a prayer on impermanence

musings on Unreal Unearth / welcoming the molt

dearest friend,

here we are at summer’s close. cooler breezes, frequent rain, leaves waving their farewells; clinging to how long the light might last the evening and watching the sun slip away just the same. 

a first in quite some time, I’m close to begging summer to last a little longer. I’ve barely plunged my body into enough freshwater, can count the nights I laid in the grass and waited for stars, and consider my knees too clean. this summer was dizzying in its constant motion. in many ways, I feel I haven’t caught up to myself, and time has gone on skating beneath me. I’m not ready. 

like much of the world, I’ve spent the last week or so pouring over Hozier’s latest release, Unreal Unearth. it seems with every new album he puts out, I know at some point I’ll lock myself in my room, put it on repeat, and exorcise a poem the lyrics stir in me. what feels particularly special this time around, is how this body of work resonates with the emotional renovation, or to use his wording, “inner custodial work” I recently went through and have felt the dust start to settle.

I know that one of Hozier’s main inspirations for this album was Dante’s nine circles of hell. there are plenty of interviews and video essays delving into his references and the history behind these connections, but what I find most captivating is just how incisively this album communicates a grappling, and later, a powerful acceptance, with impermanence. 

after my first listen-through, I wrote: “gratitude, devastation, and abounding hope (amidst and despite it). facing the nature of impermanence—how Unreal Unearth embodies that transformation. yes, there will be so many things that I hold precious to me and love in this life, you included, and I will still love it and not be sorry when it’s over—my life, my love, my dream of what the future could be, even this once-green and new-as-spring earth that wanes, more tired every day. I was here and felt each joy and sorrow fully, as a gift, because that’s what it is—in equal measure. grief and peace in impermanence. come here and let me kiss your hands before we leave. thank you.”

because of our human nature, how short and lawless our lives, and nature itself, no person, nor anything on earth will experience a forever. all that we experience is susceptible to change. “when people say that something is forever / Either way, it ends.” nothing in this life is certain except its end. 

as a major theme throughout, Hozier asserts we should not exist in the shallow surface of our emotions to avoid getting hurt. we will come out of this (this, being love and relationships, growing up, pandemics, death, our futures and lives,) scarred, stained, or transformed regardless. (oftentimes, not a beautiful or feel-good renewal. more a shedding of a former self, or molt.) after all, “gettin’ through still has a cost.” 

we won’t be the same afterwards and the fundamental structure of ourselves will shift. but as he mentions, “If there was anyone to ever get through this life with their heart still intact, they didn't do it right” although painful, it’s the only way to live. understanding the destruction of one thing allows the creation of another. approaching the heat of the flame—whatever hell you might be walking through—and understanding, ‘I will come out of this a different person. I can and will hope it’s for the better, but I will not skip over the important internal alchemy taking place.’ 

however, change and the death of things do not render our starting point meaningless. this hope might seem defiant or rebellious when facing a reality as unflinching or unforgiving as death, but that belief, that knowing—that just because things are to end, it does not mean time spent within the experience was without purpose—is just as vital. the joy experienced by a caterpillar does not diminish once it later knows flight. yes, things change. no, we will never be able to go back. it does not mean it matters less. there is no guarantee we will come out of love, out of life, unharmed, and that is what makes it such a brave endeavor. 

even in the moving on and recouping stage of heartbreak, there is a temptation sometimes, after coming out the other side of grief, to write off that time in our lives; to quickly move past it. in opposition to this way of coping, his lyrics dig in deeper. a chair is brought out to sit with grief and feel it the whole way through. allowing the sting of heartbreak, but never an erasure. “we didn’t get it right, but love, we did our best. // I know we want this to go easy by being somebody’s fault, but we’ve come long enough to know this isn’t what we want and that isn’t always bad.” I will not make what this was for me, or you as a person, smaller simply because it didn’t work out. sitting with that ache is a way to honor each other’s bravery. when all is done and spoken for, let us find each other’s fingerprints all over the other’s heart; the evidence of how well-lived this love was, if only for a time.  

the song All Things End is the one that truly blows my socks off. impermanence is no easy thing to find comfort in, and maybe this is why his reckoning and loud acceptance of it, is so breathtaking to me. then to dare make it a somewhat uplifting, catchy hymn?! with a choir to further that sensation of togetherness and community?! demonstrating we will all walk this path of heartbreak, but that very same terrifying realization is also what allows us to better support each other? it’s too much, in the best way. all of this, I know is not spoken without fear and is not a lesson that diminishes its pain once learned. but he could not say, “well, this life” in a more deeply human, loving, heartbreaking, and hopeful manner. do not be afraid of feeling. through this song, Hozier himself even acts as a psychopomp, guiding us through our own “death of things.” 

I, maybe selfishly, am also fascinated by what a synchronistic pairing Unreal Unearth makes to the healing power of anger and grief I discovered when writing my book, You Look Like Hell. perhaps it is no wonder this album is tickling me—both accomplish such monumental personal change through the catalyst of loss, anger, and walking through our own nine circles. both transformations begin and end in introduction. in Unreal Unearth, “First Time / First Light,” and within my own, “maybe we can meet me at the same time.” / “there is so much of me to introduce and all of it happy to meet you.”

above all, I know this album left with me a feeling I am struggling to define; a bitter salve I will keep studying. a hymnal to holding things close while we have them. loving deeply. living presently. not claiming ourselves unafraid of what we may lose along the way, but knowing an end to something we love does not end us with it. 

with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
venmo: schuylerpeck