No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 3.14.15 - "Floating In The Forth" (Frightened Rabbit)

Now that some time has passed...

It's been a year since Scott Hutchinson took his own life. It's taken that long to have any chance of being able to write this.

Frightened Rabbit wrote more than a few songs which will feature in this, my quixotic attempt to write a non-chronological autobiography in the only language that makes sense - the music that mattered. In fact, it's easy for me to think of the band as forming the arch my third act is built upon, with the keystone formed from an equal mix of "Heads Roll Off" and "Floating In The Forth", both from the band's second album, The Midnight Organ Fight.

The two songs each wire themselves directly into the lives of the chronically depressed. The former demands we remember that every second we hang on for makes a difference, and to hell with trying to calculate how large that difference is in the greater scheme of things. Fuck the greater scheme of things, anyway. That's religion's problem, not ours.

"Floating In The Forth", meanwhile, is about finding any excuse possible for buying more time to make those changes. It's not about a final victory over misery, because that isn't always going to be a realistic solution. It's about saying to yourself "Not today". Under the circumstances it seems ridiculous to shun melodrama, so I'll just say it - the struggle against suicidal ideation comes down to resolving daily to not kill yourself, until eventually something else does the job for you.

It's an almost unbearably cruel irony that this song worked better for me in this regard than it did for the man who actually wrote it. We both saved suicide for another year, winter after winter, until eventually he simply couldn't anymore. I get to keep making tiny changes to earth, and he doesn't, and there's no justice to be found there.

What there is, though, is gratitude. Scott's tiny changes to earth include me.

I realise him knowing that wouldn't have made the difference. But I hope it still matters, nevertheless.