Dissect - S9E1 - Mac Miller: Swimming in Circles

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

We begin our season-long analysis of Mac Miller’s conceptual double album Swimming In Circles. This season includes discussion of substance misuse and addiction. For resources on these topics, visit spotify.com/resources. Shop Season 9 merchandise here. Follow Dissect on Tiktok, Instagram, and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This season includes discussion of substance misuse. Please keep this in mind when deciding if, how, and when you'll listen. For resources on these topics, visit Spotify.com slash resources. On July 12, 2018, MacMiller posted a 30-second video on Twitter. At the time, Miller had been on a brief hiatus from social media and really the world at large. Just a few months prior, he and his superstar girlfriend had broken off their two-year relationship, and just a few days after that, Matt crashed his car into a power pole while under the influence. For morally bankrupt tabloids, Mack's life became clickbait fodder,

and given his open history with substance abuse, fans were naturally worried. But Mac's Twitter post was not an official statement or a selfie video attempting to explain himself. It was art. Scored by a new song, the animated video finds a diver and scuba gear submerged underwater. Dubbed The Abyss of the Psyche, the diver sinks deeper and deeper. deeper as different images from Mack's past appear in the seabed behind him, illuminated by the diver's headlights. The first image we see is the car he crashed, and in the full video we see his piano, a Buddha statue, alcohol bottles, and even an aerial view of his hometown Pittsburgh. It's a moving

portrait, and Mack the diver inspects it all with mindful calmness, sinking further and further into his psyche. At the end of the 32nd teaser, there's a title card enclosed in a circle announcing a new album to be released in less than a month. Two years in the making, it was an album that would stay true to the video's central image of a man entrenched in his own psyche, observing, searching, scrutinizing. It was an album that communicates a universal notion

of seeking peace amidst the unrelenting currents of emotion, an album whose central symbol is water, the replenishing source of life that can just as easily pull you under. It was Mac Miller's Swimming. Eric. Mac Miller Swimming channels the ephemeral, ever-changing experience of life, and finds faith in our ability to choose awareness and survive. Songs like self-care explore the inherent contradictions of our attempts to grapple with

the human condition. Meanwhile, songs like Perfecto find Mack fluctuating between rap bid tides of dismay and joy, battling anxiety in an attempt to accept the inherent turbulence of our lives. In support of the new record, Mac had assembled a live band and was preparing a U.S. tour. In public appearances, he was holding his head high, feeling clear, working out. As his friend Thundercat said, quote, he just wanted people to know how hard he'd been working. up until the last words we spoke to each other, it was nothing short of pure excitement, unquote.

And yet, we know the sorrow of how time is unfolded. As just over a month after the release of swimming, Malcolm McCormick passed away from an accidental overdose on September 7, 2018. He was just 26 years old. I just really want to do like some crazy things that I can look back when this is all said and done and be like some, and I could be proud of what,

I've done, you know, and really feel like that I've changed something in a good way for years to come. A year after his passing, in January of 2020, the Miller family shared a heartfelt letter on Instagram. They revealed that Mack was well into recording his next album at the time of his death, a conceptual companion to swimming called circles, quote, two different styles complementing each other, completing a circle. With Mac's collaborator John Bryan having completed its remaining production needs, the project was released within days of Max 28th birthday, posthumously fulfilling his vision of the conceptual double album, Swimming in Circles.

Good knows, good knows, but like you, when I know... Circles meditates on our cyclical, often depleting efforts to change and finds beauty amidst the cycles. And where swimming is a fluid hybrid of rapping and singing, Circles leans almost exclusively into melody, with Max sung vocals taking center stage. While he'd always been vulnerable in his music, The tender intimacy of circles provides a space for introspection unlike anything we've heard from Mac Miller. This is what it looked like right before you fall. Stumbling around you've been guessing your direction except you can see it all.

Interconnected by themes both musical and philosophical. Swimming in Circles creates what Mack referred to as a cohesive piece of art that functions as a timestamp for a specific period of his life. When speaking on his public perception at the time of swimming's release, with a celebrity breakup and car crash fresh on everyone's mind, Max said, quote, It's exhausting to always be battling for what you think your image is supposed to be. No one's ever going to really know me.

