Death to Everyone & Dirt in the Ground

“Philosophy is a preparation for death.” – Plato

“If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.” – Montaigne

Plenty has been said about death. None of it ever feels adequate. I, for one, used to love the topic. But I was a younger person then, young enough that it felt as if we were speculating about a distant planet or a star—something so far off that it might turn out not to exist at all.

And then one day you return to it. None of the facts have changed, but it hits you a different way. Oh. Right. Fuck.

Christopher Hitchens once said that friends of his who'd lost their faith have told him they'd like to get it back... and that he could never understand that impulse, the impulse to be a slave. It's a bold point... but I have days when I'd like to get it back. Hell, I have days when cults make complete sense to me. If someone—anyone—were to say to me: You will never die. I'd be like: Ooh! Tell me more! It wouldn't matter what the guy smelled like.

For the most part, this knowledge doesn't cripple us. We can still go to work, buy groceries, all that. It tends to hit late at night, in the dark. Philip Larkin captures this perfectly and hauntingly:

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what's really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

- The good not done, the love not given, time

Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape,

Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

... but then it's probably best not to dwell on it. There are other things we can fill our minds with. If joy is on the table, how do we not take it? 

But it's not a thing we can dodge forever, and perhaps we can better understand the value of our time here by occasionally looking death plainly in the eye. That's what these songs do.