The Buddha is often cited as telling us "life is suffering", but we spend our time on this earth trying to outrun pain however we can. We treat happiness as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, often forgetting the arc traces over a horizon we will never reach. There is an irony that the inability to feel pain is a true disorder. Those who cannot physically feel pain often perish early, because they lacked the warning signs necessary to learn how to navigate this world we have constructed. Those who cannot emotionally feel pain often commit the worst of atrocities, because the only empathy they have is for their own appetites.
Pain is not just an uncomfortable fact of life, it is a necessary one. Without pain, we cannot know happiness when (or if, to be more precise) it flashes across the path we walk. Without pain, we would never metaphorically slit our wrists and bleed our souls to mix the waters and connect on fundamental levels of humanity.
For their second single, Sapient Scar is dipping their toe into those crimson waters, writing their name with the bloody point of the knife. The guitars that open the song pick a slow arpeggio, tiptoeing around the discomfort that is to come. If they punched us in the face, our eyes would water over and be unable to see the truth that will soon appear before us.
VK's first line says, "I can't tell you why you had to feel this pain, and I can't say I would do it all again." In those words, she understands that despite being 'rational animals', we cannot always explain why we do the things we do. Our drives and desires arise within us, and we feel them, but what causes those electrical sparks to fly across those particular synapses remains a mystery even to ourselves. We cannot avoid all pain, because we don't know where the landmines within ourselves are all hidden.
The band swells as the chorus arises, a dramatic shift that feels like the reveal of the monster in an old black-and-white horror movie. The monster was us, of course, hiding the scars we inflict with thick layers of makeup. VK implores that "you can't make me pay forever", which is true. The only person who can cut so deep the blade breaks off in our soul is ourself, and any hurt someone else causes is merely the pattern we trace as we cut ourselves again and again.
VK sings that "I played the villain, I began to believe there was no redemption." Recognizing the reality, of course, means there is indeed hope. That's why an apology means little when it has to be asked for, as opposed to when that person offers it of their own volition. In that way, this song is VK apologizing to herself for letting people pull her down, hold her back, dull her color.
"The pain in bloom, you fed the roots, they're dead in me," she sings. The ties that bind are strong, and they should be there to pull us up when we fall into one of the holes we dig for ourselves, but they can also be the reason we cannot reach for the surface when drowning. The connections we share with people are personal gravity, and without enough of that force, our universe falls apart. But if it pulls the wrong way, we wobble off our orbit, feeling lost in the blackness between the stars. Feeling dead inside is akin to being a black hole; a cosmic beauty that devours any light passing by, because we are desperately trying to illuminate the path back toward salvation.
These realities are accompanied by some of VK's most piercing vocals. She belts the notes with her entire frame, especially as she sings "I was born to bleed" with enough force to indeed draw blood from a lesser throat. She has showcased her power before, but rarely as the sharp edge of an arrow as it traces an arc into our hearts.
The song winds through a mobius structure, mirroring how these stories do not hit precise act breaks like a tv drama. As it reaches its conclusion, David and Allie finally lay into some lead guitar, and the song shifts keys, signaling the lesson VK has learned. "I never owed you anyway, you never owned me anyway," she tells us. She's right. Whatever we give of ourselves to someone else, it is just that; a gift. We owe no one anything but our honesty, and our best attempt to keep our pain from spreading beyond our skin. We may not always succeed, but the work is the reward.
I wish many of us didn't have to hurt in such vivid color for art to echo from our pain, but it makes too much sense. Pain is our sense of survival, the force that drives us to be better, both for ourselves and for the people we love. Everything good in life can be traced back to a moment when we were hurt, and the ways that pain changed us. That's beautiful, and so is "Pay Forever".
"Pay Forever" releases on October 24th. Pre-save it here!
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