That's okay. The people that would have the best chance of knowing me that would like to would just be by listening to my music. Even friends that I've lost touch with, they ask how I've been. I'm like, my music is the best way to know how I'm doing. Really. I would love for people to just take the music as just the music, try and get rid of the outside context, which is impossible to do, but just try. And that's exactly what we're going to do this

season. Over our 15-episode examination of swimming in circles, we're going to disregard the tabloid fodder and instead dive deep into the abyss of the psyche. We will listen, respectfully observe, and learn. We will celebrate and honor Mac Miller's eternal gift to the world, his music, and let the elegant tides of his mind carry us where they will. And so with that, and without further ado, let's dissect. It's nice to not have to talk to describe how you're feeling. You know what I mean, it's nice to learn about yourself by like sitting down, picking up a guitar and just playing.

It's the whole entire journey of self-expiration. Because it'd be so easy to just throw it. on and rap and call it an album and continue. I have to expose some part of myself that I'm uncomfortable with. My regrets look just like texts I shouldn't send. And I got neighbors and more like strangers we could be friends. I just need a way. With the opening track, come back to Earth, we're immediately immersed into the aquatic world of swimming.

The musical texture is minimal yet expansive, with Mack's reverb-soaked vocals floating above a single electric guitar playing rich, beautiful seventh chords. It instantly captures the feeling of being submerged underwater, which according to co-producer John Bryan was Mack's intention, quote, Mac had this whole aquatic theme that came out of something we talked about when he was working on swimming. I noticed he mentioned water a few times in the lyrics, and then that grew into all these discussions about water and what it sounds like, unquote. One instrument Mac associated with the sound of water was the electric guitar, which is prominently featured throughout

Come Back to Earth. Sounds like water. Just like the ocean, like floating. That's how my guitar sounds like and feels like to me. Mack also noted this association between the guitar and water when speaking about two of his favorite and most influential records, In Ramos by Radiohead and Equimini by Outcast. Regarding the latter, he said, quote, Equamini is a whole complete album, not just a collection of songs. Hold On Be Strong is such an incredible opening track. It makes me feel like I'm in water,

which is my favorite feeling. Notice here the electric guitar and airy layered vocals, a minimal musical texture very similar to swimming's opening moments. When speaking about in rainbows, Mack also pointed specifically to the guitars, saying, quote, it completely changed my whole view of how I wanted things to sound. The guitar sounds on weird fishes and Reckoner are so watery in a great way. The liquid, fluid, ever-changing qualities of water form a powerful, motific foundation for swimming. One will return to time and again throughout this season. Lyrically, Mac begins the album lamenting mistakes, disconnect, and miscommunication. He sings, My regrets look just like texts I shouldn't send.

The simile of text I shouldn't send, a fear of the future, being described as regrets, a sadness about the past, captures a paralyzing sense of tension involving communication, which carries into the following line, and I got neighbors, they're more like strangers, we could be friends. The potential for connection in text and in person is thwarted by anxiety and second-guessing about what he could or should say, and the potential of creating yet another regret. However, along with this fear, the idea that they could be friends

is a glimmer of hope, that meaningful bonds with those around him would be possible if only he were able to get out of his own head. Here we have Mack's personal call to action. and admission of crippling overthinking and the need for more organic expression, setting the stage for an album that will do just that. Mack being stuck inside his head evokes states of anxiety or even depression, but this could also be the high of headiness, of dissociating from reality.

Mack also spoke numerous times about music being a gateway out of his head, saying that playing music stops the vortex of thoughts in his mind. As he told Rolling Stone, quote, All I'm thinking about when making music is the music that I'm making. I'm not worried about how it's going to be perceived. I'm not worried about if people are going to think that I have no business doing this or that. Fuck all that. I'm just creating different planets.

So people can enjoy them, come to them, or not, unquote. Relevant to this notion about being unbothered by how his music is perceived is the fact that Mack is singing throughout this entire intro track, and will continue to do so throughout much of the album. Having been mostly known as a rapper, Mack faced a lot of questions from the media about the process of finding his singing voice, and he told Rolling Stone, quote, It feels like being naked a little bit.

You're just kind of out there. It's just a process of doing that and just going for it and failing, like trying something out and sounding horrible sometimes. That's fine, unquote. It's a scary thing because, like, the bars and the raps, like, I can hide behind that forever. You know what I mean?

