twenty milligrams

I listen to music to make my brain freeze. That is why I do most things. To freeze my brain. Nick Drake does this better than most things.

When I listen to Nick Drake I am falling. I want to fall in slow motion into water. Not real water. Water that will not smash my back. Water you keep falling into and never land in. I do not want to stop falling. Falling is a form of staying. The not landing is the architecture.

I think about the end of Nick Drake's life every day. He died November 25, 1974. He was 26. Overdose of amitriptyline. They found him in his bed at his parents' house in Tanworth-in-Arden. His mother saw his legs first, stretched across the bed like punctuation the sentence forgot to use. He had recorded three albums. Five Leaves Left, 1969. Bryter Layter, 1970. Pink Moon, 1972. Almost nobody bought them. Pink Moon sold six thousand copies in 27 years. He stopped being able to speak near the end. Depression took his voice before it took the rest. The silence came first like a throat closing from the inside. Then the pills. Then the permanent silence.

I take amitriptyline. 20 milligrams at night. Two small, blue pills. Not for depression. For migraines. For Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. For period pain. The same drug that ended him continues me. I think about this when I take them. Every night when I take them. The two small blue pills are like punctuation I swallow before sentences I will not remember dreaming. The water. November 25, 1974. 50 years collapsed into the same molecule. His death in my throat every night before sleep. The inquest said between 30 and 85 amitriptyline tablets from his stomach and blood. Enough that his body became a fact his mother discovered by seeing his legs first. I know how many I take. I count them. I have counted them every night for years. 20 milligrams. Two small, blue pills. The exact dose that keeps me going was not enough for him or was too much depending on whether you measure by continuation or by stopping.

I do not know when I started thinking about his death every day. I wake up and it runs like cold water through pipes in a house nobody lives in. November 25, 1974. His parents' house. The bed. The amitriptyline. Three albums no one heard. His silence became music to other people. Other people's brain freeze. Other people's falling. That is what I am doing when I listen. I am borrowing his silence. The silence he recorded before the silence that killed him.

I listen to Pink Moon the most. 28 minutes. 11 songs. Just voice and guitar and one piano overdub like a finger tapping the lid of something that should stay closed. Recorded in two nights during October of 1971. He did not want anyone else there. He played the songs twice, kept the best takes, and left. Three years later he was dead. The album sounds like falling. Like the water I want.

When I listen, I lie on my bed or on the floor. I do not move. I close my eyes or keep them open. The falling happens through the skull either way. My brain stops doing the thing I need it to stop doing. I do not know what to call the thing. The thing that runs underneath like pipes making sounds you hear in walls at 3 am. Nick Drake stops it. His documented throat-closing stops my undocumented throat-closing. His 26-year-old voice singing about sinking stops my 26-year-old brain from making the sounds it makes when I do not stop it. 50 years between his mouth and my ears. The same throat closing at both ends.

I have been listening to Nick Drake more than ten years. Maybe 15. I had a burned copy someone gave me. Then I bought the album. Multiple times when I lost it or gave it away or it disappeared the way things disappear. Now I stream it. I do not know how many times I have listened. I stopped counting or never counted. I just know I listen every day. His falling has become my falling has become the thing I do instead of my own life.

The song "Pink Moon" is two minutes and four seconds. I have listened to it on repeat for entire days. Days I did not leave my bed except to use the bathroom. Days I did not eat or ate one thing at 9 pm. Days where falling was the only thing that worked. The song has no chorus. Just verses that accumulate like water in a throat you cannot swallow. It ends with his voice making the shape of the melody where words used to go. Two minutes and four seconds of falling then silence, but you are still falling because you hit repeat. His voice makes melody shapes where words used to be before depression took them. Depression took his words three years before it took the rest. The melody shapes are what I listen for. The place where language stopped working for him like a throat that knows how to close but not how to open. That is where my brain freezes best.

When I listen, my stomach does the thing stomachs do when elevators cut their cables. The drop. The whole song is the cable cutting. My brain behind my forehead goes smooth like a stone that water has run over for so long the stone has forgotten what it was before the water. Like the thinking part shuts off and what is left is just the part that knows how to hold the falling. When the song ends and I hit repeat, the cable cuts again. I can do this for hours. For entire days. Nick Drake falling on repeat is the closest I get to not existing while still having a throat that opens and closes on its own.

Other things that make my brain freeze: lying in the bath until the water goes the same temperature as my skin, so I cannot tell where my body ends and the water begins. Holding my breath until my vision develops edges like torn paper. Lying on the floor face down with my forehead pressed against the ground until the pressure creates a third eye that sees nothing. Walking in circles in my room for hours, same path, 97 steps, until I am not walking in my room. I am walking inside the walking. Counting backwards from 1,000 by sevens until the numbers stop being numbers and become the sounds numbers make when nobody is listening. Looking at one spot on the wall until my vision goes strange like a throat that forgets how to swallow. Skipping meals until my hands shake like small animals trying to remember how to be hands. Staying awake for 40 hours until time becomes a taste in my mouth like copper. These all work. None work as well as Nick Drake.

