?Interrobang! · Track 1 · opener
The Deepest Place to Cry
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a grief journal — letters written to her own dead. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Joyful Jade — professional mourner from China; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Krubera-Voronya, the deepest cave on Earth. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Jade wails for strangers for pay though her name means Joyful — yet could never cry for her own dead; she left her real letters at the bottom of the deepest cave. Where do you go to finally feel it?
Lyrics
[Intro] Two thousand meters down. Water at four degrees Celsius. The air tastes of limestone and time. And here. In a waterproof sack. Your words. [Verse 1] The leather is stiff with the cold. The ink has feathered but it holds. Letters to the ones you couldn't mourn out loud. Joyful Jade. That's what the funeral ledgers called you. Paid to wail for the families of strangers. A sharp cry, a theatrical tear. But for your own dead... this silence. This pressure. [Chorus] So you came to Krubera-Voronya. The deepest place to learn to cry. Did you think the weight of the rock above you Could finally press a single tear from your eye? Two thousand, one hundred and ninety-seven meters of quiet. Where do you go to finally feel it? [Verse 2] The Ukrainian team passed this ledge in 2001. A diver swam the final sump in 2012. Did they feel you here? A ghost of unfelt feeling. You wrote about the smell of your father's hands. The sound of a song he used to hum. Small things. Too small for the paid performance. Too heavy to carry on the surface. [Chorus] So you came to Krubera-Voronya. The deepest place to learn to cry. Did you think the weight of the rock above you Could finally press a single tear from your eye? Two thousand, one hundred and ninety-seven meters of quiet. Where do you go to finally feel it? [Bridge] There's a wind that sings in the shafts down here. A sound like a human voice, holding one note. Is that the sound you were looking for? Not the sharp wail you sold by the hour. But the long, low hum of what remains when the performance is over. When no one is watching. When no one is paying you to feel. [Outro] I'm leaving your book where I found it. Tucked into this fissure in the dark. A question, waiting for an answer.