Title here
Summary here
Benjamin Fairfield
How It Feels to Drown
Lyrics
How It Feels to Drown
What am I doing down here?
I came for your text,
Now I’m scrolling in fear.
Why make our plans when the end is so near?
They say it’s already here.
Maybe it’s already here.
We’re looking down, down, down,
And not at the ground, ground, ground.
The earth sends us silence.
We blast it with sound.
Is this how it feels to drown?
What are these stories we tell?
Paved over heaven to lock out the hell?
Wasting our wisdom on theories dispelled.
When there’s treasure we never could sell.
Was it treasure? We never could tell.
Please put it down, down, down.
Just look around, round, round.
Life gives us breath
And the light we snuff out.
Sharpening prayers into shouts.
How is it still coming fast?
Where is the power of our critical mass?
You call it “feed” while it’s draining our last.
Nothing we save’s gonna last.
Nothing but love’s gonna last.
Just take it down, down, down.
Give back the ground, ground, ground.
Taking our souls and our soils for their crown.
Is this how it feels to drown?
Artist’s Statement
There are two basic themes running through this song. Lyrically it depicts the feelings I get from doomscrolling (you too?), seeing the wreckage and havoc we’re causing to this earth, with or without the assistance of AI data centers. We’ve long been a ravenous species. Is it too late to correct course?
Materially, the song and larger project deals with our linear extractive economy and what the mindset of extract-exploit-devalue-discard does to us. “Trash,” by definition, labels objects as worthless, without further utility or value. Accepting the label at face value gives us license to throw it away. But where is away?
We don’t give tin cans a second thought most days. We open them up to get the SPAM, the beans, the corn, the tomato paste. We consume that content for nourishment, and we toss the can in the trash. We don’t acknowledge or thank that can for its amazing work, its journey. That aluminum was ripped from African soil, smelted down, shipped across the Atlantic, shaped into a cylinder, filled with ready-made food, shipped to us in cardboard packaging. All of this was very economical (the can costs basically nothing?) and safe (the food is consumable). Why don’t we thank the can, even as we give thanks for the meal? There are many things that sustain us that we tend to overlook at times – cans, or plastic, the land, each other.
How disconnected are we from that which nourishes us? What if we paused, questioned this label: is the material really worthless? Does it really have no voice worth hearing? No genealogy worth acknowledging? No song to sing? What if we instead turned this ‘garbage’ into musical instruments, valued and with voice again? And in doing so, find that we can join them in song? In the process of affirming their worth and potential, we enrich our own humanity, reciprocity, gratitude, and interconnectedness. It isn’t just about recycling; it’s about choosing communion over convenience.
This song features trash instruments created from three junk materials found on excursions with my sons in urban Honolulu:
Wood (and paper) / harp: made from driftwood collected at Magic Island, unused chopsticks from a potluck, cardboard packaging from my sons’ school lunch provisions, and other scrapwood.
Metal / erhu: tin can collected on a Makiki Valley hike, metal rod from my sons’ old baby gate, bike brake cables from a local bike shop, and metal screw eyes.
Plastic / drum: abandoned marine buoy retrieved from the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Sanctuary, plastic lid from a discarded takeout container.
How the Instruments Were Made
About the Artist
Benjamin Fairfield received his Master’s and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology. He has served as lecturer at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and Hawaiʻi Pacific University and was one of four 2025 State of Hawaiʻi Climate Artists-in-Residence funded by the Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission. He has led several instrument workshops; taught music at Ala Wai Elementary School; produced a high school garage rock band’s debut album in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer; and has published in various academic and literary journals. His debut illustrated children’s book about turning rubbish into musical instruments, Kani Ka ʻŌpala (How can garbage sing?), was published by UH Press in 2025. For tutorials, albums, and information on his other projects, please visit his website: kanikaopala.com.