Immersion (The Dam part 5)

[Christopher Stewart]

("Underwater World" by Felipe Skroski)

« The Dam » is a 22-minute long suite in 8 movements that uses the metaphor of water flowing from source to ocean to illustrate the process that we affectionately refer to as life.

As the title suggest, the focus is directed on one major obstacle/life-changing experience, symbolized by a dam on the river, which the protagonist/narrator has to conquer in order to reach their intended destination.

The storyline is inspired by my own life and struggle to reach the goal of earning a living through my artistic output, as opposed to working a day job to support myself and invest what’s left of my energies in artistic pursuits on a part-time basis, as I’ve done for the most part of the last twelve years or so.

In the storyline of the suite, once the obstacle is recognized and the necessity of the conquest accepted, the protagonist must transform to become what they feel they must be.

The fifth movement portrays this transformation, and is entitled « Immersion. » The word is intended to refer to both the introspective facet and the manifestation of this shifting process, as it evokes the process of entering oneself for reflection, and the qualitative change wherein one fully becomes oneself.

The lyrics have received the « this-close-to-satisfactory » status :

Standing back it's all clear
Following the wrong stream
Everyday I'm dying
For fear of failing

Signs ignored and doors missed
The whole world misread
Always the same barrage
Self-inflicted damage

I must reconnect to
My source and my outlet
Carefully rebuilding
What has been lost drifting

Choosing a better boat
Today and hereafter
The ocean is calling
Myself I must enter

While googling to verify some English phrasing, I stumbled upon the following text, which expresses very well how I view my relationship with Poligraf and its music :

Artists often appear to be absolutists - absolutists of their artistic enterprise. Because they consider it the most important thing to be done - for themselves and in the art world in general. This absolutism often meets with criticism. But there is a reasonable point in it: The artist - the emphatic artist - is the only person in this world who is able to produce just the kind of things he produces. If he were not to do it, nobody would, and the world would remain poorer. A potentiality which can come into existence only through you - because you are the only person who is haunted by this vision and who has the potential to give birth to it - will be realized by you, or never. It constitutes your personal singularity, and you may also feel responsible for bringing about this objective potentiality which can come into existence only through you. It is either given birth by you - or will not exist at all. - Similar phenomena are to be found in other spheres too, in writing, science or philosophy. - Wolfgang Welsch, "Becoming oneself"