Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Death and all that
My uncle died on Friday. A good man, well loved and too young to die.
I'm listening to eels now. Electro Shock Blues is the best examination of death I know in music, perhaps in all the arts. It's brilliant.
A true catharhic experience which has dark and profoundly upsetting moments, instances of pure beauty and even shot through with a black humour, I can't recommend it highly enough. Inventive, melodic and -best of all- it manages to turn around the bleak feel in the last few songs, most notably 'PS You Rock My World', which takes the omnipresent death and throws life right back at it.
E, I'm not sure whether you or your father is/was the bigger genius in the family. Seriously, I absolutely believe it's one of the great artworks of the 20th century. It should be added to Geurnica, Gatsby and Prufrock. This will, like those works, last, because all human life is within.
And maybe it is time to live.
