For the very first seconds,
Of every day, I don’t understand
Why you’re not around.
Busting out of your head is an arduous affair. Kicking, screaming, punching against its walls doesn’t budge the gatekeepers of a brain embracing the treasures of trauma. I know, I’ve been there. I’m often there. So, too, is the Rainer remix of standout single by Woman’s Hour ‘Darkest Place’.
It happens seemingly so random, too. I mean, one moment you’re proudly asserting your auto-pilot façade, replete with all the entertaining-to-others bells and whistles and self-important barbs that keep the world at bay, from discovering you. And then suddenly, something—I don’t know…a feeling of intense truth–strikes oil and you’re sucked, vortex like into a rich, black morass of thought from which no matter how much you struggle, you can’t get out.
That’s the brain on trauma: that moment when everything feels like too much. ‘Darkest Place’ is that process epitomized. Flailing like a bloody ghoul in the moments before the vortex happens, the track finds the singer trying to convince herself that bringing people into her darkest place, the place where she can feel real is the only time she can meet her lover head on. But that’s a lie, and you can quickly hear what that does to her.
Suddenly, the track makes a vortex like whoosh and a foreboding synth takes over, the vocals then become muted and insular, measured for every bit of affect. Every once in awhile she tries to talk herself out of her head, but it never works: the vortex drags her back down.
But what kills me, and what makes this remix one of the most self-assured of the year, is the intuitive ear of Rainer here. In two parts of the song, when she sings “I can’t even tell you how much it hurts” and “I don’t understand why you’re not around”, fluttering, arpeggiated synths rise out of the song’s depths and push aside the vocals, quieting them to a disquieting level. Understanding the track at its emotional DNA–and not just its core–takes this remix to a whole other level.
That’s trauma at play, that’s the brain quelling the panic of real emotion; and it’s why Rainer’s remix is so fucking genius.
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