The Immensity Practice

Inspiration

Source: Field observation about Francis Weller's concept of immensity—becoming spacious enough to hold difficult feelings rather than contracting around them.

Core Metaphors: - Room architecture: closet vs cathedral - Cathedral with room for grief AND sunlight - Ocean with room for storms AND stillness - "Widening the guard, not dropping it"

Emotional Arc: Contraction (trapped, cornered) → Recognition (room is small, not feeling big) → Practice (expand around it) → Capacity (spaciousness, immensity)

Potential Hooks: - "The feeling isn't too big / The room is too small" - "You cornered yourself" - "Not making the difficult smaller / Making yourself larger" - "The space was always there / You just kept making the walls" - "Breathed, and made more room"

What it should feel like: Starts tight, compressed. Opens up. The music should enact the expansion. Needs a spacious instrumental section—the moment where words run out and breath takes over.

Structural Constraint: Include an instrumental interlude or breakdown that enacts the expansion—where the song literally opens up.

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Style Prompt

Progressive grunge, 74 BPM, D minor. Slow build from claustrophobic to cathedral-spacious. Baritone acoustic guitar with tight close-mic'd reverb in early sections, transitioning to electric with swelling plate reverb and chorus. Drop D bass, palm-muted and high-register early, opening to full resonant low end. Brushes and cross-stick drums expanding to mallets and room mics. Atmospheric keyboard pads in expansion section. Male vocals, intimate and restrained building to open and present. Dynamic range pp to mp—never loud, about capacity not power. Single crash accent as arrival point. Spacious, contemplative, earned.

Lyrics

You built the walls yourself
Brick by brick, breath by breath
Called it protection, called it safe
A room that fit exactly what you'd let yourself become

Back against the corner
Feeling taking up the air
You thought you were too much
You thought the feeling wouldn't fit in there

But you weren't cornered
You cornered yourself

The grief arrived like weather
And you made yourself so small
Pulled your edges in and prayed
That the ceiling wouldn't fall

Then something broke—not you
The frame you'd been believing
The problem wasn't magnitude
The room was what was shrinking

The feeling isn't too big
The room is too small
The space was always there
You just kept making the walls
Breathed, and made more room
Let the ceiling lift, let light fall through
The feeling isn't too big
You're just learning how to hold it

The cathedral holds the grief
And the sunlight through the glass
The ocean holds the storm
And the stillness that comes after

You don't defeat the feeling
You don't push it out or down
You become the bigger room
Where it finally
Can sit down

The feeling isn't too big
The room is too small
The space was always there
You just kept making the walls
Breathed, and made more room
Let the ceiling lift, let light fall through
The feeling isn't too big
You were always big enough to hold it

The space was always there