Let me drown.
From the opening line of this song, Orville Peck takes his listener on a rollercoaster of heartbreak that keeps rising and dipping to higher crescendos and deeper lows than the human voice normally travels. Someone in my life introduced me to the music of Mr. Peck last year, and for this gift I’m ever grateful. Peck is basically Elvis reincarnated as a masked cowboy. I love the King, and I could listen to the buttery velvet voice of this living counterpart for hours without getting sick of it. Sometimes I do.
Orville Peck, his stage name, always wears a mask when performing. This public anonymity functions on multiple levels: he retains the privacy of his personal side, adds an element of showmanship to his performances, and becomes whoever we imagine or need him to be behind the mask. He’s a cowboy superhero of sorts in his fringed get up, and I don’t think he’s hiding his true self. It’s more that he’s playing with the role of appearances as a means of understanding identity. Looks matter, and appearances deceive. That’s a concept I first heard in my college freshmen seminar at Holy Cross in a course that examined core human questions as developed in various works of literature and film. Peck lets us realize that despite our initial impressions of his glittering, eccentric appearance, he can be someone who knows real heartache, real love, real loss, and the real experience of what it means to be a human. This song in particular wrestles with the grief of departure, the fear and courage in questioning identity, and the looming loss in choosing to abandon a known way of living for something unknown.
This song is about struggle, about recognizing that some part of oneself needs to die in order for the other, true part to be free. I think that Peck’s first person narrator speaks from the perspective of that struggling self, the part of him that has been broken and bruised yet still clings onto its connection to his identity despite his recognition that he can’t keep on this way. He starts with a moment of reflection: “Been finding it hard to be kind.” The struggle to be kind can mean more than the difficulty of doing good unto others. Etymologically, kind - as in kindred - has more to do with origin and nature than niceness. When Peck sings of being kind, he could mean both in his demeanor to others and in his ability to find connection with others. Not only is he struggling to act with benevolence toward himself and other humans because of his inner turmoil; he is experiencing this hardship because of his inability to see himself as the same kind as anyone. Kind implies community for all of the same kind, all who are kindred. If you cannot be kind you are alone, so he sings from a place of isolation. This lonely mentality is a lost mentality, which he emphasizes in the next lines: “Since I've been lost out there, losing my mind/ And I still keep on searching for what I can't find/ Let me drown.”
Though he has been losing his mind and wandering in a futile search, he’s at least able to recognize these hopeless aspects of his existence, which is catalyst for the difficult departure with which this song reckons. He sees that he is lost, that his mind has abandoned him, and that he is searching in vain, and with this knowledge he expresses the wish he needs his true self to grant: let me drown.
As if rationalizing this wish to his true self, he continues: “Don’t wanna wash you away/ I swear there’s good things that are coming your way/ And I can’t be the one left here dragging you down/ Let me drown.” The self that Peck (I’m just going to call the narrating voice by our artist’s name for simplicity’s sake) doesn’t want to wash away is the true self, the original self whose sense of connection with others, with God and with self has faded with the ever increasing presence of addiction and the growing power of the voice of addiction in his mind. The true self is the spirit, which suffers along with the mind and body in addiction. While the mind slips into an obsessive cycle that craves relief and becomes ruthless in a single minded need to preserve itself, the body in turn develops a reliance on alcohol to function. All the while, the spirit, which ideally should be the central, dominating force in this trinity, becomes a ghost drowning in the vicious whirlpool of it all. Some part of Peck’s mind can still acknowledge the existence of that self and knows that he is dragging it down with him in the widening gyre that began when his mind first realized that alcohol could provide that relief that trauma stole and his spirit longed for ever since. This is the kind of whirling chaos that creeps up in its capacity to destroy. It may seem a refreshing stream that mitigates the spiritual agony of disconnection and trauma at first, but it progresses into something sinister the deeper we wade in, often without realizing the peril of our situation until too late.
Peck sees that the cycle isn’t one that can reverse and inevitably will result in an unmanageable force of nature, and he also realizes that his true self has to let his addict self go if he is going to live. He doesn’t know what the future holds beyond the whirlpool, which is why he can only say that good things “are coming your way,” but he knows that part of himself needs to drown in order for the true part to get there.
