Let’s see that this song reads as / can be / is about whiteness as violence, and yet as rebellion. As a portrait of self-congratulation over the latter, while oblivious to the former, I sure like it a lot.

Let’s say that song PoV is ‘you’, and their interlocutor is ‘me’. Why? It is more difficult to interrogate the song from its own PoV.

For the same reason that some adjectives lack a certain grammatical agreement with the first person (e.g. ‘they are bad / you are bad today / I am having a bad day’. I would like to find the tweet thread with the good example of this.)

pale aversion / in
fatal alliance / scream / for deliverance
fake your own / fake your own / reverence

Hang on. Each of these syllables is pronounced like a word. So let’s unpack the word, not the sentence.

Alliance, deliverance, negative affect. Reverence, mixed affect (faking it doesn’t mean you aren’t doing it). Whatever it was you belonged to, it doesn’t fit.

To be clear, I looked up the lyrics here. The chorus didn’t parse completely, either. But it really stuck.

Drifting in and out, I won’t lie
Insecure my visions blind my
Sight, my means, my faith, my view
I hate myself for trusting you

Reverence again, visions that aren’t true, but that exploit. Faith is sight and view. But sight is means, which means we’re in head-space.

Find the door, egress this white world
Tie these chains and link what’s, take what’s
Mine, what’s yours, you’re mine, not yours
Above discoloured vomit pours

take what's mine, what's yours / you're mine, not yours

The thesis. A story, told about me. My story without my voice. This is a cruel response, no matter what you feel.

(There’s another gloss of this song where the power balance favors me, not you. But that’s not how ‘white’ presents to me here.)

above discoloured vomit pours / find the door, egress this white world

Acrid disgust, but so precise, almost hidden. A body in the rafters. A white room, and something leaking in, as it does.

tie these chains and link what's / take what's mine, what's yours

The ‘transcendence’ beat that always follows ‘defiance (of religious authority).’ Immediately subverted. You flee one set of relations and necessarily join another.

Justification of / violence of worst kind
I wish / I knew it when
white did not mean / the end when transfixion / occurs as the first state

Stretched into syllables again, yet sung (not screamed). Unpacks the thesis. White is the justification, white is stunning and violent, white was not always these things.

[white, white,] white is all that I see
this is how she came to be
[repeat]

Let’s be more explicit. You were blinded, so you left a white world, and connected with me, and somehow she came to be white. She? Like the honorific of an object, or a deity.

I think of Barthes’ image, which covers the loved one, and hides them from their lover. The effect is to substitute an object for a subject, which is more difficult to hold in a relationship.

This description curiously also fits a ‘disenchanted’ way of relating to the world, which affiliates through technocratic power with whiteness.

no / contradiction / in
warfare and worship
sing / me a lullaby
please / can you dry
can you dry / this eye

‘Worship’ implies that the connection is one of divine love. The subject is myself, not mine, but yours. Warfare, that ‘violence of worst kind’, contradicts your worship. This is a confusion producing strongly negative affect. I should comfort you.

drifting / in and out / I won’t lie

Sung like the verse, in syllables, but the line is from the pre-chorus. We continue to be in head-space. That means you and my image are there, but I am not.