It’s 5:00 AM, and the curtains are drawn. A familiar scene: empty canisters, burst balloons. There are questions lingering in the collective mind of the room, akin to the heady aftertaste of K-backwash and cheap vodka. When does the night end? When does the day begin? Will I ever be the same again? Can I ever be the same again?
Eyelids hang heavy, yet everyone is present, awake, if not entirely conscious. The resident SoundCloud DJ has fucked off back to his place, leaving the same mix to loop over and over. Dead stares, broken glasses, lost keys. Just another weekend.
The mind’s eye opens somewhat in those hours of altered states, as we sojourn into our back-passages and Inner Citadels. It’s no longer about when, if, you next open your eyes, but the lonely moments in between. The incidentals unfurl before you, as if every instance has been leading up to this sullen, bleary-eyed gathering; as if this were somehow your calling.
Was it ever really that simple?
Dean Blunt’s Platinum Tears brings it full circle — the people, the places, the corporate experiences — and renders it as the cavernous, blown-out lacuna of a subwoofer in the trunk. For the most part, it keeps it Real, a gassed, hard-hitting “bruiser;” at turns, it also abounds with “positive flow,” a Swarovski diamond in the frozen roughage. It’s a smear on the glass, a blurred refraction of a flickering streetlight. It encourages you to go “deeper” into the coke-residual recesses of your mind’s chopping board.
Think of the old school photo on your parents’ mantlepiece, adorned with the grins of children with nothing to lose. The tendrils of reality encroach upon the sun-bleached, time-worn faces, as you recall who they were. How many of them are now babymums, Babyfathers too? You remember the playground taunts: “BMW, black man’s willy.” How it all comes back around. Now, there’s “Black Dick” on the table. It’s a violent cycle.
Think of that childhood friend, the one who was keen on sport — he’s probably in that very photo — and the tenuous link you still share. His number’s in your phone. You remember the text he sent the other week, immortalized in liquid crystal: “Lots of strains . Call or text for more info.Fat bags.Fat budz.Excellent bud.” You haven’t seen him for a little while, and he doesn’t answer your calls or messages anymore. Perhaps it’s time to delete that contact and fear the worst.
Think of that night in Budapest, jostling with the destitute, the abandoned, the unwelcome. In that shitty club, you swore you recognized her face. It’s somewhere on that photo again. That’s it; she sat next to you that day. Your first crush, maybe. You never did see her again after you finished school, and now you’re in the same city, at the very same venue, the incongruent sounds of foreign chatter and Big Room ringing in your ears. Not that you ever approached her, though. Confrontation was never your thing. You stumbled about on those repressed memories, and you walk and walk, somewhere, anywhere, through the dead streets, guided by the shimmering lights of the Gucci and Louis Vuitton storefronts up ahead.
You’re back in the moment. Your moment. Maybe there is clarity in all of this. Maybe this is life’s eternal return, pre-destined to wear the same clothes, do the same drugs, interact with the same people, read the same books. All that changes is the town, city, state.
Waking up in the morning, you cry Platinum Tears in the shower, trapped within the ever-closing walls of a heavy, heavy comedown. It happens to the best of us. A quick escape; without so much as saying goodbye, you step onto the train, knowing that normalcy and mundanity is a stop away. There’s something you can’t quite shake as you take your seat. What was that mix again? It could’ve only been roughly 20 minutes looping on and on into the night, and yet it never lost any of its initial luster. It sounded familiar but detached, somehow encapsulating the worn limbs and tired souls of the room. It spoke to you, as clichéd as that sounds. It was a street fable, a sensory prayer — an uncanny glimpse from the outside-in. You realize you may never actually get to hear it again, let alone listen to it sober. But like that school picture, it has already left its lucid imprint upon your frazzled neurons.