My Face Is Outer Space
“My Face Is Outer Space” is a track from the 2023 War Against Sleep album Mysteries of the Impossible. It is about an unusual experience I had in the Central Library shortly after moving to Bristol in my early twenties.
The lyrics tell the story:
When I was 23, just moved to the city
I was clean and I was pretty
Hanging around in the library
When the Spirit came upon me
Said do you wanna see my face?
My face is your face
My face is outer space
Although it can happen spontaneously to anyone at any age, it’s an experience often described by people who meditate, or who have just done a load of mushrooms etc. It can occur by surprise while they are simply going about their everyday lives.
Briefly, the artificial boundary between oneself and the outside world dissolves, and our limited sense of self temporarily expands to vast proportions, leaving a profound sense of being all that is. “I see a tree” becomes “As a tree, I see myself.” We become everything looking at everything.
After a while, you can deliberately slip into this state by just allowing yourself to relax and become aware of your surroundings, then letting yourself disappear into an awareness that you are the place watching itself. This gets easier with practice. But sometimes it just happens spontaneously. I once had an intense experience of this kind while I was standing in the queue at a chip shop! I suddenly became everything watching itself, and the experience lingered for quite a while.
In my own encounters with this state, it tends to last until my ego concerns reassert themselves. These concerns, usually focused on a desire to draw aspects of the external world closer to me or push them away, i.e. likes and dislikes, presume a separate self, and so I’m pulled back into differentiated ego perception. The boundaries of the ego are like an elastic band that can be stretched but will eventually snap back to its usual tension. So it is an altered state rather than a permanent change in one’s stage of consciousness. It’s an interesting phenomenon but not that much of a big deal in the long run.
Sometimes, this experience of oneness deepens into a sense of great vastness. It’s no longer just the immediate physical environment that is unified, but everything, everywhere, for all time. Hence, “my face is outer space!” type experiences.
These flashes of a heightened reality can be really intense, especially when they happen in the context of love. While being caressed, you might spontaneously feel as though you are entering the caress as eternal life. If you are kissed, and the kiss is given with love, then you are truly being kissed by love, not just by the lips.
Following an experience like this, a residual awareness can persist in everyday life. We carry a background sense that all phenomena occurring within time and space, the entirety of our existence, unfold within an expansive, boundless space. This is definitely an experience, not a belief. Importantly, this sense of boundlessness includes “I”, “it”, “you”, and “that”: everything, just ourselves. We are all part of this limitless unity.
Staying with this background awareness can cause shifts in the psyche. First, a new kind of duality appears: a simple, fundamental knowing that everything is essentially okay in some ineffable way, despite external circumstances that are clearly not okay. Our previous existential crises and dark nights of the soul find a partial resolution through this really odd intuitive understanding. For some, this is dislocating, but for others it can make them feel more connected with the core of their being.
There’s also a moral dimension to this experience, which I will not go into in any depth here, although I will say more about it at some point. A heightened sensitivity can develop towards the suffering of others. Recognising that they, too, are part of the same interconnected whole, we realise that our wellbeing is intrinsically linked to theirs. Normally, we place ourselves at the centre, and a toothache in our own mouth is always more of a big deal than a famine on the other side of the world, because we have to look after ourselves as living creatures. But this shift from “us and them” towards a shared “us” is, I think, the basis of compassion.
Although that might sound lofty and pretentious, like those people who enjoy broadcasting the fact that they are “empaths”, it’s just part of the experience. Unfortunately, it does not always produce any corresponding increase in kindness or considerate behaviour.
There’s also a potential pitfall in this temporary non-dual awareness. If I identify with all that exists, including what you call yourself, then, in some sense, I am you. Boundaries dissolve and appear artificial and arbitrary. From this vantage point, I might feel that any act is permissible, even one considered harmful or evil from another person’s perspective, since we’re not truly separate, but one being with many faces. Why do I need your consent if I am you? The danger is that, unless I have an inherent respect for individual boundaries, I can do whatever I please at the expense of everyone and everything else.
Also, when expressed clumsily, all this can come across as a banal platitude: “Love is everywhere, so stop worrying.” To someone who is suffering and has not had this experience, such a statement will probably feel shallow and insulting. It can’t be proselytised or recommended as advice, let alone offered as a panacea for someone else’s anguish or material hardship. In fact, doing so can become a kind of cosmic conceit. Ironically, the experience itself arises only when the immediate conceit of the ego dissolves. Would you rather have banality disguised as cryptic wisdom, or cryptic wisdom disguised as banality? Either way, both carry a cost.
As for the rather silly recording of “My Face Is Outer Space”, like most of my War Against Sleep output, nearly everything was tracked separately rather than recorded by a whole band playing together. Most of it was recorded in my attic studio, except for the drums, which we recorded in a friend’s cellar rehearsal space.
Andy Sutor, who I played with in the Emily Breeze band, is a very talented drummer with great taste, which I encouraged him to jettison completely so that he could make the drums fills as lavish as possible for this track. Rob Norbury needed no such encouragement. I only had to say things like “more Nile Rodgers” and “more camp” to get the electric guitar solos as ridiculous as they are.
The song began as an instrumental, essentially trying to emulate an unusual recording called “Emma” by Hot Chocolate, which I was a bit obsessed with at the time. The chords and some of the musical DNA of “Emma” are still there, but everything else is quite different.
The clarinet is played by my mum, Sheila Fleming. She plays very simply and clearly, and I have to write the notes out for her. There is no vaguely humming a tune and expecting her to copy it. The backing vocal chord clusters are inspired by “Candy Says” by the Velvet Underground.
Anyway, here are some links to the recording of “My Face Is Outer Space”, which I hope you do enjoy.
https://music.apple.com/gb/album/my-face-is-outer-space/1703621370?i=1703621381