Deep End details the journey I took wandering and wondering in myself to find pieces of who I was and am. Beginning with me dropping out of 6th form and losing my notion of self.
Time is not linear in Deep End, I return to my cousins murder which happened before I dropped out of 6th form, his murder very much the catalyst for this decision to trod my own path. The phrase the ends is returned to twice in the beginning of the song, referring to the often quasi segregated immigrant neighbourhoods that house, predominantly west african & caribbean immigrants. Ends; also a term for money, money being safety, safety being tethering, to lose your ends is not something one seeks to do but may be your saving grace.
My cousins murder taught me that there is no safety in security, he didn’t live safely by a general understanding of the word. From what I’ve learnt he was involved with things and people that from the outside looking in, most would deem unsafe.
However he was simply acting as many young black men raised on council estates by single mothers and absent fathers act. Most young men involved in crime however don’t die, the majority grow up and leave the ends behind. He was playing it safe, playing his position in relation to what he saw he could be. This safety is death of a sorts, it happens that it actually manifested in his murder by people he knew. His net was severed and he fell.
So seeing this I retreated from my own safety, deciding that I would become a youth worker in some naive (didn’t seem naive at the time) attempt to prevent what happened to Edvin happening to anyone else. This act was the fortification I speak of in the second part of the song, the wonder I speak of didn’t materialise quickly. Still deeply depressed and disconnected I acted through the role I assumed as a youth worker, but in a way never fully became it. The wonder comes later, in realising one cannot act from purely prevention of what may not happen to others, but one has to first work for themselves. That is the seed that when planted turns gold.
The whole end of the Deep End heavily references the Earth Wind & Fire song, That’s the Way of the World, ‘plant a flower, and you’ll grow a pearl..’, which got me smiling, shifting perception and beginning to understand a little more of life.
lyrics
i went
swimming
i i i
went swimming
in the deep end
in the deep end
in the deep
end
verse
i went swimming in the deep end
lost all of my ends
lost all of my friends
nearly lost my life
man!
cut deep
i went to sleep
and bloody bloodied
all my sheets
dream turned to night MARE
couldn’t fight or flight HERE
madness up in the ends
they killed my cousin
murdered …
i went swimming in the deep end
lost all of my friends
lost all of my ends
nearly lost my life
man!
cut deep
i went to sleep
and bloody bloodied
all my sheets
dream turned to night MARE
couldn’t fight or flight HERE
madness up in the ends
they killed my cousin
murdered him!
refrain
in the deep end
it depends
on how you fortify your soul
STOP
your body growing old
STOP
your body growing cold
there’s wonders to behold!
behold behold behold behold!
plant that seed in the soil
make it turn gold
flower unfold!
i said i said i said
in the deep end
it depends
on how you fortify your soul
STOP
your body growing old
STOP
your body growing cold
there’s wonders to behold!
behold behold behold behold
plant that seed in the soil
make it turn gold
flower unfold
i said i said i said
in the deep end
it depends
on how you fortify your soul
STOP
your body growing old
STOP
your body growing cold
there’s wonders to behold!
behold behold behold behold
plant that seed in the soil
make it turn gold
flower unfold
outro
in the deep end
in the deep end
in the deep
End!
credits
from POOL,
released August 5, 2022
Written by Nadeem Din-Gabisi, Coby Sey, MettaShiba & Beni Giles
Produced & Mixed by Beni Giles at Iguana Studios, Brixton
I'm a bit anoid with my silf that I only just found this fantastic album yesterday, but also chuffed to fuck that I have at all. Love it so much what a wining collaboration 👊🔥🔥 Toblermone
Like so many others, this came like a bolt out of the blue and, even though it's well before payday, I had to have this astonishing album on vinyl to prove it exists. The feel of the tunes makes me feel like the Impressions do, Curtis Mayfield, the big spaces and instinctive horns and stuff drifting in and out. Great grooves and I can see lots of ghosts nodding along to this with big smiles on their faces. At last! Anthony Cottrell
Gaelynn Lea won NPR's Tiny Desk Contest, and it's easy to see why. Haunting, beautiful country songs, laced up with weeping fiddle lines. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 3, 2016
