Daily Jam - My Death

When we’re young, we take our lives for granted. Our present, our future, our health, our deaths…we live only for the moment, taking in every slice of pleasure or experience we can, our hair whipping wildly in the wind in our faces, gritted teeth, and no foregone conclusions. We walk on ever forward, never looking too far ahead, but never looking back either. Thinking back on our youth is like floating through a daydream. We inhale nostalgia like pulling off a joint. We inject memories like a syringe full of sleepy afternoons. And nothing seems real until it’s all too real.

Growing up, I could be a fairly macabre little dude, especially in my early teenage years, an adolescent not quite obsession with death and doom and gloom presided over by my artistic overlords of music, film, and literature. I thought about death…a lot. I dwelled on it. I wrote about it, drew about it, sang about it. My friends, my family, my loved ones, myself. But I never really experienced it except in an abstract way. Global catastrophes or disasters can certainly make you feel sad or empathetic, but at the end of the day, you still experience that kind of tragedy and death as a glassed off observer. It’s all just images on a screen really. In fact, it wasn’t until I was 30 years old that death really hit me directly…and completely took the wind out of me. After all of that not quite obsession, I was left unguarded and unprepared. And I felt foolish that I had found it so fascinating. And since then I’ve tried to appreciate life and everything in it, to think about my future, and my health, and my eventual death. But of course, we all eventually slack off.

And then death hit again.

The second time was no different than the first, even when expecting it or waiting for it. I was still unprepared and found myself adrift soon after. Death is so much more than you can ever really fathom. And again, it made me want to live, and to get things done, and to experience everything, and to blah, blah, blah. But we all fall back in line. We all succumb to the droning hum of existence. We find ourselves bored again. We find ourselves complacent. Death’s always just around the corner, but it never seems real, until it is again.

I’m doing my best not to take life or death for granted. I’m doing my best to carpe diem and all that good shit. And it’s hard work. And sometimes my brain and body don’t want to comply. But it’s good for my soul. And I hope I can keep it up before the next death, and the next, and my own.

Ladies and Gentlemen, from 1967’s Scott, Scott Walker’s “My Death”…