We Used to Sleep on the Beach

“They called Coney Island, ‘the playground of the world.’ There was no place like it, in the whole world, like Coney Island when I was a youngster.”

Side two of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven begins with the voice of Murray Ostril. We don’t know who Murray Ostril is. He is all of us; he is no one. He is probably fake. It doesn’t matter. He’s describing something that doesn’t exist anymore, in a way. The physical location is still there. But the place — the feeling, the experience — is long gone.

The world Murray Ostril is describing isn’t accessible through memory or longing. It’s on the other side of a wall. You can remember it existing, but you can’t touch it, can’t return to it, can’t even properly grieve it because the gap between then and now is too absolute.

It’s supposed to come across as sad, I suppose. It works.

“No place in the world like it, and it was so fabulous. Now, it’s shrunk down to almost nothing, you see. And, uh, I still remember in my mind how things used to be, and uh, you know, I feel very bad. But people from all over the world came here. From all over the world, it was the playground — they called it the playground of the world, over here.”

We’re not doing okay.

We’re not doing okay, because things aren’t okay. We’re not doing okay because ICE — and by extension, our government — is performing acts of fascism. They are murdering non-violent observers. They are working solely as an agent of vindictiveness, unconstitutionally laying waste to whatever rule of order we’d once thought was safe.

Except it’s winter in Minnesota. The cold is oppressive, and those of us who have lived in Minnesota — especially those raised and nurtured by Minnesota — learn to live with this oppression by taking action: warm coats, ice shacks, Schell’s Bock.

So of course it’s Minnesota who is standing up, who is showing everyone else how it’s done. How to stand up to tyranny for real: how to brave sub-zero temperatures, how to document, how to give enough of a shit to bear witness. How to care for your neighbors. How to fight against fascism. The same resilience that gets you through February, weaponized into care, into showing up, into fucking showing up.

Even when it’s hardest, Minnesota is still crystal clear. Refusing to look away even when it’s safer, even when it hurts. Checking on each other while taking care of themselves. The core tenets of empathy, of society; the beauty of living in a place that teaches you that survival is communal, that you look out for your neighbor because next week you might need them to look out for you.

The government is murdering people for practicing that empathy. For asking for help. For standing outside and watching. For caring enough to be present. We hear it. We hear it in every last word.

“Are you okay?”

"I’m not mad.”

“I can’t breathe.”

The core tenet of post-rock is tension. It’s a lull, and it’s a build. “Sleep” opens with Murray’s voice and then as it fades away a wail builds in the background. A few notes, sparse and patient. There’s no rush. There’s all the time in the world, or at least that’s what it wants you to believe.

Then something shifts. Not dramatically. Just a little more insistent. A few more instruments. The volume creeps up so gradually you don’t notice it’s happening until you realize you’re leaning forward, waiting. The pattern repeats but it’s heavier now, denser. Each repetition adds weight. You can feel it accumulating.

But there’s more to post-rock than the build. Post-rock baits. Post-rock withholds. Every measure promises something and then fucking refuses. It makes you complicit in your own anxiety — you’re listening for the break, anticipating it, needing it, and the song just adds layers; gets louder, accelerates. This is the pattern. This is “Mogwai Fear Satan.” This is “Challenger Part 1 – Flight.”

This is “Sleep.” A perfect example, especially in the second movement, “Monheim” — a slow burn that hints at chaos. A train heading off the tracks, a teapot ready to boil over. The guitars get louder and more distorted. The drums get more frantic. Everything is moving toward something inevitable.

And then it breaks.

The break is loud. It’s really loud, and that’s the point.

The break is what happens when the tension becomes unsustainable. When the structure can’t hold anymore. Everything that was building, all that accumulated weight and pressure, detonates into noise and, for a moment, everything is undone. We don’t know what comes after. We don’t know if what emerges will be better or worse, just that it will be different. Irrevocably different.

That’s where we are. Somewhere in the build, watching the machinery accelerate, feeling the weight accumulate measure by measure. We’re tired of the build but terrified of the break. Because once it comes — revolution or tyranny or something we don’t even have words for yet — the song never returns to what it was. The break changes everything.

Murray Ostril’s world doesn’t come back. The playground doesn’t rebuild itself. After the break, you’re in a different piece of music entirely, and you don’t get to choose which one.

“And we used to sleep on the beach here, sleep overnight. They don’t do that anymore. Things changed, you see. They don’t sleep anymore on the beach…”

We’re all suspended in the same moment — leaning forward, waiting, knowing.

I’ll be honest with you, I’m tired of the build-up. Tired of living through the kind of moments that get written about later, that get studied and analyzed and turned into something coherent when right now it’s just chaos and fear and this sick idea that we’re watching something break in real time. So, yeah. I’m tired of the build-up.

More than that, I’m afraid for the break. Afraid because once it comes, we don’t get to go back. Afraid because we don’t know which side of it we’ll land on — revolution or tyranny or something we don’t even have words for yet. Afraid because the break is loud and destructive and it changes everything. Afraid some of the people standing in the cold won’t make it through.

But we don’t get to be afraid for long. That’s not how it works. The tension doesn’t resolve because you’re exhausted by it. The teapot doesn’t stop whistling because you’ve stopped listening. Things changed, you see. They don’t sleep anymore on the beach.

So we hold what we can. We keep each other warm. We stand outside when it matters, even when — especially when — it’s hardest. The break will come on its own terms, not ours.

Until then, there’s the build. There’s the waiting. There’s the single sustaining thread that reminds us there was music once, and might be again. It might have gotten harder to hear, but it’s still out there. The discomfort — the not knowing, the waiting in the cold, the fear — that’s what keeps Minnesota sharp. That’s what keeps Minnesota ready.

Soon enough, it will be our turn. Grant us the strength to stand like Minnesota always has.

You can only stream Godspeed You? Black Emperor’s “Sleep” on YouTube these days.

But you stand with Minnesota in a ton of ways. Visit Stand With Minnesota and give however you can.