Lost Mariners: Music by The Soft Hearted Scientists—Video and Lost Musings by Bryan Parcival

When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.—Genesis 1:2

Why did God pause and hover? What did he see in the chaotic depths that stopped him mid-creative-act? At the point of pause, God had yet to create the sun and the moon. So he stared before he saw. When God commanded “Let there be light”—post-hovering—the light blazed as if on a theater cue, and God, for the first time, got a good look at what was in those depths, at the forms within his watery canvas of creation. 

Had God seen his own reflection in the dark waters? The verses go on to explain that on the final day of creation, God created “man” in his own image. In Genesis 1:27 we read, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Did he glimpse his own dual androgynous nature on the surface of the deep, the endless cycle of attraction and repulsion and copulation that was to push all later creation forward? 

Or did God glimpse the shadows of monsters lurking beneath the surface? The monsters that were there—apparently—long before he arrived on the scene with his flashlight. 

I like to think that at the end of each creation day, God stopped to pause and stare at what was gradually emerging from his efforts. The story informs us that is pretty much all God did on day seven. 

At the first “night,” finally defined and governed by the moon, what did God see reflected in the luna-sea? The mad ebbs and flows in the tumult of tides. Tension and rhythm, chaos and creation. The lunatic drive to organize a next to nothing into a something. The lunacy that is creation as it starts to know itself. But a humble creator must also acknowledge his raw materials—and celebrate the aspects that elude organization and control—for it is those elusive, slippery, tentacled, weirdities that compel creating again and again. 

The music of the Soft Hearted Scientists consistently sets sail on the luna-sea of mystery. Ghost ships and phantom islands shimmer and compel and lead the unwary on a mind-bending journey of unfathomable discovery. Sirens sing and ships sink into the depths of the psyche. Always enigmatic, playful, and peculiar. Songs that I feel I have known for my entire life, yet I hear for the first time with each new album.

It was an absolute pleasure to create the short film/music video for the Soft Hearted Scientists’ epic psychedelic odyssey, Lost Mariners. There was no budget—so the video is made DIY with creepy found objects, odd nautical maps, and curiosities I happened to have lying about. It seems I share a passion for creepy collectibles with songwriter Nathan Hall—so that was as good a place to begin as any. I consider most Soft Hearted Scientist songs trickster-guided initiations into higher, weirder levels of consciousness. As a result, the video is structured like an occult initiation—full of symbols and puzzles—culminating in an aqueous cosmic merger à la a moist 2001: A Space Odyssey. On no budget… so please be kind.

Lost Mariners

Music by the Soft Hearted Scientists
Lyrics by Nathan Hall
Video by Bryan Parcival

Lost Mariners
Far from home
Far from home
Far from home
Far from home

Watery graves
Beneath the waves
Sunk by a storm
So far from home
No fields of green
No sunlight there
No singing birds
Nor those that care
Lost Mariners

It is so cold down here
200 years or more
It is so cold down here
200 years or more
Please bring us home
Please bring us home
Lost Mariners

When we set sail
We were just young men
We didn’t know we’d never see Britain again
We had the sun in our faces
And the world in our eyes

When we set sail
We were just young men
We didn’t know we’d never see our families again
We saw some beautiful places
But paid a terrible price

Lost Mariners
Far from home
Far from home
Far from home
Far from home

Watery graves
Watery graves
Watery graves
Watery graves

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“And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters”

Despite decades of learning and better understanding of myth and context since the churchy days of my youth, I still find that imagery “deeply” unsettling. 

My childhood imagination pictured unfathomable depths of dark, churning water, boiling in raw, shapeless power. Even before God magically illuminated the scene with his famous “Let there be light” command so he could get a better look at the situation, I still imagined the depths somehow darker and more mysterious than the roaring surface of the watery chaos. 

Meanwhile, as God occupied himself dividing water from earth, land from sky, etc., I think I was most fascinated by the mysterious depths—far below the chaos—that apparently eluded God’s attention… at least for a few days until he got round to it. For example, while God was busy inventing dirt, plants, and clouds on Day Three of Creation, then the Sun and the Moon on Day Four, and eventually fish on Day Five, the chaotic alchemic froth that somehow pre-dated God was still in its pre-creative state for some time. THAT, to child me, was the most perplexing and exciting part of the Creation story. 

Before God luckily arrived at the watery abyss that would eventually become the focal point of his universe—to set things in tidy order—the dark tumult must have contained “unfathomable” mysteries. And creatures and monsters.

The Books of Job and Psalms both mention the sea monster Leviathan—a relic that predates the paleo-Hebrew mythology that became the Bible. Leviathan is an obvious reference to the Mesopotamian Tiamat, the primordial sea dragon of chaos, ultimately defeated by Marduk who “divides” her to create the elements of existence. 

Even so… the pre-division, the pre-ordering, no matter which Creation mythology, is what I still find most interesting. And horrifying. The three days in the Biblical creation myth while God was otherwise occupied…

Imagine if you will, as Rod Serling might say, a world that is not yet a world. A world that is deep and liquid and chaotic, without form and void. And yet there is a “deep.” Something outside of God’s immediate creative concerns. There is something lurking or swimming beneath the surface—something naturally there, in and of the mystery, something that is older than God. And it is that deep Deep over which the Spirit of God (or order) hovers (or pauses). 

According to the stories. God clearly tamed and organized the surface of the waters, and filled them with fish. But how DEEP did he dive into the abyss before his attention was deflected by other pressing matters. Like forbidden fruit, nudity, and snakes?

As Rod Serling might go on to say, imagine if you will, a world meticulously mapped and defined. But a map is not a territory—and a nautical chart is not a world. And if an adventurous Mariner somehow finds himself navigating the primordial deep that God has yet to tame, what will he find? The ancient Greek poet Homer, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, describes a “wine-dark sea” that cannot be crossed without losing ones’ sense of self and confronting the dead. Dark as wine, red as blood. Maroon. Marooned.

Lost Mariners is an epic ghost story of sailors who find themselves far from home, off of any map or charts, somehow both alive and dead la Schrödinger), in watery graves beneath the wine dark sea. 

Deep in the mysterious depths that God (or Gods) dare not attempt to organize. Leviathan is there. Tiamat is the there. Only those brave (or curious) enough to be Lost will ever understand that to be Found is to be defined.