As part of DE/FRAGMENT’s 10th release, focusing on the “emotional, ethereal and sublime aspects of intimate interpersonal relationships”, Douchean’s Just to be Clear offers listeners a life-affirming journey; through feelings of looking into the eyes of a significant other.
We live in a world where stopping and observing feels like a moral infraction. Panta rei, says Heraclitus, but believing in such a maxim blindly only leaves one with a bitter taste of a moment that went by too quickly, trampled by the unyielding march of Time. It is only human, perhaps an act of greed, to capture in one’s palm that which seeps through a fist’s grasp like sand, isn’t it?
Yet, in the nominal spirit of Warcraft’s greedisgood, successful greed results in art; captured moments from an individual’s qualia, able to be appraised (and appreciated) by others. I had the privilege of appraising (and appreciating) DE/FRAGMENT boss Douchean’s upcoming “Aphrodisiac” EP and choosing which track to premiere; a perk of officially joining the DE/FRAGMENT team last month.
As opposed to his other, heavier releases (such as DEFRAG003), Aphrodisiac offers a glimpse into a captured world of blissful existence, floating weightlessly and bouncing from soothing cushions of exalted emotional charge. It is a fitting ode dedicated to a person close to him, expressing appreciation and adoration for the feeling of comfort they bring to his being.
“Just To Be Clear” immediately struck me as “the one”. The track opens with a Sunrise over God’s own Earth, offering a clean start to whoever was there to bask in its greatness. You see, it doesn’t matter what happened yesterday, all the sins are washed away by the warmth of a morning Sun. Just like in relationships, all the hardships, fights, and disagreements no longer matter. All that matters is the serenity of the current moment.
As the track progressed, I was taken to a grass field on a crystal clear, windy, Sunny day. My right hand was in someone else’s hand, all the while playfully running with the person through the tall grass. The wind in the hair, the warmth of another – close to me – made it feel just like a magic trick of levitation. However, unlike the magic trick where the magic of the act is only felt by the audience, I feel as if there is no audience – this magic is shared with the one who holds my hand.
Suddenly, as the second breakdown of the track started, the world stood still. Entropy, as we know it, stopped changing. The person let go of my hand, turned around, and looked me in the eyes. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I struggle to find a thousand words that could fully describe the blissfulness of such a moment.
Just as the Sun immaterializes all that has happened before, so do the eyes I stare at make me forget all the hardships I went through. “Just To Be Clear”, they whisper, “everything is going to be alright.”
Transmitted by filozof., a slave to Deus ex machina.
Electronic Tesseract 