SUPERPOSITION

J
J
Nov 6 · 2 min read

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this song. The sound is so interesting to me, particularly in the asynchronous way he forms the lyrics.

“Exist in, Superposition” — When I first heard this, I thought the first word was either “existing”, or “existence”. Swap out either of these words for “exist in”, and the lyric could potentially mean a wholly different thing.

But what an interesting phrase, exist in superposition. Superposition is the placement of one thing on top of another such that they coincide. In physics, superposition can pertain to sound waves. Sometimes, two waves can be placed on one another such that they perfectly nullify the other one, sort of like how noise-cancelling headphones work to cancel white noise on a plane. Shift the wave a few degrees, and the superimposed waves are cacophonous, each building on and adding to the disharmony between the two. Maybe Daniel Caesar means to say that we aim to exist in the first case of superposition, harmonious opposites, but in attempting to do so, we may find ourselves in the second case, conflicting and amplifying each others’ “noise”.

You’ll actually hear a bit of this ‘cacophony’ in the beginning of the song — this unpleasant asynchronous sound that doesn’t make a lot of sense, before the melody finally kicks in.

“Life’s all about contradiction

Yin and yang

Fluidity and things

I’m me, I’m God

I’m everything

I’m my own reason why I sing

And so are you, are you understanding?”

I love this chorus. It’s so full of complexity, of confusion, of contradiction. It’s not a chorus that’s meant to be understood. It’s like mental health and anxiety. During that period of my life when I had extremely bad anxiety, my brain was so full of confusion. I couldn’t describe why I felt the way I did, or why I couldn’t control how I felt. I was simultaneously up and down, left and right, happy and sad, scared and brave. Sometimes the mind can’t make sense of things. I’m my own reason why I sing, but so are you. This is superposition. Two simultaneous truths that contradict one another. It’s chaotic and complicated — you know you can’t be both yin and yang at the same time, but somehow you are.

I found this song to be a strange but precise metaphor for our (my) lives (life). The confusion in the song maps so accurately to the confusion I have in my mind and life trajectory that I struggle to make sense of. And I wake up and think: what am I doing? Everything about my life is simultaneously superimposed, contradictory — nothing makes sense. But somehow, listening to this song and understanding it in this way makes me feel like perhaps I’m not the only one.

J

J

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