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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

by Claustrophobia

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1.
Chapter I: Attachment 02:47
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2.
Lilystone Well 02:14
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3.
Fading Light Over Maiko St. 03:19
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4.
Secret Fears 01:51
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5.
The Glass Cage 04:43
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6.
Haunted by Ghosts 03:16
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7.
Chapter II: What We Talk About... 02:04
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8.
Some Days We Are Free 02:32
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9.
The Open Door 03:52
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10.
No One is Coming to Save Us 01:38
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11.
Surrender 07:17
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12.
Chapter III: ...When We Talk About Love 00:13
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13.
In Love With an Illusion 02:14
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14.
No End Credits 03:55
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about

Some time ago, I read about an experiment on learned helplessness. Performed by American psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1960s, two groups of dogs were placed in a chamber in which they would receive electric shocks. One group could escape the chamber by pressing a panel with their nose, while the other group had no way out. The experiment later moved on to a second phase, in which dogs from both groups had equal opportunity to escape electrocution by simply jumping across to the other side of a barrier. The dogs that had been able to escape in the previous phase were quick to try and end their suffering, and they jumped across without difficulty. The dogs that had previously been trapped simply lay down whimpering and accepted their fate, without even realising that all they needed to do was to simply move themselves a little way over to the other side.

Some of us live in glass cages, restricted and confined in our existence, without seeing the open door right in front of us. When we were younger, we learned that no matter what we did, we would forever be helpless to change our situation. So, we stopped seeing the glass cage as a cage at all; it was simply our world, and we no longer felt the need to try and get out. Moreover, in those brief moments of what we believed to be clarity, we assumed that everyone lived the same way we did, and that those who were content with their circumstances were simply delusional and incapable of seeing the walls around them.

It took more than 30 years for me to finally see that not everyone is trapped. For the first time in my life, I got to really know someone whose cage wasn’t a cage at all; it was a home, a comfortable one, one they could come and go from as they pleased, but… it’s threatening to meet someone who is free. You want to be like them, join them in their unshackled lives, but you don’t know how. So you observe them through your box, trying to learn how they got so lucky so as to be unrestricted, all the while failing to notice the giant exit sign flashing above your head.

Back to the experiment: the dogs could be taught how to escape the electric shocks only when the researchers physically picked them up and carried them across the barrier. With time, they slowly realised they were capable of doing it themselves.

All this to say thank you… thank you for being the one to carry me.

credits

released September 1, 2023

All music by Claustrophobia, except where otherwise stated.

"Chapter I: Attachment", "Chapter II: What We Talk About..." and "Chapter III: ...When We Talk About Love" contain excerpts from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.

Album art courtesy of Yuriko Ishii.

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Claustrophobia Durban, South Africa

Ambient artist from South Africa, currently residing in Kobe, Japan.

An ever-expanding discography that encompasses numerous releases covering everything from drone and dark ambient, to harsh noise, sound collage, modern classical, and new age. ... more

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