10. Julia Brown - “The Body Descends”

Julia Brown is Sam Ray – a.k.a. the same mastermind behind the likes of Rickey Eat Acid and teen suicide. However, the music of Julia Brown is less sporadic than his other projects. It’s more balanced and deliberate, contemplative and mature  – almost cinematic in nature, as if it is meant to be absorbed directly into the soul rather than mediated through the distant and cheapening channels of the senses.

This track in particular reminds me of an emotional final montage of film. The protagonist is dying from an overdose. Their life is flashing before their eyes, and they can feel themselves slowly drifting beneath the veil that separates the living from the dead. It’s the end – and it’s a moment as simultaneously beautiful as it is frightening. They can suddenly see through it all. They can look upon their life as a third party, removed from action, and see existence for what it is. The result is a slow building crescendo of realization. They’re being flooded with meaning. Soaked within regret and thankfulness, torn asunder, pulled and pushed every which way as wave after wave of feeling drowns them. It’s as if the ocean of their life has suddenly been stuffed within a moment the size thimble. They’re a shabby vessel – a broken vessel, and yet they finally see past the lies to recognize that they’re just as capable of perfection as they are of corruption. They’re standing on the shore of everything, about to fall into what’s next, and leave behind the known for an unending expanse of nothingness. The unrelenting weight of existence is being shed, cast aside and left behind upon the shore as they dive into the warm and accepting blurs of the unknown. It is the end, but it’s also only the beginning.