Descending. 16th May 2022

He - "Your email. A bit of a shock"?

Me - I suppose so..."

He - "What happened, I mean how did you discover?"

I had discovered that mandatory therapy doesn't end until we have done at least 50 hours of placement and we have a letter from our therapist passing us as stable (!) And also to have filled out more forms to highlight our areas for development, and then also listing what CPD we are planning on taking. In other words, I need not have given him a date to end therapy.

He - "So have you found anybody"?

A new therapist...I say that I will leave that until I find a placement. And he isn't saying anything. Then we are talking about transcripts. He is telling me to never write my own transcripts because I can use a transcription service! 

I write my own transcripts.. 

I say, 'where does that leave the promise of confidentiality then! I mean talking about a client to a supervisor for the purposes of making sure that I'm doing the best I can for that person is one thing, breaking confidentiality by letting some nameless person transcribe a conversation that I said was confidential, doesn't sit well with me.

And then we are talking about placements, we are not talking about continuing therapy...

He - "So what now then"?

Me - rummaging in my bag: "What's this? What could this be? It is a CD. I will let you open it"

He - as the little video inside the CD package starts..:"Oh! It plays! How on earth does it do that? It's like those weird birthday cards where you open it and it sings happy birthday but like several sophisticated stages further"

Me - "Welcome to the world of Tool"

He - "It's like a cross between Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali isn't it! I dread to think what happens if you delve in further! Are all the eyes related to some song on the CD?"

Eyes again.

I explain about the eyes in Tibetan iconography, especially those of White Tara. And then Alex Grey, and end up talking about the Fibonacci sequence (as is compulsory!) and end by saying that there is a lot to Tool...

He - "So you brought it for what, so you wanted me to see all the eyes or...

Eyes - what the Holy mountain, is it about eyes, Kit?

Me - <laughing> "So I can grant you the mystic empowerment of inner vision! No, to play one track. The song Descending has been with me a lot recently. A person in college gave a talk about how people are so cruel on the internet, and how social media is a force for harm, not good. And I said, 'yeah I know that - but at the time Fear Inoculum was released, quite a few people were writing on the Tool Facebook groups I'm in, and going through really tough times. And, we use Tool to keep us going because the songs contain so many embedded principles...it's in the title - fear inoculum - And a lot of people, me included would write to people who sounded, and probably were suicidal - and Descending, or rather lyrics from Descending, was one of the most quoted tracks. And many people posted photo's of loved ones who had died; the son who would have loved to have seen them play, my father, my brother, my sister. And I collected their photos on my phone and they all went with me to see Tool when they played recently, and then I deleted them all. That was my contribution, my ritual. But Descending "Stay the grand finale"...I always felt that you didn't really understand that aspect of me. The why I hold on. So when I first began speaking to you. What I would write in an assignment about denial, about thinking that there is hope and possibility. But what I do has to be a fair trial, I don't give in until the last moment, ever, no matter how painful or bad something is, I don't give in, or say enough is enough until it clearly is. There is a criteria, a defining characteristic. When that has been reached then I can let myself off, I can breathe again. And the other memory associated with Descending, when things were bad one night with my husband I went downstairs and set up VR and sat - with the Earth below me, I'm in space, stars above me, listening to that album with no body (characteristic of many VR 'games' is that you have no legs, torso, or arms. Just hands) it struck me as infinitely beautiful"

So much I'm not saying. About my total despair. About how important this song was at that moment. About my connection with all those going through similar to us...watching their family give up, giving in to fear and blame and the desire to RUN...

I 'stay the grand finale' because if I give in, what am I worth; to myself?

He - "What is it I wonder, because you often talk about Tool, because with so many bands of good looking men and lots of girls are drawn to them, and we know what the obvious appeal is there. But there is something about the way that you describe Tool as a band that draws people to, essentially the soundtrack to significant parts of their lives. What is it about them that does that?"

What, you have never met a woman attracted by intelligence and energy, before?

Me - "Lyrics, also the complexity, but mainly attitude. and Maynard - the singer - he is the voice of my shadow. I very much appreciated his expression of anger, disgust and rage!

He - "So it's a way of putting to music things you would like to express"?

Me - "No, things I was experiencing, putting them safe in the bottle. It's not the time to let that Genie out. Tool's music connects me to myself. There is a similar sensibility, that you can't tell which way, it's not ambivalence but polyvalent, there is a trickster energy, a joker energy. But clear in its own way."

He places the CD into the player...and the sound of the sea fills the room.<Plays Tool: Descending>

Me - "Remember it is a journey and it will take longer than you think."

I don't say - Listen, this is my goodbye.

Sound the dread alarm

Through our primal body

Sound the reveille

To be or not to be

Rise

Stay the grand finale

Stay the reading of our swan song and epilogue

One drive to stay alive

It's elementary

Muster every fiber

Mobilize

Stay alive..

He - "The voice sounds very low in the mix, so I heard the odd word, but I didn't really get meaning"

Me - "I suppose well, the drum kit is center stage, always well lit up. Maynard stands at the back, you can hardly see him he stands in shadow"

He - "Hmm - what does this mean to you?"

Me - "The vison of being above earth, in space is one part of it. Very much it fitted with my experience of Wim Hof breathing, with overriding 'the dread alarm', that my body panics almost as soon as I begin a breath hold, but at one minute everything dissolves into presence. The oximeter shows me that the sense of panic at first isn't about oxygen, there is no real risk or threat so I'm facing that dark sea of the unconscious. There is my apprehension of being in peril which is true. At the time I was listening to this album in VR. I was in peril - my life as it had been was in peril, so my physical reactions were completely in keeping, but they weren't useful. That's the critical difference. So, it reminds me of that. You can read it on many levels. The song is mostly about the state of the world, the foolishness of fossil fuels and all the rest of it"

He - "Yeah looks like he's written it so there is very much, a feel to this, that the meaning is in the reader rather than"

Me - "Yes, that is the point of Tool. A tool is not anything in particular, its a tool for you to use. The album is Fear Inoculum - about how personal madness can, I mean that's the next track. Imagining conversations you have never had"

He - "Ha, I'm reading Culling Voices and immediately I'm remembering things that you said to me, about conversations between you and your husband."

I am being subtly undermined.

Me - "Oh, but they were conversations we had actually had, because they were recorded! Memory I cannot trust - which is the meaning in Culling Voices - but I thought that I was madder than I actually was - until I listened to what was actually said. When I'd heard the recordings enough to separate myself and just listen to the words, rather than remember the feelings, and to see the underlying dynamic"

He - "Altercations we've never had, or so I'm told" - It doesn't feel like I'm holding an ordinary booklet for a CD. It's almost like I have a sacred object in my hand"

And why not!

I guess it is sacred to me.

But back to that idea that all I have is memory of how my husband spoke to me.

The conversations I imagined cast me as always at fault, they tried to restore my power by saying - everything was wrong because of what I said, if that is the case, I can change it! 

Kit is implying that the conversations I imagine make out that my husband was not being cold and cruel, or downright abusive?

And when I listened to the recordings?

It was worse that I remember.

So Descending, again he misses the message. 

And we are heading towards our 'swan song and epilogue'...right here, right now.