Like, I can put, I can put, like, bars out on why I'm iller than you or why I'm doing this. But, like, to, like, sing is, like, scary you know I mean like like because I'm not a singer but like um my main instrument is my voice so like I have to I have to learn and use it in as many ways as possible and I by by no means think like I'm like a phenomenal singer or anything like that I just think that that I know how to like I I know how to how to put my emotion on a record and sometimes that emotion can't be

captured on with just just the raps So in the opening moments of the album, we're quite literally hearing the process of getting out of his own head play out in real time, as Mack is admitting his fears through his singing voice, both of which leave him totally exposed and vulnerable. This catharsis then leads to a turn in the music. There's a sudden lift to a more optimistic sentiment as comeback to Earth continues into its B-section. There's a noticeable shift in mood here, one that is just as much musical as it is lyrical. To show you why, I want to briefly back up to the song's opening section, where we hear this

chord progression. Tucked inside this progression is a chromatic descending line, which just means there's a sequence of notes that move downward step by step, even when some of those notes don't technically belong in the song's key signature. I'll play the progression again and accent this descending line I'm talking about. Matching this downward motion in the guitar is Mack's vocal melody, which also moves downward. Musically, we tend to associate prolonged downward movement with melancholy or dejection, which in this case is a very fitting musical setting given the disconnect and anxiety Mac is expressing. Now when we hear that shift into the B section we just heard, both the melody and chords flip. We get a C major seventh chord followed by the chord directly

above it, D minor 7, creating a lift. Over this, Mack sings an ascending melody, one in which he's constantly reaching higher and higher. Fittingly, Mac's lyrics turn here as well, as he sings, In my own way, this feel like living some alternate reality. I was drowning, but now I'm swimming. The obvious articulation of the album title here already captures our attention, but it's heightened by the fact that when he says swimming, he hits the highest note he'll sing in the entire song. It's as if the struggle, the climbing both mentally and musically,

was to reach this state of swimming, to survive amidst the constant threat of drowning, which seems to refer to the numerous entities consuming Max's mind, addiction, anxiety, depression, love, and even work. I have a tendency to really drown myself in my work. Do you know what? Like nothing else exists. And I think it's just kind of like perspective actually adds to the whole process

because you want to talk about life so you have to live a little, you know. On swimming, Mack shows his attempt to live life a little. Given the chance to sink or swim, he's made the decision to swim. to sustain the effort needed to resist being pulled under. While this is a hopeful declaration of agency, there's a balance present in the stanza. The couplet of I was drowning but now I'm swimming through stressful waters to relief,

contains two dichotomies, drowning and swimming, or stress and relief. Here Mack lays a foundation of simultaneity and juxtaposition. In the water, the ever-changing currents of our life, we can drown, allowing the water to take us over, or we can swim, fighting for our lives and seeking refuge. Concurrently, there's the experience of stress or relief,

two opposing emotions, and Mack hopes to find relief in his quest. The presence of juxtapose forces evokes the sense of balance that will be explored on the album, and we get the notion that perhaps stress and relief are not individual destinations, but rather different experiences of the water. Mack's focus on emotive expression, as well as his often slurred delivery,

appears to paint certain lyrics with abstract subjective colors. He sings, oh, the things I do to spend a little time in here. Or maybe it's the things I do to spend a little time in hell. Or maybe it's the things I do to spend a little time in her. Perhaps as ambiguity comes from one way Mac composes lyrics by humming and mumbling along as he improvises and creates a song's musical bedrock. For example, here's Mac beginning to put lyrics down on a track at Rick Rubin's studio. So while Mac is making another hopeful agreement to act,

as he begins the statement with The Things I Do, we're left with an interesting triad of simultaneous possibilities for what it is Mac is actually seeking. First, let's think of Mac aiming to spend a little more time in here. This seems consistent with Mack's pursuit of coming back to Earth, out of his own head, to a place where he can swim to relief. The use of here also evokes the themes of mindfulness and presence of experiencing the world as it is around us in each moment.

This is a grounded, balanced state, one that Mack seeks. Then there's the idea that Mac would do anything to spend a little time in hell. This would be a raw admission, that while Mack has been talking about leaving the struggles on mental clouds, sadness, or addiction, he also knows that he's done so much throughout his life to stay in that hell. This is the swallowing, all-encompassing submergence into the depths of the earth, drowning in the indulgence. It's a mortifying truth that the destructive habits,

in cycles we create for ourselves can sometimes feel like comfort, that sometimes we do whatever we can to succumb to the abyss rather than let ourselves rise to the surface and breathe. Finally, the third possibility begins the thread of lost love on swimming, as Mac wishes he can spend a little more time in her, that is, experiencing a connection with a romantic partner, whether that be mentally, spiritually, or physically. Mack's exploration of love and romance throughout his career offers plentiful connections, but two stand out in relation to this moment. Going back to 2013 and the release of his album Live from Space,

