Is life a serious and stuffy affair? With shirts stuffed for Summer and butts stuffed for Winter? Does the Hereafter call out to you, as it did for old Walt Whitman, whispering sweet salad verses of “death’s death deathingly” from the waves of the Long Island Sea? Or does the Endless Nameless dog at your heels from the time you crawled out of the abyss; aroused by the pursuit, it waits for carefree moments to reach those creepy tendril fingers around your neck, and you run in the opposite direction straight into a parallel abyss, a shotgun shock to Oblivion, which like the Great Nothing, is something big and black-bodied, always hungry yet never full.
When you laugh too long, does the laughter turn to tears? And when you cry, does the sadness ripple through your form almost pleasantly, fluid and frissony, like an orgasm less sticky? Are men allowed to fuse with their child selves, creating a kind of man-child in the process? And is said man-child allowed to cry? Should rhetorical questions end with a question mark.
Has a sheep eaten a rose? Pourquoi mamans meurent? Why do we die and how is life lived? Does thanatopsis make for a good pop song?
There is a hell-mouth of human drama out there, yet Popular Music seems to be limited to a single vibe, a consistent tone. A song must be this or that; a band should be taken seriously if they are not to be a joke band. They must be bound live to a dancy click-track, eroticize the abstract musical image with graven promos, and worship Baphomet with the blood of their blood. Ahem.
“All Alone” is the song that ends e’rebody. It is the song that kills e’rebody. It is a serious song, in that it describes a Great Dying—the end of a relationship, the death of love, and the killing of the self—but it is also ridiculous, with its upbeat refrains, bouncy beats, and hopeful One to Four chord progression (the happy plagal cadence), which inverts itself to a Four to One by song’s end.
We emerge from the white goo (the same white goo as you) like some special effects farce of a superhero film. We die as we dream—all alone…
