Drowning the Infinite Soul

Drowning the Infinite Soul is a symbolic depiction of a passage from Moby Dick in which a character named Pip goes overboard from his whaling ship, and is left floating in the open ocean for the better part of a day. While alone on the water, Pip is struck by divine insanity as the sea “drown[s] the infinite of his soul.” The starry tambourine in the piece represents Pip’s soul, calling back to a passage in which his tambourine playing “turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine.” The tambourine’s fabric ribbons allude to Pip having seen God’s foot upon the loom. The albatross carrying the tambourine—Pip’s soul—down to the depths of the sea references sailor lore, in which the seabirds are thought to carry the souls of the dead.