Notes on ‘Crawling’- a practice in song analysis
‘Crawling’ was a part of the Hybrid Theory discography, Linkin Park’s debut album in 2000. The text, visuals and vocals of the song are all testimonies to the abuse and depression that Chester Bennington had undergone.
The video starts with image of a spinning doll but towards the right side of it is a box full of golden trinkets, perhaps indicating towards the material compensation for the physical and mental turmoil that the protagonist undergoes. She is shown in the bathroom, with bloody tears dripping off her face, her hands and face marked with bruises. She wears a septum ring, in relation to Bennington’s lip ring. As she leans on the basin, a man/her abuser enters the bathroom and puts his hand on her shoulder. The scene gets covered by crystals and the band is shown with Bennington beginning with the lines, “Crawling in my skin/ These wounds, they will not heal/ Fear is how I fall/ Confusing what is real”.
As embodied beings, we are subject to physical touch all throughout our life, right from our birth till our death. But some touches are different from others. Any unwanted touch, harsh or even gentle, just as the heroine feels on her shoulder, feels like a loss of agency over your own body. That kind of touch does not leave your skin even after the other person has physically let go off you. It lingers on your skin. Why do we see films depicting rape victims scrubbing themselves so violently in bathrooms? The woman in the music video also sits in the shower, perhaps willing the water running over her body to carry along with it all the unsolicited touches.
But Linkin Park also talks of these touches moving/crawling on your skin and reaching your mind where it might make a hostile home for a long time to come, because of which you start harbouring feelings such as fear, confusion, etc. This home is indicated by the crystal place which is the setting of the band throughout most of the video. It is cold as indicated by the blue and grey hues, devoid of much colour. Bennington, the voice inside her head, alternately sings and screams, “delicately and ferociously”, as 30 Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto had once described his voice. This also refers to how the undesirable and hateful voices in your head speak, alternately softly and loudly.
As Bennington screams, she confusedly looks around and puts her hands over her ears, as if trying to shut out the voice inside her head, his voice. One can minimize external noises by covering one’s ears but what about the ones emanating from inside? They are not silenced but only soften, as does Bennington’s voice in the next sequence.
He talks about that “something inside” which drags one down, consuming oneself and making one lose control over oneself. Others look at the heroine with judgement or is it just her hallucination? It is “confusing”. She looks at her reflection in the mirror again as if to see if it is very evident. But the crystal walls close down upon her as she feels she is losing oneself. A feeling of insecurity with the realization of the loss of control over one’s self rises, as does Bennington’s voice with the chorus.
It is not only her reflection in the mirror that she observes. “Against my will I stand beside my own reflection,” her reflection in her mental place. She has to listen to/see herself in the words of the voices inside her. But “It’s haunting”, giving rise to discomfort, as she cannot seem to recognize herself. She has “felt this way before”; it is not a new feeling, yet it is difficult.
But it is a happy ending for her. As Bennington wails again, shards of the ceiling now fall down. Cracks arise in the crystal room and she finally realizes that she is going to get out of that place, indicated by the slight smile on her face. The room, in the end, looks like any kind of ordinary brown room.
The next time she looks at herself in the mirror, she is smiling. Her cheeks are rosy. Her lips are not blood red anymore. There is a bouquet of half-bloomed pink roses beside the basin she hovers over. She pulls back her hair to reveal and watch the entirety of her in the face, as it is no longer hard to reflect upon herself. This is in contrast to the way how her hair veiled almost her entire face before. She touches her reflection in the mirror, as the last remaining dark/dirty water runs down the basin, perhaps washing away the touches and thoughts that had been crawling across her physical and mental being all this time.
Some of the themes and references in ‘Crawling’ can be found throughout the lyrics of the album (“paranoia”, “right underneath my skin”, “whirlwind inside of my head”, “Wish I could find a way to disappear”, “bad dreams”, “sad thoughts”, ‘Acting like I was part of your property”, “Sick of you acting like I owe you this”) and it is therefore clear where they are come from.
Bennington had been vocal about the physical abuse, drug abuse, alcoholism and depression that he had experienced. He had stated that the song was “literally” written about his past drug addiction, the remains of which he could still feel “crawling” under his skin. He had also said that it is about self-esteem, something that he had suffered with due to the sexual abuse at the hands of an older male friend during his childhood. In my understanding, the music video makes no explicit reference to drug addiction, but the latter issues are indicated by both the lyrics and video. The altering soft vocals and screams in the song (something that marks most of the band’s works) is also testimony of his mental health struggles- the extreme highs and lows- that he often oscillated between, as stated by his friends and family after his death.
The ending of ‘Crawling’ is also about hope. The woman is finally free of all her shackles and turmoils. Indeed, as Bennington, himself, in a 2002 interview to the Rolling Stone magazine, said, “…that song is about taking responsibility for your actions… It’s about how I’m the reason that I feel this way…” He himself was hopeful and underwent rehab, experiencing long periods free of alcoholism. In my understanding, he was also equally successful in his battle against depression, even though it ended with his suicide in 2017. He did not fall into what he had said “poor, poor me” trap. But most importantly, if the comments of the listeners of LP are paid heed to across the internet, their music helped and saved many.
Just two months before his death, LP released their seventh studio album. Bennington softly sings in ‘One More Light’, “Who cares if one more light goes out (in the sky of a million stars)? Well, I do,” as if rooting for anyone with struggles similar to what his had been.
