the space between the two. Or of having suddenly grasped an assurance of the connection between you and the world.
These fragmentary moments are always very beautiful, and it seems as though in them the murky unease and exceedingly frightful things that were once there melt into vapor. It is as though you were crossing an ocean when the wind and waves subside and leave your small boat drifting serenely on the mirror-like water.
The looping world.
The salvation and severity of having no end.
The joy and frustration of always being yourself no matter how far you go.
I am sometimes daunted, but I know things will work out. Though the water shows many faces, though the waves rage one moment and are gentle the next, a moment will come when the wind dies away. And that moment will grant me the courage to believe in this beautiful world once more.
Over and over again.
from the “I.D. ” essay collection
maaya