Mack had a bonus track titled Earth, featuring Future. In the chorus, Mack sings about a love interest, saying, I had to stop, you blew my high, a real angel, bring it back to Earth. Mac explained the concept of this track in an interview, using the phrase, Come Back to Earth, as an explanation of the female character's role within the song. I was like, hell yeah. And then I just made that record, Earth, which the whole thing,

whole concept behind the record is about a female who we live in this, in this high, right? Everyone's always high, you know, whether that be talking about the kush or like whatever high you live in. And it's just kind of this girl that kind of cuts them, cuts that under you and you fall, come back down to earth. In this sense, it seems a romantic connection, the idea of being with someone real, can help alleviate the high of Max's lifestyle. Instead of being removed from reality, this love offers a chance to ground his life in something real. Mack's exploration of love ran throughout all of his work,

but it perhaps came to its zenith with the release of his 2016 album, The Divine Feminine, which neatly coincided with the public beginning of his romantic relationship with Ariana Grande. He was often asked if the album was about her, which parts of the album were about who, and how his real life influenced the music. It was the sort of thinking that would follow Mack with each project, and Mac would try to explain the bond between his life and art.

There's bits and pieces of real, like, life stories of love that are actual real and personal to me. But then there's also the idea of what I'm searching for and what I want. You know what I mean? A lot of the times with this, like, there would be stuff that I couldn't. I had to, like, imagine what I wanted. You know what I mean? From the stops and starts, the questions, the searching, and Mack's response, we get a sense of the nebulous, fluid relationship between his life and art,

where Mack admits there are pieces of life in there, but also other stories, hopes, and dreams. It was a dynamic situation he would have to navigate with the release of swimming as well, given that his relationship with Grande had ended earlier that year. Regardless, the exploration of love throughout Divine Feminine, combined with the nature of the title and its final track, God is Fair, Sexy, Nasty, Mac conveyed a compelling portrait of the feminine as heavenly. Thus, Mac's longing to spend more time in her captures both the bliss of love and sex,

but also the joy of his time on the previous album, which has passed, forcing Mac to move on. Any combination of the three words, hear, hell, or her, can be present simultaneously. It's the beauty of Mack's delivery, a subjectivity he encouraged, noting the personal nature of music and the conversation it creates. Make sure with music you have your own experience,

To anyone listening out there, I think in today's day and age where you can go on the internet and you could, you know, figure out, everyone always wants to know what my intention was on making a song. But I think it's very important for things to be left unsaid and for a listener to take it where it goes for them. Translate. Because my experience with my song is just is unique to me. And that doesn't mean a thing for anybody else. You know, it's just my story. Like, I hope that this music touches people in their own way. And a lot of times people bring new meaning of songs that I made to me.

And I'm like, whoa, you know what I mean? And that's tight. That's the conversation. Like, we're having a conversation. And you've got to be a part of it as well. While all three words offer their own lanes, perhaps by opening ourselves to the entirety of the experience provided by this line, we see Mack longing to have it all. We see hell, earth, and heaven.

We feel pain, balance, and bliss all at once. Adding to this heightened experience is the introduction of an airy synthesizer and tremolo heavy keyboard play by producer John Bryan, an iconic multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and composer. Mack spoke about taking comeback to Earth to Brian and witnessing him transform the song. I bring this record to him. And I literally go into the corner of the studio with a blanket and like a pillow and just like stay up and just watch him compose. He's like, oh, you're lucky I'm in arranging orchestra mode.

And I was like, oh, really? Arranging orchestra mode. That's a mode. Wow, that is a mode. And just watching him do that was beautiful. Despite these not being typical orchestral instruments, this part is very orchestral in its voices, as the synth part could easily be played by a string section.

But the airiness of the synth captures the feeling of floating in a way that strings cannot, while the rapid tremolo of the keyboard creates a rippling effect. Both textures reinforce the sound of being underwater. Over this, Matt continues singing, and what I won't tell you, I'll probably never even tell myself. It continues the threat of miscommunication laid out in the song's opening lines, revealing that the disconnect begins internally and expands outward. There's a sense of futility here, that even as he tries to be honest,

he may never connect with others fully because he can't even fully connect with himself. As comeback to Earth continues, there's another turn toward optimism, as the B section returns but with different lyrics. That's right after the break. Welcome back to Dysect. Before the break, we heard Mack expressing how his disconnect with other people, starts with an internal disconnect with himself. After this vulnerable admission, the song returns again to its B-section.