This reminds me of the scene in the film Titanic when Jack has helped Rose onto the door that floats like a lifeboat; he makes her promise to “never let go” as she holds onto him while he floats in the freezing water beside her. There is plenty of humorous debate over whether Rose could have shared the door, and there are memes of Rose’s duplicity in letting Jack sink into the ocean just as she croaks out a final vow to never let go, and I’ve absolutely been privy to these jokes. Hard not to when you’re looking at the woman who let young Leonardo DiCaprio sink into the Atlantic. Have you seen that smile? Not sure we’d be having these same debates if it was some other guy clinging to the door, but that’s beside the point. Jack knows he is going to die. His body is slowly shutting down, and he can’t see any imminent relief approaching. He’s not asking Rose to make sure she drags him with her until help comes; he’s giving her the same message (in less blunt terms) that Peck implores of his true self. When he says “never let go,” he wants her to let him go but hold onto hope, onto life, and onto love and connection. These are the states of being that will save her and that will keep him alive in her heart in the truest way. He needs her to let him drown in order for her to live. Neither of them can see how she will live at this point in the bleak, wintry darkness, but Jack knows if she can just hold on, something good will come. I think he has to believe that to be at peace with his fast approaching death.
Peck touches on the theme of identity in his next lines: “Only one knew my name/ Nothing left but the summer rain/ Drag me 'round 'til I never complain/ Let me drown.” The past tense here tints these lines with nostalgia. Peck is speaking from a memory soaked with his sense of being misunderstood. This is before he has found a solution that engenders connection, so at this point it feels that only he knows that his act of slowly drowning himself in addiction wasn’t an act of carelessness or malice, but a deep longing for that lost sense of self. In connection, we know each other. The disconnection wrought by addiction may alleviate pain temporarily, but in doing so it blurs connection and makes it impossible to feel truly understood or seen. Often, the people in our lives may not understand what’s happening or even recognize the person we become in our disordered way of living. We know that we’re still there on some level underneath the masked existence that takes over in the more serious stages of alcohol abuse. This line harkens back to my previous discussion of Peck’s presentation of a stage self. He doesn’t use his real name and hides his face behind the mask of his Orville Peck persona. Only the Orville Peck with which he presents us holds the knowledge of his true name and face, and this is the same way we operate when we let our substance disorder run our lives. We present a different persona to the world, holding in our true selves and placing them under the guard of an abusive part of our being. Because we hide behind the mask and the deceit that Peck notes in the next line - “And then suddenly we're writing out the same old lie/ When water is all around” - we make it impossible for anyone else to understand that duplicitous existence we live. Others can identify the given name we bear, but they can’t truly know what our names mean until we let them into a deeper understanding of our honest struggle.
Peck recalls justifications of these lies, “Well, I had sun in my eyes and I'd confide/ We're no worse off than the worst of 'em, it's fine.” This is the wishful, delusional thinking that our drinking is not that bad. We may be suffering, but so is everyone, and if alcohol makes it better, then we’re better off for having found it. That of course is faulty reasoning and something we cling onto, often convincing ourselves of its legitimacy in the desperate need to not be the only one out there drowning. We may be alone in our Charybdis, but we think we’re justified in staying if we know there must be others out there in their respective whirlpools.
The imagery of the sun in his eyes works in a couple ways. On one level, we all know the experience of the sun’s blinding rays in our eyes. The brightness is more than we can handle and makes it difficult to see clearly in a similar yet opposite way that being in a dark room affects our vision. Another meaning hearkens back to classical times when the sun was honored as a god; to look directly at the sun was an act akin to claiming a greatness like that of the gods. Staring into the brilliance of the sun deliberately is risky and rash, an offense punishable by the gods or for us by acute pain and blindness. Even if done accidentally, it’s not recommended since it’s an action that’s only accidental when we’re not vigilant and aware of our place and the line of our vision. For that, it is still a misstep. Looking at the sun with our ill-equipped human eyes suggests we don’t practice awareness of our place in creation.
Peck’s comment reflects the disordered mentality that seeks to order and manipulate everything in our lives. This need to be in control of the trajectory of our lives - in our feelings, relationships, successes, appearances, etc. - stems from a crippling fear of vulnerability and inability to trust in God, our higher power. When Peck says he has sun in his eyes, he says so much. He doesn’t know his place and has waded in far past the extent of his knowledge and ability; he has lost his perspective in doing so, which leads him to justify his lifestyle by comparing himself to others. He cannot see, but he’s blinded by light, so he thinks he must be no worse off than anyone else.
