Glenn Murawski – Fractured
Glenn Murawski – Fractured – Album Review
Art inspires art – let’s do this!
The following was written in real time…
There was red, purple, green and a plethora of colors I couldn’t have pointed out on a paint swatch if I had been looking straight at them…this whole world seemed different…malleable, bendable…but ultimately, just different. Each wall around me seemed so familiar, yet so far away, changed, and constantly morphing, like it was moving consistently, and I had no real choice but to stick around for the ride. It was like being able to see all of our thoughts swirling around visibly, but not at all knowing what to do with any of the information as it zoomed around the room. I felt like I could see the details of history and all that had ever been throughout time, the walls breathing in & out new information and adding the past, present, and future all into one. “Time Is Like A Pendulum” was the very last thought I had before I felt the first drip land onto my face…right before I woke up and realized I was somehow still in my bed. The walls were still ahead of me as I opened my eyes…but there was something had changed and where I was now, even though I felt like I could recognize it, felt like a completely different place altogether. Changed. Not the same as when I had left it when I had last closed my eyes the night before. And there it was again…another drip…square on my face as I laid on my side facing the door of my room…and I could feel the cold of the air around me. I put my hand to where it had just invaded my right cheek and felt the damp & how it had spread out over the contours of my face and slipped into the hairs of my beard…apparently I had been dripped on for some time now while I was sleeping.
Drip. Drip. Drip. I turned over to look…not really sure what it was that I would see – and surprisingly, it was the absence of anything at all that actually caught my eye. It wasn’t any kind of mere leak in the roof above my head where I slept, there was an entire hole that seemed to pulse at the edges like it was actively chewing its way through matter and continue to grow. It was like there was a hole in the sky directly above me…and perhaps it had been there all night long. Like some kind of “Bizarre Symbolism,” I stared at it while the occasional drip would still rain down upon me…my eyes didn’t even flinch when they’d drop onto my forehead, narrowly missing my eyes as I stared up into the sky, fascinated by everything I could see. Those same colors I was staring at only moments ago in my dream existed out there in the universe somewhere far away…and rather than panic about the potential damage to my humble abode, I simply laid there and marveled at the cosmos from my very own bedroom, like the two had and always will be connected. “And maybe they are” I thought to myself philosophically as I took in the entire experience and realized that there was no way any of this could be real – could it be? I was staring through a hole in my roof that was roughly the size of a small animal by this point, with the edges of it all glowing in a neon green, expanding its circumference bit by bit as it danced and seemed to fray away the sides of the house bit by bit. Drip by drip. Maybe it wasn’t water at all that was landing on me, but the fluid of space & time and the excess matter that couldn’t be absorbed by the universe itself.
I thought to myself…”shouldn’t I be panicking right now?” It was almost unnerving how calm I felt, staring up at a growing hole that was expanding on the ceiling above me, dripping who knows what down directly onto my face…yet I was as calm as a crystal – I just laid there and stared, equally mesmerized by how still everything seemed to be, while everything moved at a completely slow pace and seemed to fleck itself away from my vision like pixels disappearing. It was one of the most beautiful moments, and also the most “Dissociative” by quite some comparison…like I was a witness to the rebirth or resetting of the cosmos. Fear began to creep in slowly with each and every drip and partial fragment of the roof disappearing…was I dying? Why couldn’t I understand what it was I was seeing? Why couldn’t I just feel that urge to get up and move away from the constant drip, drip, drip from the ceiling above me? Instead I just laid there, held captive by the incredible beauty of the cosmos swirling over my head…and I started to wonder if, piece by piece, drip by drip…perhaps I was being called home. It felt like if I were to look down, I would see that a foot was missing, or a limb…and that just like the ceiling above me, the pieces of my own DNA would be slowing melting away to some extraordinary oblivion and pooling underneath me. That’s if I could even move at all to look, which I wasn’t even 100% sure that I could…it felt like I was disappearing, becoming transparent and paper thin…drip, drip.
In what I could only describe to you as the “Unraveling” of the soul, that’s exactly what happened…at least for a moment – I disappeared. Utterly and entirely into the ether, I was still there in the room, but completely gone. I could look around, and I could see those same walls that once surrounded me, I could see the memories I’d created within them over the years gone by, so vividly like I could reach out and touch them. It was like every part of all that I’d experienced was hugging me from the inside-out, creating a genuine comfort unlike any I’d ever known. And while I had dared not to look at the bed where I had once been laying only moments beforehand, eventually I felt compelled to peek in that direction…just to see if what I could see would match what I knew I already knew. And so I did, and there I was, lying still and plain and peaceful, underneath a hole in my roof as the universe dripped its nectar onto the body below it. That was the moment I realized it wasn’t mine anymore. That was the moment that I realized it was never mine to begin with. My skin and bones had been no more than a costume rented for a Halloween event…a rental tuxedo…a disguise to hide whatever I was now, within. And where I expected that realization to be horrifying…it somehow wasn’t at all…it was like I had slipped into an even more comfortable skin where there was no pain, no sorrow, no anger, no despair…just the eternal bliss & comfort of what it felt like to really be at peace. I wasn’t “Unraveling” at all, so much as saying my final goodbyes to a life I once knew, respectfully and completely…forever. Drip…drip…black…
…drip…drip…drip…
Things were so much brighter here as I opened my eyes again. In front of me, I could see grass underneath my face and feel it clutched between my fingers…everything looked…so much smaller now. On the back of my head I could gently feel the tapping of rain invading my hair…and I could feel it starting to seep into…my clothes? I felt drained of all energy and struggling to come to some sort of grip on where I even was, or how I came to be there in the first place. The last thing I remembered was drip, drip, drip…but was that simply because I had been outside all along? I turned over on my back to look up at the sky…feeling like I had made a similar movement only moments before somehow, but puzzled as to how that could be. I felt the rain on my face and knew it to be real…this is where I was now…and I am here. Was I “Shackled By Fate,” was I here by choice, or was I simply part of a never-ending story that has been written & told a thousand times before? I felt a sickening feeling develop in my stomach that seemed to rumble in response to a question I’d never be able to find out the answer to, though I felt very specifically that the answer was right there at my fingertips, just beyond my grasp & comprehension. I put my hands towards the sky and embraced the rain, looking at them, mystified at how young they looked and how old I seemed to feel on the inside…and laid there fascinated by the fact that I felt like I had been asleep for so very long, only now really waking up, for perhaps the first time.
