He was right. I mean, I have never seen more black eyes in my life, but everyone was extraordinarily friendly. More than once someone really wanted to help me out by offering me free cocaine, which sounds bad, but they were so very nice about it.
Amongst some of the people we met, two were particularly great, we meet them at a metal and rock themed bar called Rufus T Firefly. For those that do not know, Rufus T Firefly is an antagonist from a Groucho Marx film, I did not know that, but my best friend, trivia king that he is, he knew, and he let me know.
We were sitting at the bar when we started chatting up the man and woman sitting next to us. Like all Scots in Glasgow they were friendly, sociable, and very likable. Benefit of having met them in metal and rock bar, they naturally had amazing taste in music.
At one point, the gentlemen and I were using the two urinals at the same time and we talked about Scottish rock music. I mentioned my deep fondness of Scottish indie rock band Frightened Rabbit, to which he informed me that the front main and principle song writer Scott Hutchison had killed himself recently. This was dreadful news for me. However, I was on vacation so I could not let this dreadful news ruin my night. He and I returned to find our two friends rocking out hard, very hard, to Rage Against the Machines “Fuck you, I won’t do What you Tell Me.” It was quite the sight.
As you should easily surmise, we had a very good time in Glasgow.
I wrote about Frightened Rabbit, and their song “Keep Yourself Warm” way back in 2009: https://colinkellymusicinreview.blogspot.com/2011/03/august-2009-frightened-rabbit-keep.html
At the vest least, by 2011, “Keep Yourself Warm” was probably no more than my tenth favorite Frightened Rabbit song. They possess a deep well of great songs.
For years, I have thought about revisiting Frightened Rabbit, and why not, no one I knew listened to them. For I all knew I convinced zero people to listen to them when I wrote about them. Someone should say something, and I just happen to be someone. One of the reasons I never got around to writing a second review was that I was suffering from the tyranny of choice, Frightened Rabbit had so many songs I had grown to love that picking one to focus on proved highly difficult.
Giving the nature of Scott Hutchison’s death I think I will talk about “Swim Until You Can’t See Land.”
When I had a life that contained a resemblance of free time, I dappled in playing the guitar, I definitely mentioned it before on this blog, and “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” was one of the tracks I attempted to learn to play. I ran into difficulty for the same reason while I failed to learned to play many (any) Led Zeppelin songs, the tuning was set to something other than the classic EADGBE, and I am just not comfortable enough changing the tuning of my guitar Sara, since I am not sophisticated enough to necessarily be able to tune it back correctly. I learned to jam away but nothing sounded right, and that was because they used something I have since forgotten for their tuning.
The opening flair rhythm guitar is sweet and carries through “Swim Until You Can’t See Land.” It is lovely, no wonder I was so drawn to wanting to learn to play it myself.
Those moments, while presumably irrelevant to the general public, bestow upon me a greater personal attachment to this song. By touching those strings and bringing forth those sounds, I felt and heard the music in a way that made me directly connected to it. I should play guitar more, probably the most therapeutic thing I have ever done.
Being an inadequate guitar player, but a competent singer, I often focus on lyrics and “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” has some great lyrics. The song is about a man, potentially Scott Hutchison himself, walking to the coastline and braving the waves going further and further out.
The two verses I would like to focus on are thus:
“Dip a toe in the ocean, oh how it hardens and it numbs,
The rest of me is a version of man built to collapse and crumb.
And if I hadn't come now to the coast to disappear,
I may have died in a landslide of rocks and hopes and fears.”
And;
“Up to my knees now. Do I wade? Do I dive?
The sea has seen my like before, though, it's my first and perhaps last time.
Let's call me a Baptist, call this a drowning of the past,
She is there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back.”
I have always taken this song and the swimming away from the land as a metaphor of therapy. The past throwing stones at the narrator was simply looking to move beyond whatever had happened to cause such harm. The land was no longer a home or a place he wished to live so he would swim, until the land was nothing more than a distant memory. A baptism, or a rebirth, I believed he was singing about starting over, and how fearful doing such a thing can be.
Then we get one last bridge of lyrics that I appreciate the most:
“And the water is taller than me,
And the land is a marker line,
All I have is a body adrift in water, salt and sky.”
Our narrative swimmer has gone too far to go back and the continued terror of the endeavour sinks in to it’s fullest, the water, the future is now greater, or taller, then the man and there is no going back. All he is now is a man floating in the ocean. Maybe because my skin is thick and my heart is as hard as iron, but I never felt a dark forbiddance in this line. The takeaway for me that was simple that the unknown future was highly intimidating.
I took great joy from this song as an inspiring song about letting go of the past and marching forward into the future with courage despite the fear.
My perspective on “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” has shifted a little after learning about Hutchison’s suicide. Scott Hutchison’s body was found at Port Edgar, and presuming I am understanding things correctly, I believe he was found in the water. This song is might be an early suicide note. Letting go of past and embracing the dark waves is not moving on, but perhaps giving up, and now this song is equally sad as it is beautiful. From what I know, it sounds like Scott Hutchison might have played out the narration of the song “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” in his final moments.
It is well known that Scott wrote about suicide before presumably committing it, in the form of the song “Floating in the Forth.” I suspect anyone else writing about this will point to that song as a key note regarding this tragic outcome, but I am less familiar with that track, and giving the circumstance of his end, I doubt I am the only one who now looks as “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” differently now.
I am reminded of hide of X Japan’s death. X Japan guitarist, Hideto Matsumoto (aka hide), the Pink Spider, wrote songs about killing himself and then, eventually he did. I wrote about that back in 2015:
https://colinkellymusicinreview.blogspot.com/2015/11/x-japan-forever-love.html
I have two comments on that post, which is a lot for me, both disagreeing with my assessment. The police later confirm that hide had accidently killed himself while performing some neck exercising, and while I really want to believe them and learn that I am mistaken, I am not convinced. I think the Japanese police are trying to warm our broken hearts. The evidence in his music pushed everything to only one terrible conclusion and hide lived and died by it.
Back to Scott Hutchison, he sang about killing himself, and then eventually he did. I do not know what we can say, or believe, to warm our broken hearts now, and I fear maybe Scott thought, or felt, he needed to finish his self-fulfilling prophecy and ensure his life ended in the same manner he wrote about.
It is very interesting and upsetting to think about, but I have never shied away from such subject matter. I take comfort in knowing that while he lived Scott gave us so many great songs and I hope he squeezed as much joy and happiness out of his existence while it lasted. I hope his final swim was as poetically beautiful as his song “Swim Until You Can’t See Land,” and I hope he somehow died in peace.
Until next month, keep on rocking in the free world.
- King of Braves