The second iteration of this section adds weather to the symbolic foundation of the album, as Mack sings, and don't you know that sunshine don't feel right when you inside all day. I wish it was nice out, but it looked like rain. Here, weather serves its traditional symbolic role with sunshine standing for happiness and rain for sadness. Mack is stuck inside, both indoors and in his own mind. This is due to his perception of rain, where the sadness he feels interacting with the outside world. Interestingly, while it looks like rain, Mack never goes outside to feel it, and it's this inaction and lack of engagement that's the true tragedy of the situation.

The motific presence of weather also appeared on the trio of loose songs released in the lead-up to swimming. On the track programs, Mack approaches the subject of his return to music in the public sphere. After lines such as, I'm always going overboard, better swim before I drown, and drumming loud as thunder with the sounds, weather serves a central role on Mack's parting advice to himself. Everybody got money, get the band together. We're like you can't stand the weather, but it ain't going to rain always. After demanding he stand and get his hands together, Mac wraps, moving like you can't stand the weather,

but it ain't going to rain always. It's as if he's talking directly to the Mac, who on Come Back to Earth, stays inside the house all day because it looks like it's raining outside. The transience of weather is a quality that applies to emotions. They pass and change with time. Remembering that, we can get more used to varied emotions, so that when the sunshine does come around, we can be outside to experience it.

And Mack knows this, singing to himself, gray skies are drifting, not living forever. They told me it only gets better. The not living forever refers both to the gray, cloudy skies, but also to Mac himself, and remembering mortality in this way as part of his process of understanding the ebb and flow of life. For now, Mac relies on others who tell him it only gets better. But the dismissive nature of, They Told Me, reveals Mac knows these emotions are cyclical,

that things will get better, but also worse, and he has to become okay with that. It's something Max seemed to come to understand, that he could see change. When asked what advice he'd give to a younger version of himself, Max said, quote, I would just tell myself to worry a little less, and don't create all of this weight for things. Everything has so much weight, but it's all just chapters. It's all just pieces of the story. There's going to be a next part.

It's not a big deal. It's not. That's the thing. Trust. The more I trust in who I am as a human being, the more I'm like, okay, this will all kind of figure itself out, as long as I do what feels natural. Maxing's the opening chorus again here at the end, closing a mini-circle within this opening track. In our second time looking at these lyrics, we have to note the tragic reality of their

appreciates toward Malcolm McCormick's life. In the aftermath, of his passing, court documents of public record have revealed some of the details surrounding his death. Included in these are records of text messages wherein he seeks out the drugs that ultimately killed him. In terms of regrets and texts that he shouldn't send, this connection is almost too much to bear. As we stated before, these opening lines are powerfully honest. There's no glorification, no morose doom gazing. It's simply pure truth. We make mistakes, and sometimes it can kill us. And so how are we to navigate these treacherous waters. When we know that the water surrounding us will drown us, why do we swim? How do we find

peace amidst our perpetual suffering? These are the kind of existential questions Mac asks and explores on swimming in circles, using honesty and art to offer ideas, transparent examples, and companionship. As we all float around, looking for a sense of direction, we'll notice each other, realizing we can help ourselves and come to understand movement and being as entrindic sanctuary. By the end of this chorus, Mack once more asked for a way out of his head, a call that'll propel the trajectory of swimming. In light of this overarching theme, writer Craig Jenkins wondered aloud with Mack that one of the key messages of his music was that things will be all right, that will get through our troubles. Mac responded, quote, that's how it actually works. You're in your head and at some point

you have to decide to either fucking move forward and go or just stay in this space. At some point, there has to be the decision to get on with it. It's probably a reflection of how my mind works maybe. At some point I'm just like, shut the fuck up and go. There's always that moment of release and I always want that, unquote. For someone who often cited music as a way to cope with his anxiety, come back to Earth's instrumental outro feels like a fitting conclusion, as we experience Mac getting out of his own head through the gentle tides of keyboards that swell and pan. There's a feeling that we've breached the surface and now lie adrift in the waters, face up towards the heavens, engulfed but breathing. Conclusions.

