There is a social experiment that I once did where you have to stand a few inches apart from a stranger and stare intently at their face for 10 minutes. There was a group of us doing this exercise in pairs and some people broke down and cried because the intimacy was too much for them to handle (why is intimacy too much for us handle?). This is an intimate song, not in a romantic sense, rather in the sense that Abimaro’s voice gets close to our very soul. To me, it serves as a reminder that it is God’s prerogative to get as close to us as this. I often wonder if this is the reason why people reject the idea of a personal God. Perhaps people really don’t want a God in their business, someone who will remind us that we will one day have to fit through the eye of a needle.
“Perish spoil fade, everything I’ve owned or made, it will perish spoil fade , but I won’t go empty to my grave…”
Study these words closely. This is the kind of folly we all laugh at on paper except when we’re doing the exact same thing in our lives. It is an illogical conclusion that sums up the futility of human striving. The piano captures this sentiment perfectly in its desperate attempts to keep its head above water throughout the song.
And what of Abimaro’s voice? The pure texture that it is. The voice that haunts us with its uncanny proximity. In this video, Abimaro describes her songwriting process as coming up with the words, having the melody develop from the meaning of the lyrics, and then letting her band give the melody ‘wings’. Ain’t that something. And now listen to how the song begins to levitate in the second verse, particularly at 2:17. Ain’t that something indeed.
poetic reverb 