The corniest way to learn you are going to one day die, and have it hit home...

BLOT: (22 Jan 2014 - 08:47:25 PM)

The corniest way to learn you are going to one day die, and have it hit home...

Knowing about the inevitability of one's own death seems hard because we, like Narcissus, are mostly worried about ourselves and then make a big deal about seeing our reflection in the world around us [apologies of John Burnside's A Summer of Drowning] and then we think that reflection, that encapsulation of our worldviews and beliefs and moral code, is etched in the fabric of nature and once you assume the Universe is there to prove you right then how can you possibly really think about death? Death is the time when our reflection ceases, and all our assumptions of our place in the Universe are gone, and if there is one thing that we cannot really be bothered with, it is when the Not-Me becomes the No-Me-At-All.

BUT, assuming that we can have a general notion that we will day cease to reflect, then here is the very corny way my thoughts of mortality showed up.

I was into Rush at the time, the Canadian band, so I would say it was around 1992. This means I would have been around 15. Shortly after that, I kind of went off and became a Goth/Indie-nerd blend, but early 90s, I was big into prog-rock. I saw an advertisement for a coffin that played music at you, "you" being the corpse, as you decomposed. I do not remember any details, but I'm sure it would have been for more than just a couple of hours. This was before MP3s, so I guess it used a CD changer? A long reel of tape? No clue.

[A quick Google shows the more things change...]

As I was contemplating myself being inside this coffin, it playing Rush to my dead body, I realized: "Oh man, unless something happens to end my life, the members of Rush will have been dead before me...one day, I will have listened to the last-ever Rush tape to have ever been released..." and that's when it hit me. Really hit me. There was a finite number of days left before my favorite band would no longer exist. And, cue ee dee, there were only a finite number days left for me to listen to music. It floored me. It really did. Because of a corny music playing coffin.

After that moment, I've always been slightly aware of that every day I'm alive is one of the last few days I'll ever be alive. Have been plagued by that thought since I was 15, so there you go. That's my story.

How about you? When did you realize you were going to die?

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: January 2014