Come Back to Earth was the first thing Mac Miller wrote for swimming a full two years prior to its release. Despite writing 13 different versions of it, the very first iteration is the one he used to open the album. By the way, the intro on this record, I made maybe 13 intros. This was the first one I made. One of the first records I made after coming back from Tor from Divine Femin. So I'm making like intros all this. time and I'm like, no, this is how I'm going to say. They were all called Come Back to Earth, by the way, every single one. In light of these comments, the title Come Back to Earth seemed especially important

to Mack as the conceptual start to swimming. Coming back to Earth implies a past departure from which he's returning, and given Mack's occupation inside his own head removing him from reality, it seems the way out of his head is to come back to Earth, that swimming will be an album attempting to find our shared world. After all, Earth is the only planet we know of with water. The only place where swimming is even possible. This idea of returning also seems to tie into a shared thread between the beginning and ending tracks of many of Mac's albums. As he explained to NPR,

the last track ends an album with death, while the first track is the start of life. Some reason I'm obsessed with albums ending in death, I don't know why, and it's not even necessarily a negative sad thing, but I guess to me an album is just a life, like it's like a mini lifetime. We can follow this thread of death and rebirth across the series,

successive Mac albums, beginning with the final song on Good A.M. It's here that Mac had Eukami from Little Dragon play God, welcoming him into heaven, saying, quote, I like God being female. The only way we can get the world back on the right track is to embrace the sacred female, unquote. This idea presented at the end of Good A.m. connects seamlessly into Mac's next album, aptly titled The Divine Feminine. This album's opening track presents a rebirth, a welcome into a world. skip ahead to the album's closing track, God is Fair, Sexy, Nasty. We find an extended dialogue for Mack's grandmother,

who is talking about the love shared between her and Max's late grandfather. I feel I just gave him a wonderful life, a good marriage and a wonderful family, and I know he really had a beautiful life, and I did too. Eternal love and his late grandfather seems to fulfill Max's intention of ending each album in death. And like the transition from the closing of Good AM to the Divine Feminine, we find a possible connection between the end of Divine Feminine into the opening of swimming. After the Grandmother's speech, the album closes out with a piano part played by jazz pianist Robert Glaspur. The album ends on this chord, an E-flat major 7.

But the thing is, this chord doesn't resolve the progression. It's musically inconclusive. And if we were to loop this ending progression, that is return to its beginning and start again, the first chord we'd hear is a C major seventh chord, as that's the chord the progression started with. But of course, that's not what happened. The part doesn't repeat, and we don't hear that C major seventh chord. It just hangs on the unresolved chord and the album ends. But can you guess what the first chord played on swimming is?

Yep, a C major seventh chord. This possible connecting thread continues the fluid transitions across Mac's final albums, with each of them ending in death and beginning with a new life. Given this idea of each album as a lifetime, we ought to look at Come Back to Earth as a rebirth due to the returning aspect of Come Back. This falls in line with ideas of reincarnation, such as they appear in Buddhism. Fans of Mac Miller might recall images of Buddhist statues in his studios dating back to at least 2013, and one of the more prominent objects seen in the Seabed of the Come Back to Earth music video is a large Buddhist statue.

Mac fuses the Buddhist notion of reincarnation and its cyclical symbolism with a religious practice of ablution, or ritual washing, such as a Christian baptism or Jewish chavila. These rituals carry significant weight and often represent a purification or cleansing of the spirit, so that the individual may be reborn and move forward with faith. Buoyed by the aquatic sonic environment of the track, the symbolism of drowning and swimming emphasized the role of water in Mack's new state, carrying associations of both cleanliness and change. And this is our introduction to the MacMiller of swimming,

deep within the abyss of the psyche, looking for any way out of his own head, but honest and open about it, lending us into his own troubles so that we might understand how to work with ours, washing himself in the same waters that could pull him under, but deciding to keep swimming. This episode of Dysect was written by Camden Ostrander and me.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell a friend about the new season or share on social media and tag at Dysect podcast. It really helps. Limited merch for this season is available at Dysectpodcast.com, which is linked in the show notes. The season intro was scored by So Wiley. Theme music by Bureaucratic. Instrumental Recreations by Andrew Atwood.

Audio editing by Eric Bass and me. If you're new to Dissect, check out our back catalog of over 100 episodes, where you can find full seasons on albums by Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Beyonce, Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, and more. All right, thanks, everyone. Talk to you next week.