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Thirty-One years of decompression sickness: A review of Radiohead’s “The Bends”
Today marks thirty-one years of decompression sickness. The album's title isn't metaphorical decoration; it's diagnostic. Decompression sickness, the bends, happens when you ascend too quickly from depth, when dissolved gases in your blood expand faster than your body can process them. Nitrogen bubbles form in joints and tissues, in the brain, in the heart. The pain is your body rejecting the transition, refusing the violence of moving between pressures too fast. This is what The Bends understands about existing in 1995, or 2026, or any moment when the gap between what you're supposed to feel and what you actually feel becomes physiologically untenable.