I rose to my feet and somewhat stumbled around the “Barren Fields” as best I could, beginning to walk in a direction that felt just as familiar as any ever had, like I knew exactly where I was going. To my right, to my left, and all around me, was nearly nothing except for wide-open space, lined only around its 360 degrees by the faint lines of houses way off in the distance. I was in a park…for how long I did not know; but I felt like I had been there forever already, and began to make my way forward, wherever that led. Feeling “Maligned” by the universe, my pace started to quicken in tandem with my heartbeat & pulse; and what once felt like a small desire to leave where I was now felt like I needed to sprint away from it all as fast as I possibly could go with my little legs. I was a stranger in a strange land; everything felt so familiar, everything felt so foreign & new at the same time…and as quickly as I could run, I couldn’t outrun that feeling like I had been through all of this before, or quiet the discomforting feeling that I knew exactly where I was running to, without actually knowing at all somehow. Perhaps it was merely instincts…or maybe, just maybe…I had forgotten something important that I had once known…it felt impossible to say, and even just asking the question as hard as I could, screaming it into the void of my mind felt like each time I asked, the reasons as to why I was asking the question in the first place, faded. To the point where the voice in my own head seemed to slow down the more my pace quickened as I ran through the dripping of rain out of the field and into the city streets at full speed, determined to somehow outrun a fate I had no control of, rebelling against the feeling I was about to repeat another complete revolution around the sun. I ran, and I ran, and I ran until my tiny little body nearly gave out.
As I twisted the key into a lock of a door that was all-too-familiar, I knew I was home, and that I was the me – the same very me, that I am right now. I felt conscious of the fact that I had either slipped into, or out of a “Shadow World” that I had no way of tangibly conceiving or conjuring up visually…it was just a haunting feeling like I had been here for so much longer than the evidence was suggesting I could have been. I walked into the house, up the stairs to my bedroom, passing the mirror to see my young face reflected back ever so briefly as I closed the door behind me, and laid back down on the bed. So comforting, so familiar, so much like home. I could hear the rain finally slowing to a halt as the final drips faded like nature had turned off the faucet after showering the earth with its universal gift. I never did understand where I was, where I had been, or if I had in fact, been anywhere else at all…all I knew was that I was here, right now…and that seemed to be all that was ever going to matter. More perplexing was how far it felt like my ability to process thoughts and information had become…like I had connected to a consciousness long dormant, and now awakened. “This is me, and I am here,” I repeated to myself quietly, over and over. Feeling exhausted from the entire experience that seemed to pass by in mere minutes but felt like an eternity had gone by…the vague flash of fear flushed through me as I felt a panic over whether or not I would be here when I woke up, were I to fall asleep again…but it quickly subsided and faded from the view of my conceptual grasp as I tried to hold onto what I thought I once knew. I did my absolute best to try and hang on…to stay awake…to connect the pieces…to remember…drip…drip…I felt Fractured inside…but as I fell asleep, I also felt comforted by the fact that everything was gonna be OK…that I would wake up tomorrow, I’d be right here in my bed, and be just as whole as I’d ever been. I am here, this is me.
Find out more about Glenn Murawski at his official homepage right here: https://gmmtunes.com
Art inspires art in so many fantastic & unexplored ways. Listening to the instrumental music created by an artist like Glenn Murawski always sets off an incredible wave of visual imagery through your mind as you listen to it, and it’s been both an honor & privilege to have been on that ride so many times over these past years with him. I’ve written about the man countless times here on our pages, and I can vouch for Fractured being right up there with some of my favorites from him. I mean – look at the story that just came out will ya!?! That’s all inspired by where his music took me in my own mind as I listened in real time…just letting the stream of consciousness pour outta me while Glenn’s new record put thoughts in my head. And you gotta ask yourself…are YOU making music that could inspire someone to do something like this? Have you written something that could impact another creative person enough to continue the story of your music even further into an entirely different medium? Murawski’s been an ever-inspiring & tirelessly dedicated artist in the scene, always pushing himself harder than the rest to create, stay invested in his art & craft, and explore the unknown. While I know this ain’t exactly your most typical music ‘review’ that you’ll ever read here at our pages, it’s a pure reflection of how the wealth of creativity in his own passions can truly inspire those around him & connected to his music, even me, way over here in the nation’s capital of Canada hiding behind my computer screen & stereo speakers, typing away like a madman. I write a whole lot of things at these pages of ours, and the opportunity to do something radically different is a rarity in itself…but I can say wholeheartedly that if I could write every review like this one here, I would be. It’s not only rare to find an artist like Glenn Murawski that’s capable of inspiring such an endeavor, but even rarer to find one that’ll understand it, like I’m sure he will. Hopefully, fingers crossed, it’s received as the true compliment it’s intended to be; art inspires art – & I’ve written these words to prove that Glenn’s music is capable of doing exactly that.
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