hydrology

the symbolic movement of water through life

THE WATER STRANGULATES, PROMISING DEATH…

Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) crashes a car into nearby river, a mechanical contraption in strange waters that heralds both physical death and spiritual entrapment. Succession S01E10 “Nobody Is Ever Missing” (2018, dir. Mark Mylod)

The Cure, “The Same Deep Water As You”

“Swimming the same deep water as you is hard
The shallow drowned lose less than we
The strangest twist upon your lips
And we shall be together
And we shall be together”

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“For me, the opening of No. 5 depicts stern, sheer cliffs above a leaden stormy sea; awe-inspiring in both their magnificence and their indifference—but those waves then rise to engulf the cliffs, resulting in climaxes of such emotional power that any barrier between the music and the listener is shattered […]”

— Boris Giltburg on Sergei Rachmaninov’s Études-tableaux, Op. 39

The mirrored reflection of Pinky (Sissy Spacek) falling upwards into the pool water, an inverted suicide attempt—simultaneously a reinvention and rebirth. 3 Women (1977, dir. Robert Altman)

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“To look life in the face. Always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is. At last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away...” The final words of Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) in The Hours (2002, dir. Stephen Daldry).

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The benevolent, sage romanticism of the sea finally dawns upon Hae-joon (Park Hae-il)—an unsolvable mystery never to reach its climactic conclusion, an unfathomable mass of pure existence. Decision to Leave (2022, dir. Park Chan-wook)

Lexie Liu, “MIRA”

“You know my name
That’s only one thing
I exist in the rivers and seas, all bodies of water
Without a shape or a name”

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“My brothers asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

… OR IT RELEASES, EXTENDING LIFE.