By JILLIAN KRISTINA
Blood on our hands. Blood on the ground. Blood on our minds. Blood on our hearts.
A frigid ocean, beckoning towards its icy depths. A roar only the lost can hear. An invitation into blackness. A never-ending black hole lined with driftwood totems, standing like forgotten, timeworn megaliths. Reaching up towards the sky, rooted in the shifting sand, marking the path to the watery abyss.
Drawn to the waves. Into the waves. Knee deep. Arms raised… by something unseen. Pulled. Tugged towards the sky.
Blood on the water. Blood in the waves. Blood in our eyes.
This is how the dead speak, through blood, through muted movements in the darkness, through loops, over and over again, never letting go of the trauma. Trapped in terror.
Fucking stop.
In Ryan Glover’s 2020 slow-burn psychological thriller, THE STRINGS, the lines between reality and illusion are blurred and spliced by the spirit of place – the spirits tethered to this looping moment in time. In the dead of a brutal Canadian winter, Catherine (Teagan Johnston), having just broken up with her boyfriend and band, seeks isolation and solace at a family member’s cottage. Hoping to create some fresh music to help process the heartache, she finds herself crushed by the weight of her past; a weight she was hoping to leave behind.
But we all know, no matter where we go, our past follows.
Here we are.
The loneliness. The isolation. The boundaries, betrayed. The constant reminders of obligations as grief crashes over each movement, each thought.
You know, it’d just be great if for once, things just went the way we planned. I’m tired of doing every last person a fucking favor.
The pressure to create new music for her label looming over her, Catherine reconnects with Grace (Jenna Schaefer), a local photographer, to take some sultry shots to promote her new material. And Grace has the perfect location in mind – an empty farmhouse with a murderous past. Here, too, the past holds on. Follows. Reverberates. Materializes.
In the days following the shoot, Catherine begins to look through the photos Grace has sent. She stops at two in particular; She swears she sees a shadowy figure in the background – a figure Grace says she doesn’t see.
I went wandering, wondering what it would bring.
It’s not long before the darkness begins to speak. There are knocks in the night. Pounding on the wall. Creaking floorboards. Doors opening and closing, revealing muted cries that try to coalesce into a hazy reality. Phantoms appearing, disappearing, just enough to jar you awake. Just enough to keep you on the edge of sleep.
Just enough.
Just enough to drive you to the brink.
Yet, Catherine presses on, processing through her keyboards, singing through her sorrow – barely sleeping, watching quantum physics videos and wondering about the spaces in between. The spaces we don’t understand. Searching for more than the pain and paranoia that seems to be edging its way closer, little by little. Bit by bit.
She walks the same path to the icy beach, day by day. But now, figures are starting to appear on the shore – one in a red jacket, one in black. Appearing. Disappearing.
It’s winter, so it’s definitely about death more than birth or rebirth.
In death, there is creation. A chapter of Catherine’s life is dying just as she’s creating the container to hold the next one. And she’s doing it alone because birth, like death, is a solitary process – a singular, agonizing process. There is beauty in that process, in that dark night of the soul. The ego death. And the soundtrack accompanying this cosmic nightmare supports that liminal space. Comprised of original music by Johnston and a score composed by Adrian Ellis, the two worlds collide to create a character unto itself, a creeping, hypnotic soundscape that leads and ensnares.
I went walking
Talking
Till I could sing
Still, Catherine isn’t alone. Not entirely. She sings, and Grace watches. Witnesses. Admires. Adores. Grace becomes a touchstone in the void. Grace becomes a casualty of grief and loss gone unchecked. Grace becomes part of the neverending story. The neverending loop. Because in this beautiful, desolate space, no one gets out alive.
It’s really kind of tragically beautiful here in the winter. So stark.
There are places where we become trapped. Sometimes, we’re the imprisoned. Sometimes, circumstances beyond our control drive us into those maddening badlands of the psyche. Sometimes, we become enmeshed and entangled in these places where death and darkness reign supreme. Sometimes, the darkness is so thick, we can’t find our way back.
I’ve been wanting
The love of mine
Home to bring
To hell
Hell
“What have you been seeing?”
I don’t know, like shapes and shadows, I guess. It’s just when you wake up in the middle of the night, there’s no…
“…there’s no context for anything. Anything seems possible.”
Yeah. It’s like being in another reality, almost.
“Or, seeing the strings being pulled in this one.”
Behind the quantum curve, I guess.
The strings being pulled, the invisible strings we’ve no awareness of, the patterns, the foundations, we continue to try to fortify, rebuild, restructure… Time and time again, rebuilding, re-envisioning what this reality looks like, feels like. Trying to find some solid ground on which to craft our version of happiness, of wholeness, of contentment. Of what it feels like to belong, to be worthy. Of building a sense of success and security so that we may exist in this web of threads and strings – this fragile, illusionary tapestry of reality. What would happen if one of those strings wouldn’t stop vibrating? Wouldn’t stop pulsating? Wouldn’t stop to rest, to recalibrate, to just be? Would that string drive us to madness, doomed to repeat the story encapsulated within those reverberations? Those echoes of tones and screams and wails?
I saw the edge
I saw the end
I saw the strings,
They took my friends
Took my friend
On July 3rd, the Full Moon in Capricorn rose, and with it, comes a question. How do you let the illusion of success define you? How do we betray our own boundaries in the name of climbing someone else’s ladder – someone else’s mountain? Capricorn is the goat, and the goat can scale incredible, insurmountable heights. But herein lies the choice. Just because we can, does that mean we should? Can we use the energy of this Full Moon to release any struggle, any ascent, that isn’t ours to take on? And in doing so, can we adjust our compasses to our true north, working towards what’s right for us?
Tarot spread for this Full Moon in Capricorn – tag #thestringstarot with your spread!
- How does the idea/illusion of success exist in your life, right now?
- What could you do to transform that illusion?
- What energy could help you craft your own vision of success?
- What needs to be released before you can proceed on this next chapter of YOUR story?
In the end, it doesn’t matter if the new music’s better. It just matters that it’s the right music.
