The Drift

A Spell for Swimming in the Currents of Memory, Magic, and the Empire’s Noise

Listen While You Read: “Underwater” — Bassnectar

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I want you to imagine the ocean: dark, heavy, luminous where it wants to be. That’s me. That’s you. That’s every quiet, messy, electric part society would rather ignore. Sometimes I feel suspended, weightless, in a current of information, memory, ancestral hum. Overwhelming. Delicious. You don’t swim in this water—you dissolve into it.

There’s a rhythm I’ve been learning, a pulse beneath the chaos that hums like Underwater. You feel it first in your chest, then the tips of your fingers, then the secret corners of your brain that think they’re alone but are really wide open. Not meditation. Not self-help. Not self-care. This is initiation.

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On Drowning and Remembering

I used to think drowning was literal. Water in lungs. Panic. Flailing. Now I know: you can drown while scrolling, performing, pretending to be whole in a world that profits off your unfinished edges.

The empire wants you to drown quietly. Forget you came here to remember how to build beyond it. You—sitting with your phone, feeling the vertigo of being alive in the wrong system—this is the gift. Pressure forces something to surface.

I learned to swim differently: not stroke by stroke, but pulse by pulse. Electricity in salt water. Ritual disguised as panic. When you stop fighting the current and start dancing with it, you notice: the water is memory, soul-tech, ancestral code waiting to be touched.

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The Spell I Didn’t Know I Was Casting

Everything you’ve hated about yourself is a spell waiting to be spoken.

I hated my nervous hands, my blurred old photos, my inability to perform for the mirror. Under the surface, they were instructions. Maps. Invitations. Nervous hands wired me for precision. Blurred photos taught me to see without clarity. Performance anxiety reminded me: the soul does not need an audience.

So I whispered my spell internally: Let me not drown in the empire. Let me drown in myself. Let me dissolve. Let me swim. Let me remember.

And then it began. Small things first: light on the floor at noon like a sigil. Rhythm of footsteps on the street, a code meant for me. Gifts of attention, costing nothing but permission.

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Humor in the Abyss

Here’s the joke: when you start listening to currents instead of clinging to logs, absurdity hits. Humanity, frantically pretending not to sink, handing each other paper towels while the system leaks.

I laugh. At myself. At the empire. At time, linear in theory, while the soul recycles favorite mistakes. Humor is alchemy. It keeps us afloat as the world collapses. Humor is sacred.

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Rituals of the Submerged Self

I build rituals nobody can steal or monetize. Tiny spells. Each room mapped to a chakra or forgotten desire: kitchen—the sacral ocean; bathroom—the reflective mind. I move through space like salt in water: purifying, preserving, electrifying.

And yes, these rituals are funny. I bow to my cactus, Ancestor Who Knows Too Much, before writing. Spell works. Not the plant. The attention. The acknowledgment. I’m here. I remember. I claim this space.

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Excavating the Rot to Find the Garden

There is rot. Everywhere. Within, around, cracks of sidewalks, pulses of unread texts. The garden isn’t planted yet. But excavation—the willingness to poke, dig, stare—is sacred.

My spells are pickaxes and flashlights. I write, map, sing, hum the ocean’s rhythm into my veins. Not to “fix” the world, but to remember the currents that built it, so we can build beyond.

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The Pulse of Connection

Water is not lonely. Dive into yourself, find everyone else there: ancestors, future selves, children who inherit ruins—they are submerged, waiting for you to notice.

I write letters I never send, songs I never play, prayers without a deity. Transmissions across water. Proof the currents move. Pulse is alive. Connection is resonance. Resonance is magic.

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On Emergence

Emergence isn’t climbing out. It’s turning your inner ocean into a river flowing through empire. Still water. Still memory. Still magic. Directed.

I move deliberately, like a spellcaster who knows the words but waits for the tide. No hurry. No flailing. Let the current sculpt you.

Sometimes I crash. Like Underwater drops. I love it. The crash is part of the spell. Submersion is part of the song.

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Call to Action: The Spell You Can Cast

This is for you. Not to make you better, richer, or more efficient. To remind you: you are a current. You are underwater, and the water is you.

1. Take the breath you’ve been holding.

2. Find the space where the current touches you—floor, desk, back of neck.

3. Whisper: Let me swim in myself. Let me remember what I am.

4. Notice the smallest pulse. Follow it. Record it. Laugh at it.

5. Keep mapping, keep excavating, keep dissolving.

This is your initiation. This is your ocean.

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Swim. Dissolve. Remember. Laugh. Map. Whisper. Dive again. The water is not waiting for permission. The ocean is always here, carrying you, shaping you, initiating you. You are not lost. You are underwater. And underwater is sacred.

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