I wanted to enter a school talent show once to sing "Hazy Jane II." I practiced it for weeks. I could sing it. I did not know how to play instruments. I wanted to perform it. We could not find a backing track. I did not enter the talent show. I did not sing it for anyone. I still know all the words. I do not sing them. The falling works better when I am not the one making the sound. When someone who is dead does the throat closing for me.

I think about how he recorded Pink Moon then stopped performing. He had done small shows before. Clubs. He would sit facing away from the audience sometimes like a throat turning away from mouths that wanted to watch it work. Would not talk between songs because talking was becoming the thing his throat could not do. After Pink Moon he stopped. Stayed at his parents' house. Saw a psychiatrist. Took amitriptyline. Stayed in his room. Played guitar. Did not record another album. Two years of taking the same drug I take. Two years of his throat closing more and more until words stopped. Then the overdose. 

Every night, I take the same drug. I pour water in the same glass. I take 20 milligrams. Two small, blue pills that look like punctuation that goes in your throat instead of on paper. I lie in bed. I wait for them to work. Sometimes they work on the migraine. Sometimes they do not. They make me sleep. Heavy sleep like falling through water that is the same temperature as your body so you cannot tell when the falling becomes the sleeping. I do not know if Nick Drake dreamed. I do not know if he meant to take enough to not wake up. The inquest said suicide. His mother was not sure. The verdict was suicide but used words like, "when suffering from a depressive illness," which is just another way of saying his throat had been closing for years and one night he helped it close the rest of the way. That the difference between continuing and stopping is just a question of how many small, blue pills. That measurement is everything. That his mother saw his legs first is just another way of saying the body becomes information when the throat closes.

The water I want is not real water. Real water at speed breaks your back like a throat that closes all at once instead of slow. The water I want is in Nick Drake's voice. The space between guitar notes where his throat is opening and closing and you can hear both. The silence pretending to be music. The melody shapes where words used to be before his throat forgot how to hold them. Anesthesia that sounds like folk music. Brain freeze that sounds like someone documented their throat closing in 1971 before depression closed it the rest of the way.

I do most things to make my brain freeze. Not a metaphor. The sensation of my brain stopping the thing it does. The thing that runs underneath like water in pipes in a house where nobody lives but the water keeps running. The thing that will kill me if I do not keep stopping it. Or not kill me. Just make me into someone who cannot speak. Like Nick Drake at the end. When depression took his voice like a throat that closes from the inside. When he sat in rooms with people and could not talk because his throat had closed around the words before they could get out. The silence came first. That is what I think about. That going quiet is how you know the throat is closing.

I have never told anyone that I think about his death every day. When people ask what kind of music I like, I say folk music. They say, “Oh yeah, Pink Moon, beautiful album.” I say, “Yeah.” I do not say, “I think about how he died every single day.” I do not say, “I take the same drug that killed him every night before I go to sleep.” I do not say, “His throat closing is my throat closing.” I do not say, “Two small, blue pills.” I do not say, “His mother saw his legs first.”

The worst part is not that I think about his death every day. The worst part is not that I take the same drug. The worst part is that it helps. Thinking about it helps. Taking the pills helps. Listening to him document his throat closing helps. Knowing someone else took amitriptyline and did not wake up, so now I know how many not to take, helps. 20 milligrams. Two small, blue pills. Not more. His death has become information I use to not die the same way. His throat closing has become the water that does not hurt. 50 years collapsed into the same 28 minutes on repeat.

I am 26. The same age Nick Drake was when his throat closed. I turn 27 in a couple of weeks. Every day until then, I think about November 25, 1974. Every night until then, I take amitriptyline. 20 milligrams. Two small, blue pills. I pour water in the same glass. I lie in bed. I wait to fall asleep. I wait for my throat to close just enough but not all the way. I do not know what I will think about after I turn 27. I do not know if his throat closing will work the same way once I am older than he ever got to be. Once I have taken amitriptyline more nights than he did total. Once I have swallowed more small, blue pills than the number that closed his throat.

I still listen to Pink Moon every day. 28 minutes. Sometimes once. Sometimes on repeat for hours. The throat closing still works. My brain still goes smooth behind my forehead. My stomach still drops like a cable cutting. I still take amitriptyline every night. I still count the pills. 20 milligrams. Two small, blue pills that look like punctuation. 50 years between his overdose and my correct dose. I still do not land. Nick Drake still does not land. November 25, 1974. His mother saw his legs first. He is still 26. I am 26 for a couple more weeks. The falling is still the architecture. The water that does not hurt. The brain freeze. The same drug that ended him continues me. The throat closing he recorded before his throat closed. His voice making melody shapes where words used to be. His falling on repeat for 50 years. Other people's throat closing. My throat closing. All of us not landing together. 28 minutes at a time. Two small, blue pills at a time. The same water. The same falling. The same throat opening and closing and opening until one day it just closes. But not today. 

Today, I take 20 milligrams. Today, I listen to someone else's throat closing. Today, I fall without landing. Today the two small, blue pills. Today November 25, 1974. Today, the throat closes but not all the way. Not yet.

Bea has been sick for a while and doesn't do a whole lot except write in her diary and eat ramen noodles.