Like Drowning

Feb 22 2026

It is like drowning, my grandmother tells me. It is this feeling, I love it, it sweeps you up but ties you down, it is like breathing in the whole forest at once, too much oxygen that upsets your liver, and before you know it, your shadow’s resting on brown golden pine needles and creeping through ferns, and your feet are five inches off the ground, it is like opening your eyes at the tabernacle, like dropping stones cause they’re too heavy and picking them right back up, it is dreaming about giant beings beyond our memories made up of triangles and darkness.

This thing, it gets me sometimes, it’s got me now, (has it got you too?) it’s like getting caught in a wave and spit back into the sea, when you’ve been hit by inspiration, and then you remember about the other thing you saw and you consider the line you read and then how the quote you heard fell out your friends lips like windchimes, and the way the quick swipe of a zipper up a coat brought you to childhood, and the most beautiful shape of sunlight you watched today, a lamp’s shadow caught on a white wall, and the magic in the way the fabric fell while hanging between windows, and you’re caught in it, you’re drowning, you’ve got too much Magic and too much World and you must do something! Or worse, just Magic, not enough World in the bucket, so much life and desire to make something as great as what you’ve just experienced, because you know the greatness will fade quickly, and you’re worried about how everyone says that time speeds up as you age, so you’ve got to make something now!

And you’ve got to read something, you must, you’ll watch a lecture from a professor on YouTube, considering for a moment the infinite amount of knowledge you could learn at any moment that’s all out there for free, gratuit, floating on a kinder harbor of the Internet you so often ignore for more crude pleasures, the deep sea parts, deep-fried delicacies of pimple-popping chocolate-filled hypersatisfactory content. For a moment, you’re struck free from these metal wires and you know suddenly, you must read and visit and consider work, not consume it, but you’re tragically, inedibly unsure, how do I make decisions about what I want when I’m eighteen? And when, I want different things seasonally, quarterly, and I want to build a life of quality, full of love and truth and emotion and beauty, beauty like the rawness of the radio or the craftsmanship of strong tables, chairs, and wheelbarrows, and just how, it’s so much, you’re drowning, it is like drowning, my grandmother tells me.

When I get struck by inspiration it is like sounds clattering around in my head, the sounds which are usually quite manageable become nothing but sirens, begging me to make something, because I have been struck with bones of magic for a moment, and if I give up control just right, I’ll capture that magic on paper, or in code, or somewhere, you know, so the magic hasn’t just got up and walked away. That’s the best thing, when there’s magic and material, and it forms some kind of purity, like if every time someone makes art it brings us one step closer, to some Babel-like place, maybe of holiness, or something. To believe, to see, to imagine so strongly are incredible gifts, and I feel lucky to sometimes have access to them. I try to live my life in a way that sets me up to capture magic on paper or however you want to put artmaking into words, and I am always ready to listen to what I see.

The way it goes, I think, is that Art is just putting World back into Reality. Living gets you more World, it fills you up on that, call it material, inspirations, same thing. You need World (material) and Magic (energy, desire to create) to make Art, and when you’ve done it right, there’s still that World and that Magic somewhere, but the special thing is you’ve put it back into the world, like centennial farming or respecting the laws of nature.

It’s like drowning and resurfacing, maybe, catching air and breathing for the first time, it’s like a flashlight illuminating stars, or steam traveling through open windows, it’s days that pass like years and years that pass like days, it’s children being carried up a bridge, and knowing there’s a number of how many bridges they’ll cross in their lifetime and knowing they will never know that number. It’s knowing there are colors we’ll never see and touching the sides of highways, paths unwalked, smelling every branch, saying thank you to the computer, and learning words from strangers. It’s bridges, squares, benches, and nails, denim, laughter that makes you choke. It is like living, or waking up in the morning in a new place and getting used to a new home. It is like brining words in jars for proper moments, it is like keeping a lighthouse, it is like falling in love and believing. It is like drowning.