Track 21: Vanishing Points: Slowdive’s Souvlaki by J.L. Moultrie
I recently visited a certain Zen Buddhist monastery for the first time. The meditation group was led by a Zen nun of over twenty-five years. Her name was Myungju and she proceeded to teach us the essentials of zazen. The focus of the morning session was gratitude, so we were asked to direct our minds towards this sentiment. My thoughts immediately turned to my mother, who’s struggling to function with a serious ailment. Fresh shame boiled over inside me when I realized I hadn’t spoken to her in several months.
Though the sitting meditation wasn’t very long, I recall the passing seconds feeling arduous and unfamiliar; something I’d not experience at home nor in the previous Zen temple I’d been a member of. All my emotions converged on how uncomfortable and transparent I felt in front of everyone. Myungju picked up on my discomfort and gently suggested stretches and alternative sitting positions that may be a better fit. After changing my posture, my frame of mind tempered considerably.
I’m a burly fellow, so before coming to this meeting, I typically meditated in a semi-cross-legged position. However, Myungju introduced me to the seiza or kneeling position, which is achieved by resting the sitting cushion between both thighs and positioning the buttocks so that the calves are facing upwards. I expressed my gratitude and that I’d certainly use the kneelingpose moving forward.
***
“Your voices sound just alike,” my ex-girlfriend announced from the bathroom. She was doing a facial cleanse and I had Souvlaki playing in the next room. I was absently singing along to the song “40 Days”. I initially felt stung because I thought she was kidding, but she suggested I tape myself singing along, so I could hear it for myself. I grabbed my handheld voice recorder and sang along to the opening lyrics:
40 days and I miss you
I’m so high that I lost my mind
It’s the summer I’m thinking of
40 days and I’m blown away
If I saw something good
I guess I wouldn’t worry
If I saw something good
I guess I wouldn’t care
Her compliment turned out to be accurate, as they often were. Our voices blended to the point that it was difficult to decipher where mine ended and where his began.
***
I first became aware of Slowdive in my late teens, when I ran across some songs while surfing the internet. I listened to some of their tracks, but at that time, couldn’t afford to buy their discography. However, I took note of their sound and the effect their music had on me, which I’d describe as melancholic ecstasy.
When I entered my twenties, funds were still scarce, but I soon made it a priority to become immersed in Slowdive’s music. I eventually got hardcopies of the three full-lengths they’d released to that point. Though I liked Just for A Day and Pygmalion, Souvlaki was a revelatory.
The skittering drums and wall of reverbed guitars melded with warbling, blushing basslines. The vocals and lyrics, which often mined themes of ennui, isolation and lost connections, provided texture to the band’s asymmetric pop vision.
***
The members of Slowdive are Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, Christian Savill, Nick Chaplin and Simon Scott. Neil and Rachel began playing music together in their teens when they had a spontaneous jam session, where neither spoke a word. This chance meeting turned out to be the genesis of Slowdive. Neil was the main songwriter of the band; his craft is imaginative, singular and is not averse to taking risks.
Souvlaki is Slowdive’s second LP and was released in 1993. The album’s appraisal by contemporary critics ranged from mixed praise to invalid derision. Despite the lukewarm reaction, the band released a third album, Pygmalion, in 1995. The outfit was dropped from their label and quietly disbanded shortly after, until reconvening in 2014. Slowdive have released two more LP’s since reuniting, Slowdive and everything is alive. They continue to receive universal praise for their ongoing body of work.
After our lesson, we left the meditation hall and descended a set of stairs to the monastery’s basement. Myungju prepared fennel tea while we arranged a dozen chairs in a circle.
At some point during our conversation, I shared that I wrote poetry and had been published. Myungju then asked if I could recite a poem, but I said I wasn’t good at sharing from memory, at that time she requested a spontaneous piece. I remember closing my eyes and hesitating momentarily, then reciting something to this effect:
I look at the sky
Who am I?
I want to know
Where does the wind go?
