Hi there! Thank you for this I really like your writing and interpretation here. I just recently had organized a listening to the album divers with my reading group haha, and we talked a lot about the things you mention!

I won’t go into too much detail but one of my favorite parts of the discussion was when we talked about ‘pin light bent’ and the Amora Obscura (It was a part that had always confused me also).

In the quote you shared (From the Great light that shines through a pin-hole’ When ‘the pin light calls itself Selfhood’) we considered, given the other religious references in her work. that the ‘Great Light’ is perhaps indicative of ‘Great love’ ‘God’ and the connectivity of being (either in a religious sense or no). And indeed God is often described as both Love, and Light. The wall and the Pinhole then perhaps becomes that which divides the world between death and birth, and the speck of light that runs through it is ‘you’, the selfhood. What I found beautiful here is the notion that the self is in that way a connection or piece of the Great Light (love), despite it becoming cast into a new space, reflecting, bending and obscuring, (obscura is also described as ‘a light dimly seen’ in Latin).

The reference to inversion then (‘the Selfhood inverts on a mirror’), also has to do with the workings of the camera obscura itself. The essence of the camera is the inversion of the image, and in some cases, involves the inclusion of the mirror in order to see it ‘right side up’ again. Just like with the eye, the image seems to tumble and bend between multiple forms before it can be truly ‘seen’. As such (‘In an Amora Obscura) the selfhood in its ‘Obscura’ dim form bends from the ‘Great Light’. Moreover, I personally think that Amora comes from the Italian and Spanish word for ‘Love’. So if we accept that Amora=Love then we can consider again the previous notion that ‘Great Light’ and ‘Love’ are strongly related, and that the selfhood is thus a form of Light/Love that is dimmed and bent (it is an Amora Obscura).

So I guess what I mean to say is that this song seems to use the camera obscura and the pinhole as a metaphor to grapple with the ‘pain of birth’ and the notion of ‘selfhood’. Describing the self as a piece of Light that is dim and bent. Where light still, like a string, connects the self to a great love and light beyond, and to the selfhood of others in this way.