Peck knows now that this past thinking was a delusion when he acknowledges, “Never knew where was home/ I slept a lifetime alone/ Yeah, we had it one time but it's gone now, it's gone/ Let me drown.” Even if he believed at one point that he could be in control and that drinking brought a sense of connection and relief, that conviction is gone, replaced with his recognition that he never had that secure sense of belonging that defines one’s home. Alone in his waking sleep and unsure of where he belongs, Peck sees now how much he has failed to see. He knows pain like no other, and he realizes its source as the very thing he thought would bring him salvation:
I know with pleasure comes pain.” Recognizing that he’s long past the point when alcohol brought pleasure, he can see it as the root of the misery in his life since his fear and loneliness are based in the addiction that has taken over his mind and body. When he says, “I figured we were the same/ But as I get older I get more afraid/ Let me drown,” he could mean a couple things. He may be emphasizing that earlier delusion that he was no worse than anyone else in his addiction, but he could also be saying that he believed that his true self was one and the same with his addict self. Both are valid, and both add some sense to why we who suffer from addiction will go to any lengths our disordered thinking deems necessary for the addiction to survive though it kills us. We think we are operating for our own survival, not just for that of the addiction. But as we get older and progress in this cycle, we become more fearful that this survival is really killing us.
As if acknowledging that this logic indeed has taken over his mind, Peck continues, “No, I can't be kind since I lost my mind.” He has lost his mind, his true mind, to the obsession of addiction. In singing these lyrics, however, he has some kind of awakening in his ability to see that his true mind still stands a chance if it can leave him and his fatalistic path behind. He, the addict self, will never be kind since he will never be truly connected to anyone in a conscious way. He ends with the same set of lines repeated a second time, emphasizing his resolve on this matter and also hinting at the death that has to occur for one or both of these selves: “this town just ain't big enough for the both of us now/ Let me drown.” He has reached a point of no return. He knows that his true self deserves and needs to heal and live, and his addicted mind has reached a point in its progression where it is impossible for it to coexist with his true self while being fed, which is why he bids that self to let his addict self drown. He knows they cannot both stay, and because the addicted side of him will not self-destruct without taking everything with him, he needs the true self to summon the courage to let that addiction drown. Only one of them can thrive, and Peck knows that it should be the one who can be kind, who can achieve connection in its true form.
The conscious, though weakened, needs to take action, which is why he bids that self to let him go rather than saying “I’ll drown.” This is why it’s so effective to work a program, to actively pursue recovery. Our addiction or disordered substance use will not just willingly surrender, even if we desperately want it too. It can’t. More than anything, the mind-body that has been drawn into addiction needs to survive, and the only way it can stop itself is with the express will and action of the conscious working with both mind and body. This conscious - the spirit - can be kind, which is the only way it can gain the direction and power to let the dark side drown.
‘Let Me Drown’ is a farewell song that is dark in its despair, but it contains a glimmer of hope. I don’t think that the voice of addiction speaks out of altruism or love; it is true despair and self hatred that motivates the desire to drown, but it’s a self aware despair. I discussed this idea to some extent in my essay on Peele’s Us, but our conscious self is linked intrinsically to the mind and body part of ourselves that has become disordered by addiction. Neither of these selves can be whole by themselves, though one is clearly superior since it contains the spirit in its trinity. The suffering self operates as mind and body, and although it affects the spirit it does not contain the spirit. So when Peck sings “Let me drown” he sings both as the self who suffers from addiction as his conscious self as well. Both selves suffer while the addiction progresses, and only one can thrive if they separate. These song lyrics serve as a sort of Hail Mary pass, a desperate resort that puts the agency in the hands of a self with more potential to succeed than one who faces a downward spiral of pain. The self that drowns will remain, but it cedes the authority it has held over the other half, who now must begin the difficult task of living in the wake of a substantial loss and haunted by the lingering ghost of the past.
In this song, Peck is singing in the place known by the Tibetan expression ye tang chi - a state of total desolation and hopelessness. While the suffering self knows he cannot be redeemed from this place, the spirit has given up trying and needs to surrender to a higher power in order to move forward without the crutch of addiction. So “let me drown” not only is asking himself to let go of the weight of addiction, but he is asking himself to surrender, to stop trying to survive in active addiction by maintaining old delusions and to yield to something greater than himself.