I want to change
Who am I?
I want to know
Myungju thanked me and shared that she entered the monastery as a teenager who recognized in herself a need for guidance and structure. She shared that a painful aspect of her monastic life was that, over the years, people would visit the monastery with only a fleeting, surface-level curiosity. She said that having intimate talks and experiences with people she’d only encounter for a brief time was a source of trauma. She became emotional, as did other members of the group.
When we finished tea, we got up and cleaned our cups. A member of the group told me she enjoyed the session and hoped to attend a retreat sometime in the future. As the group began to disperse, I was browsing the small library when a member of the group named Victoria approached me. She was also a first timer and said that my poem made her teary and I thanked her. We hugged and expressed our mutual intention to visit the temple again.
***
Many of the spaces I inhabited as a teenager and adolescent - including classrooms, workplaces, parties and family functions - rendered me an interloper. As a black teenager who grew up in the projects, my love of guitar music, classic literature, Korean cinema and existentialism went firmly against the status quo upheld by my environment.
The songs of Joy Division, TV on the Radio & Bright Eyes filled my headphones and influenced the awakening of my own self-expression. Amid all this, I had to learn how to revel in solitude and plumb the recesses of my own psyche until I found solace.
***
Rachel and Neil were in love for years and split around the time of Souvlaki’s recording. Meanwhile, the band recorded twenty-five songs and submitted them to their label, which were swiftly rejected.
At the suggestion of the band’s manager, Neil sequestered himself inside a cottage in the British countryside. The change in scenery inspired a new creative flow. After two weeks, he emerged with a handful of new tracks and refined them in the band setting. One of these new songs was “When the Sun Hits”:
Sweet thing, I watch you
Burn so fast it scares me
Mind games, don’t leave me
I’ve come so far, don’t lose me
It matters where you are
Another recording, titled “Dagger”, was also born in the countryside. It features an acoustic guitar and a few over dubs, but not very much else instrumentally. The plain sung, emotive vocals feature lyrics centered on the inherent throes associated with a messy break-up:
The sunshine girl is sleeping
She falls and dreams alone
And me I am her dagger
Too numb to feel her pain
The world is full of noise, yeah
I hear it all the time
And me, I am your dagger
You know I am your wound
Last summer, my ex and I took a road trip from Detroit, Michigan to Daytona Beach, Florida. Upon arriving at the ocean’s edge, I was struck by the sheer immensity of the clashing, tugging and mounting vastness of each wave. They seemed to hold more memories than the extent of mankind yet could not undergo catharsis.
It was my first time seeing the ocean firsthand, and from the height of our hotel room, I could see at a certain point far in the distance, the ocean and sky vanish into each other.
***
My ex and I separated around a year after our trip. I feel we exhausted the knowable depths of one another. Over our twelve-year relationship, we’d fully grown into, through and around one another until we both constituted a single garden.
There are myriad reasons why things happen, but explanations merely point to the matter at hand. I’m happy we both possessed enough bravery, and felt enough security, to act when it was needed most.
“Dagger” captures pain and the unvarnished reaction it bestows. Rachel, who’s the song’s subject, said in a documentary that it took years before she was able to listen to it.
The looming departure of a lover; the storefronts engulfed in flames; the latent disaster of black ice. Growth demands that something fixed becomes jarred and separated from the security of its axis. Space and sustenance are essential for things to mature.
***
Before I exited the monastery, Myungju handed me a note that held the names Po Chu-I and Wang Wei who I’d soon learn were renowned Chinese poets who practiced Zen. I was also made aware that this was the final lesson Myungju would lead before departing upstate for the duration of Fall.
As I walked outside, I felt that I’d departed from a place that could benefit me in a much greater capacity than it already had.
J.L. Moultrie is a Detroiter and multi-genre writer who communicates his craft through words. He hasn't been the same since encountering Hart Crane, James Baldwin & Patti Smith. He's poetry reader & assistant fiction editor at ANMLY
