Open Water, Caleb Nelson [best summer books txt] 📗

that for me?’ you asked, the young man towering over you. ‘The tape?’

‘You haven’t heard it yet?’

He was so surprised when you shook your head, he handed you the tape in its case, Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner etched on the spine.

29

Let’s go further back, to an early memory. 2001. In a living room which isn’t your own, on a carpet worn down by shuffling feet and ashy knees. You’ve been running around ends with friends all day, and still you’re stretching out these moments of carefree like they could be your last.

Flicking through TV channels, settling on MTV Base. The cackle of ­sped-­up laughter, the question coming: ‘What you laughing at?’ A pair of children playing in wasteland. A flash of light and one transforms into a grown man, complete with bowler hat and round dark spectacles. All Black. They’re all Black.

The second MC wears a leather durag atop his skull, a soft grin on the edge of his lips as he plays rapper for a few moments. Years later, you’ll see him in a supermarket car park, his child slumped on his shoulder, still struggling to hold the boyish smile from taking over his features.

Now, forwards. Summer of 2016. You lost yourself in the mosh pit. Five pairs of ­hands – you could feel the purchase of each finger on your ­skin – pulled you back to your feet. Skepta ran out wearing shorts and thick black shades and a presence which filled the stage. That summer you’d been thinking about energy and frequencies, and how something could just feel right. When the DJ reloaded the posse cut for the third time, and five Black bodies moved freely across the stage, you thought, this feels right. This feels right.

Same summer. You’re in Spain, on a beach where, on a clear day, you can see the shores of Morocco, when Frank Ocean’s album, Blonde, drops from the sky. This is not a drill. You’ve been waiting for something you didn’t know you needed. When it comes, you take a pair of headphones, a folding beach seat, and stumble down the sand, watching the tide roll in and out. You can’t remember knowing a stillness like this, and perhaps it’s now, caught between looking forwards and looking back, you realize you’re looking for it once more.

The sun rises late in this part of the world, and you watch as stars are replaced by a sheet of pale blue, a hot white dot climbing the sky. You didn’t bring swimwear, so when you have finished listening to the album, you take off your clothes, and run into the water. Submerging, all you can hear is the rush, the roar. The salt of the sea mingling with your tears.

Forwards, once more. Six months ago. A slim figure, puffed by layers. Head bowed. All the candles have gone out, but he’s illuminated by the darkness. It’s the early hours of the morning. He’s motionless, dancing to the sound of silence. The memorial is fresh. You wonder if the slim figure is also crying, like the moment you slid the key into the door, and broke down, unable to get the image out of your head: a bike lying on its side, the wheels still spinning back and forth, waiting for the rider to return. You wonder if he too is mourning Daniel, the kind man who won’t ever get you back. That man who you shared a spliff with on roads and waxed into the night about Dizzee Rascal and grime and rhythm. That man who, for a moment, you loved like kin.

That afternoon: black and white uniform, deciding to show face. The station’s just down the road, but you’ll never find them in this place. Not unless something has happened. They go from shop to shop, ­off-­licence, dry cleaner’s, chippy, takeaway. They stop people in the street to ask for information. When they approach you, they stare, and remain silent.

The Caribbean takeaway doesn’t have any patties, so you keep walking, onto the next one.

‘How you doing, darling?’ the woman behind the counter asks. You smile at how something as simple as a familiar inflection could cradle you in this moment.

Leaving, you hear a ­kick-­kick, snare, ­kick-­kick, snare in your ears. You wonder if Dilla added reverb to the snare, or cut it, clean, straight from a sample.

The interest in energies and frequencies remains, and you’ve always wanted to make music, always wanted to know whether you, too, could feel just right. Your friend, a drummer, invites you down to the coast and you record a music demo in a studio by the sea. The first take is fluffed, but you dance across the second, shoulders loose, punching words across the ­64-­bar count. You produced the beat yourself, so you know where the breaks lie, where the beat drags, where it slides, you’re not surprised by the silence which you value so.

You gaze at the reflection of yourself in the glass of the booth, relaxed, unhurried, playing rapper for a few moments. You wonder if this is what freedom looks like.

You’ve been wondering about your own relationship to open water. You’ve been wondering about the trauma and how it always finds its way to the surface, floating in the ocean. You’ve been wondering about how to protect that trauma from consumption. You’ve been wondering about departing, about being elsewhere.

You have always thought if you opened your mouth in open water you would drown, but if you didn’t open your mouth you would suffocate. So here you are, drowning.

You came here to ask for forgiveness. You came here to tell her you are sorry that you wouldn’t let her hold you in this open water. You came here to tell her the truth.

30

She says:

She’s been listening to rain fall at night. This is when she tends to pray, trying to manifest her desires in her own reality. Beside her bed, kneeling, never gazing skywards but into the ground, into the depths, wondering what lies beneath her surface.