"And they were talking
About pain and the need for judgement and how he would
make himself
A law of pain, both its spirit and its letter in his own flesh,
and then break it. . ."
In this scene, Jesus overhears the rumors of the people who've followed him. They expect for him to accept suffering upon himself in order to destroy its own power over him. Perhaps he only imagines this is what they think, but he does that very thing; he transcends suffering in order to defy its control over not only himself, but everyone.
"The wave breaks
And I'm carried into it.
This is hell, I know,
Yet my father laughs,
Chest-deep, proving I'm wrong."
The narrator is afraid that he is about to die upon a rocky shoreline. He's convinced, but then he hears a familiar voice laughing. In response to the sincerity of this laugh, he cannot help but change his mind. This place must actually be safe. It's not hell but heaven.
"To be identified by one like him --
The easy deference of a kind of god
Who also went to church where I did -- made me
Reconsider my worth. I had been noticed."
Sixteen-year-old Jarman once met an older boy from church while surfing. They weren't friends, but Jarman admired him from afar. When the other boy greets him by name, he invites Jarman to reconsider his self-worth. He is somebody noteworthy.
"But what could we know, tanned white boys,
Wiping sugar and salt from our mouths,
And leaning forward to feel their song?
Not much, except to feel it. . ."
Listening to the Supremes on the beach, teenage Jarman and his friends experience satisfaction. Their summers are so visceral that the music is linked to part of their identities, or at least Jarman's, still. It didn't matter who they were in the moment, just that they felt it.
