Don't Miss It

Vallari Saxena

James Blake through his music, which is often characterised as “sad boy” music due to its emotionally expressive style, captures many nuances in the functioning of the mind. Music as form can capture and convey so much pain; low notes juxtaposed with high capturing the ongoing despondency and cries for help that rattle around in the heads of those struggling with depression. His latest song Don’t Miss It captures not only how one struggles with depression, but also with the yearning for the same once it leaves.    

Depression isolates, it numbs. It paints a bleak picture of the world, one where it is hard to find hope and, many a time, the will to live. It keeps one from feeling motivated, pulls them back from engaging with society, from being able to give something their all. It prevents one from engaging with others, from feeling like one is risking anything because everything feels lost already. 

Blake addresses these feelings and handicaps, but by saying that he could avoid feeling and doing the same. His haunting melody glitches when listing them out, capturing the temporality of depression. While negative, and abnormal, these thoughts are also a way to escape reality in a way that, ironically makes one feel more alive. 

I could avoid coming coming to life

I could avoid anything I like

I could switch off whenever I like

As though this is a choice he had. There is a tendency to tune out of the happenings of reality and into one’s mind. 

Depression isolates, but it also occupies one’s mind. It keeps a narrative going within your head which becomes a way you see the world. The feeling of being alive is amplified by the turbulent decay you see and feel around you. The pungent 

sadness that overwhelms, that grasps you in its heaviness and drudges you across dark seas is still tugging at something deep in you.

‘Don’t miss it’ refers to the life he’s missing avoiding the things his depression keeps him from, but it also speaks to the feeling he’ll miss once he is able to step away from his sadness and reintegrate within society. 

Many personal accounts of those with depression have addressed that once they are out of the pit they sometimes miss it. It is not only an affliction but a worldview that forms, one that the individual feels distant from once they’re treated for the illness. It can be a brilliant sadness that makes one feel more productive, more in tune with the world, always on the brink. 

Blake’s song is hopeful, he focuses on the small things that he’d be missing out on that are too good to pass by, like spending time with your favourite people who only wish to support you and want what’s best for you. It might never be the ideal image one is seeking, but it’s real and safe and not ruled by darkness. His song complicates the struggle with depression by focusing on how one also sometimes may revel in it. That’s just how it is, our bittersweet interaction with our sadness.

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The world has shut me out

If I give everything I'll lose everything

Everything is about me

I am the most important thing

And you really haven't thought 

All those cyclical thoughts for a while

And as it keeps going

I could never be involved

I could never really see in real time

I could never really be involved

And as it keeps on going

I could avoid real time

I could ignore my busy mind

I could avoid contact with eyes

I could avoid going outside

I could avoid wasting my life

I could avoid

I could avoid 20 20 sight

I could avoid standing in line

I could avoid the 405

I could avoid coming to life

I could say anything I like

I could switch off whenever I like

I could sleep whenever I like

I could leave in the middle of the night

Oh, but I'd miss it

Don't miss it

Don't miss it like I did

And as it keeps going

If there's no need for the perfect image

And nothing seems that wrong

Don't miss it

When you know there's better conversation 

Waiting for you at home

And as it keeps on going

You forget whether it was the beginning or end

When you can't believe your luck

You're with your friend

When you get to hang out 

With your favourite person everyday

When the dull pain goes away

Don't miss it (don't miss it)

When you stop being a ghost in a shell

And everybody keeps saying you look well

Don't miss it

Like I did

Don't miss it

Don't miss it like I did

Like I did