Judges 5:27

Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility.

Perspective in song is something of an anomaly when one spends too much time considering its breadth. Music’s bottomless, endless history encompasses so many stories, fables, & lessons learned that its inevitable that themes will double over themselves & repeat ad infinitum. At summer camp, there is a game we play called “Singdown” that involves teams of children collectively thinking of as many songs that they can that contain a specific word. For example: the host/judge will say, “Your word is rain. Go!” Possible answers will include: “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” etc. (Though kids being kids, there are always shouting matches along the lines of, “The word is rain, not raindrops! CHEATERS!! CHEATERS!!”).

Even iTunes has been adapted to play with this function of themes, including a handy search function that will bring up songs with titles containing any specific word or phrase you choose. I’ve just typed in “monkey” to test my point, in fact, & was surprised with a total of four results! How convenient! Scientific studies requiring repeated trials, however, I also tried “flower” (four more results!), “truck” (only two), & of course “love” (not surprisingly – one hundred and twenty results). This is truly the magic of music, then, this link of lyrics that can connect Kate Bush with Modest Mouse (granted, this is not the biggest stretch, but bear with me) with just the word “god.”

I bring this up to take the long way round yet again to my main focus for today’s post, which is one of this century’s most strangely referenced & re-structured songs, the old dark blues-spiritual “O Death.” The song fascinates me for a number of reasons, but mainly for its perspective (which is, to be disgustingly obvious, what I was referring to at the beginning of this post). With every re-do the song has encouraged, it is not the theme nor the tone nor the general lyricism that has been changed, but rather the use & manipulation of point of view.

There are three main examples of what I’m referring to here, & perhaps there is no better way to invite you into the endearing qualities of this ultimately very depressing song than to just throw them at you one at a time.

The original structure of “O Death” has been preserved best, it seems, in Ralph Stanley’s accapella version, haunting in its lividness that becomes evident with the stripping of stylized instrumentation. Stanley’s adaptation appears on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, & I believe in the movie it is used in the scene where our three heroes are strung up to die in roped nooses (correct me if I’m wrong here, please, I don’t have the movie on hand as it is). The song as this man performs it begins as a simple plea, straight from the mouth of a dying man, age unknown, who begins to converse with the figure of Death itself:

[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=xpxuh090IUc[/youtube]

There is no reason given for this man’s death, & for some reason this manages to give the song the heavy backdrop it presents; the listener hears this & thinks, “Death, leave this man alone! What did he ever do to you!” As Stanley presents it - &, I’m certain, as it was presented by congregations in the beginning of America’s gospel implosion from the slave fields across the nation - both parties are clearly drawn. In this corner, we have a dying man (we know it is a man because Ralph Stanley is a man & thus his gender is the gender of his subject. Sometimes music is more complicated than that, but not in this case), a man who swears he does not deserve this death he is receiving, & is reluctant to leave his own life in the hands of the future. Across the mat there is Death, a figure who draws upon a slew of historically iconic images of Death - “ice cold hands,” “dirt and worm,” “close my eyes” - & yet who is not necessarily shown to be dangerous or unfair.

& this is exactly where this song really captivates me: while it presents a story of a relentless Death taking one man’s life away, it never tries to claim that he who is dying should not be dying at that given time. Death in this song is rather something that is unexpectedly HERE, & must be dealt with in the only immediate way we as humans are aware of: resistance. The fact that we will die is not shaded over in any way, but rather it’s only used as a lyrical fulcrum for Man’s existence that is evident in his bargaining chip, namely that this man still has things to do, still has people to see. Namely that he only wants to be spared a little longer, “just another year.”

In 1988, Camper Van Beethoven released a very Camper Van-esque version of “O Death” (calling it, intelligently enough, “Oh Death”) on their Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart album. The song is kept very true to the original turn-of-the-century folksong, but is bolstered by big, amplified snare hits & a drolling guitar/violin interplay.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-puAbhnwm...[/youtube]

[I uploaded this video just to add the song because I'm out of room on my Webspace & YouTube is free. So just ignore the video part, it's all for the audio]

Camper Van’s “Oh Death” is interesting to note because of the slight change in its tone - here we have a very youthful man with the sneer of a very youthful man & the spit-in-your-face attitude a young man is sometimes apt to possess, as opposed to Ralph Stanley’s position as an older man who could, very possibly, face death every day. Rather than coming off as mocking, or brutally ruining the song, the band manages to take the final verse & refrain & turn it into something of a crying plea again. This is the point of the song, I believe, personified here in this last minute or so. Death is upon us at all times, & though we may live life boasting about our attitudes towards its inevitability (”I laugh in the face of Death! Hah!” the young man announces just before he catapults himself from a bridge with a bungee cord tied around his ankles), at the final moment of our life Death is just…there.

Listening to a conversation of sorts between a dying man & Death itself is spooky in the way that being told you have cancer must be spooky - here it is, the final moments, the big decision between one breath & the next, the fragility of the human form, & all we want is more time. In anticipation of writing this post, I came upon a passage in Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (yes I am 20 years old & I’m reading this book & yes I’m aware that that’s what everyone expects you to do & no I don’t care). The passage is taken from a somewhat imaginary conversation the author is having with the reader. The author writes:

These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake’s long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it’s of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.

The final incantation of “O Death” that I’ve come across is also my favorite. It takes quite a different form altogether, possessing the feel of a sermon intermittent with periods of musical revelation. It is by the Rev. Anderson Johnson, called “Death in the Morning,” around the late 1940’s/early 1950’s. [As a side note: check out the sound of his guitar. Amplified loose strings with a coke bottle, anyone?]

[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=53g6QC3CIKY[/youtube]

[Again, don't bother with the video; just check the music]

Johnson’s version is my favorite because it’s easily the most charismatic & gives the most away. We know it is a child here who is dying, & we know that he deserves to live longer because of his youth, & we know this because another voice has entered the song’s perspective: the boy’s mother. The range of voices, affirmations, & terrifying realities is almost breathtaking. Death here is not typical or boxed-in. He is a frameless character, something like an old gangster with a warrant for this young boy’s life. “I know your number,” he says. “You had your chance,” & it almost chills your blood.

But the song seems to have another purpose altogether, & its focus on the mother of the child serves to scold the listener into treasuring not only his own life, but the life of she who carried & birthed him as well. In times of trouble, Johnson says, “You’ll think about the dear mother of yours,” & repent is otherwise not far off. This fascinates me, this interwoven tapestry of lives presented in this version of what is otherwise just an American folktale of Death’s rapturing presence. & then! & then the reverend, having told his cautionary tale & scared the bejesus out of all of us with talk of “chewing my tongue so I can’t talk,” then he tells us, “And that’s the true vision of all of us one day, my friends.”

So, ha! So even he, this man who warns us to care for our souls & get on our knees to pray & remember our mothers every day, even he reminds us that Death is inevitable. It’s brilliant! Later on in this semi-imaginary conversation I mentioned earlier, Dave Eggers writes about dignity:

You will die, and when you die, you will know a profound lack of it. It’s never dignified, always brutal. What’s dignified about dying? It’s never dignified. And in obscurity? Offensive. Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And it’s fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it.

I don’t believe there’s a better way to wrap this whole discussion up better than using what Eggers says here, that death is always brutal & never dignified, & though we all want “a little longer, just another year,” what purpose is there besides postponement? So yes, fuck it. Well, first live; live every moment as if you’re having a conversation with a disguisedly iconic portrait of death. & then fuck it.