"the most widely used of all solvents" indeed.
SWIM4SWIM was and is water to me. that's the easiest way for me to communicate the totality of my experience with it. i'll try to articulate it more, further down.
the shallow end: this was water in the way that it was hard for me to hold. much deserved praise has been heaped on the presentation and prose in this vn—the transitions and emphatic mood "cards" dividing certain scenes gripped me hard, and i want to try digging around in the files to see how it was managed. there were many times, however, where i found it hard to know the 'you' that was being spoken to, or who was speaking it, which led to confusion on my part for what was taking place.
that said, even though it created friction in reading for me, it also felt strangely appropriate? the chlorine burn of trying to make out shapes and actions under the surface of a swimming pool, or the obliterating murkiness of lake water. some events are approached—less with caution and more tentative determination—and then a rush of text and images follows, which never feels like fear of the event being depicted but nevertheless felt at times like someone cannonball jumping into a placid moment. which felt, still, appropriate. maybe it's uncertain because everything blurs, smeared outlines in distorted refraction. maybe i should read this with goggles on.
the music was incredible as well, and i loved the way it shifted fluidly as each beat of a scene was hit, tonally and sonically.
the deep end: spoilers follow.
this was water for me in another way: i felt held by it and overwhelmed by it in equal measure.
i went swimming yesterday. i'd been planning to go swimming specifically, in fact, to remember what it felt like to swim before i read SWIM4SWIM. it's been two and a half years since i last swam, and two years since i bought my first two piece swimsuit in anticipation of swimming again.
i've always loved swimming. i was too big for professional swimming, but i eyed my swim team with envy for years. my main exposure to the professional world of it was the occasional olympic clip, and the exponentially more frequent news article about sexual abuse, about transgender performance, about institutional corruption. maybe it was for the best that my love of the water was kept safe from seeing if my ambition could float in it.
it still feels surreal to think about what it felt like, getting back in the water, how natural it felt but how foreign it had become; how new-again the feeling of loving it was, but how bittersweet the forgetting of it was revealed to be.
the love of swimming and the forgetting of it, the suffocation and resuscitation, the choking and the chest compressions—it's all so vivid and deeply felt.
"i think, despite everything, i just want all of us to play in the pool together." the way that water can serve as a solvent to dissolve social contexts, because all of us who wade into it have evolved to the point where the belonging we find in it is only what we bring into it—or what we fish out of it, what we gut and clean—i feel like that, at least, i understand.
bottom of the pool, breath released, bubbles few and far between: i'll share an old poem of mine that this vn reminded me of. i hope it feels relevant: https://pastebin.com/u4BVHJ3s
thank you all for making SWIM4SWIM.
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