While Away
Early in 2020 I visited a sensory deprivation flotation center, hoping to start the year with an unusual experience.
I had read accounts that alluded to its deeply relaxing effects, its otherworldliness, its transformation of
awareness, and failing that, its novelty. In the end, I was indeed relaxed but also slightly sea sick after floating
in a Stygian tank of lukewarm salt water for ninety minutes, and it was only after a friend asked me if the
experience was "pleasant" that I realized it had been neither pleasant nor unpleasant, nor had I many adjectives at
all to describe it. My memory was instead utterly and intentionally neutral as one might expect from a tank designed
for reducing sensory input to nearly nothing, but I was left with expectations that had settled potently into my
imagination. While Away is about what I imagined and hoped to feel, a progression on one hand toward
restfulness and on the other toward some deep and unsettling unknown, moving through sections that are increasingly ambient to reflect a sense of immersion and suspension.
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