The end of every song that we sing
Reflections, 6 October 2024
by L.A. Davenport
It is perhaps more than a coincidence that the release of a brand-new song by The Cure, after so many years, should trigger a bout of self-reflection over where I am and where I, and we all, are going.
Last week, I mused over the charred remains of a neighbour’s life, now abandoned, and the mood music of my mind, as it were, has only darkened since then, although not without occasional rays of sunlight bursting through the clouds and reaching down to the shadowed land below.
Before I get into that, what about The Cure’s song?
After waiting for more than 15 years for a new long player, and before that having experienced the sense that The Cure were, in some senses, treading water, I approached the idea that they were putting out new music with some degree of trepidation.
But after reading the glowing reviews, I decided to take the plunge and headed over to YouTube.
Last week, I mused over the charred remains of a neighbour’s life, now abandoned, and the mood music of my mind, as it were, has only darkened since then, although not without occasional rays of sunlight bursting through the clouds and reaching down to the shadowed land below.
Before I get into that, what about The Cure’s song?
After waiting for more than 15 years for a new long player, and before that having experienced the sense that The Cure were, in some senses, treading water, I approached the idea that they were putting out new music with some degree of trepidation.
But after reading the glowing reviews, I decided to take the plunge and headed over to YouTube.
Alone is immediately very familiar, yet also a clear evolution of the sound that characterised their 1989 masterpiece, Disintegration.
It is as if the last 35 years have collapsed into nothing and we are seeing the world in the same way, but with all the life experience and knowledge that comes of advancing age.
It helps that Robert Smith’s voice is virtually unchanged (something I can attest to, having seem them play live in recent years).
The song itself is majestic, with an arrangement that reflects every classic Cure touchpoint.
More than that, is intimate yet remote, like edging your way slowly through a darkened room that might have once been familiar but now is utterly known.
The lyrics themselves speak of loss and the deathly passage of time, when we become increasingly aware of our separation from a past existence to which we can never return.
As Smith sings in the opening verse, which was inspired by the poem Dregs by Ernest Dowson:
This is the end
Of every song that we sing
The fire burned out to ash
And the stars
Grown dim with tears
Cold and afraid
The ghosts of all that we’ve been
We toast with bitter dregs
To our emptiness
It is a sensation that we experience in youth, when we realise that have crossed some kind of frontier and can never go back to being a child, and as we age, when we start to lose first our parents and then more and more loved ones from our own generation.
It is as if the last 35 years have collapsed into nothing and we are seeing the world in the same way, but with all the life experience and knowledge that comes of advancing age.
It helps that Robert Smith’s voice is virtually unchanged (something I can attest to, having seem them play live in recent years).
The song itself is majestic, with an arrangement that reflects every classic Cure touchpoint.
More than that, is intimate yet remote, like edging your way slowly through a darkened room that might have once been familiar but now is utterly known.
The lyrics themselves speak of loss and the deathly passage of time, when we become increasingly aware of our separation from a past existence to which we can never return.
As Smith sings in the opening verse, which was inspired by the poem Dregs by Ernest Dowson:
This is the end
Of every song that we sing
The fire burned out to ash
And the stars
Grown dim with tears
Cold and afraid
The ghosts of all that we’ve been
We toast with bitter dregs
To our emptiness
It is a sensation that we experience in youth, when we realise that have crossed some kind of frontier and can never go back to being a child, and as we age, when we start to lose first our parents and then more and more loved ones from our own generation.
A slow decline
Viewed from the vantage point of what might be called early adulthood, death seems a binary concept, a sort-of on, off, where the act of passing from this life to the next is instantaneous, and it is merely the loss of someone’s presence with which we have to contend.
I suppose this reflects the reality that most people who sadly die in youth do so as a result of an accident, or due to a short and devastating illness, and their journey is necessarily short.
But the longer we live, the more we encounter the kind of slow decline that typifies older age. And watching on from the sidelines, it can be as painful as a sudden loss, and certainly lasts for a lot longer.
It is not even the reduction in a parent or loved one’s capabilities that hurts the most, but rather the slow erosion of their will to live—that force that keeps us going when times get hard and that helps us set ambitions and targets for ourselves.
The worst of it is that we, the outsiders to this highly personal and individual situation, can do nothing about it. We may try to cajole, to encourage, to suggest, but a point is reached when we have to admit that they will only do what they are motivated to do, and that that occupies a smaller and smaller circle of what constitutes, by a certain point, nothing more than surviving from day to day.
This is very different from the tragedy of dementia, in which the ‘person’ as we knew them, slowly slides out of view, as do we from their ever-diminishing world. I will never forget, or even get over, the intense regret I had after my grandmother’s death, when I finally had to admit that her Alzheimer’s disease had robbed us both of the opportunity to say goodbye.
In the case of slow decline, the person is there just as you always knew them, and they still know you, but on a physical level they don’t want to go beyond a certain level of effort, even if to do so would be beneficial for their health and/or quality of life.
Or at least that is how we see it. They, our loved ones, have become comfortable, to a certain extent, within their circumscribed sphere of existence, and do not want to leave it. Just as the nights draw in as we approach winter, so the shadows of life draw in and take us to a smaller and smaller place.
It is not frightening in the way it would be to someone in the prime of life, but rather consoling to those experiencing it, as they are able to to let go of the myriad distressing concerns that crowd our day-to-day and get in the way of appreciating what we have around us.
For me, not yet at this stage, it has been hard, painful even, to accept, and watch people I hold dear relinquish the reins of life as they slowly approach the dying light. But I have to let them go, and I simply hope their journey is not too hard.
As Robert Smith says:
This is the end
Of every song we sing
Alone
I suppose this reflects the reality that most people who sadly die in youth do so as a result of an accident, or due to a short and devastating illness, and their journey is necessarily short.
But the longer we live, the more we encounter the kind of slow decline that typifies older age. And watching on from the sidelines, it can be as painful as a sudden loss, and certainly lasts for a lot longer.
It is not even the reduction in a parent or loved one’s capabilities that hurts the most, but rather the slow erosion of their will to live—that force that keeps us going when times get hard and that helps us set ambitions and targets for ourselves.
The worst of it is that we, the outsiders to this highly personal and individual situation, can do nothing about it. We may try to cajole, to encourage, to suggest, but a point is reached when we have to admit that they will only do what they are motivated to do, and that that occupies a smaller and smaller circle of what constitutes, by a certain point, nothing more than surviving from day to day.
This is very different from the tragedy of dementia, in which the ‘person’ as we knew them, slowly slides out of view, as do we from their ever-diminishing world. I will never forget, or even get over, the intense regret I had after my grandmother’s death, when I finally had to admit that her Alzheimer’s disease had robbed us both of the opportunity to say goodbye.
In the case of slow decline, the person is there just as you always knew them, and they still know you, but on a physical level they don’t want to go beyond a certain level of effort, even if to do so would be beneficial for their health and/or quality of life.
Or at least that is how we see it. They, our loved ones, have become comfortable, to a certain extent, within their circumscribed sphere of existence, and do not want to leave it. Just as the nights draw in as we approach winter, so the shadows of life draw in and take us to a smaller and smaller place.
It is not frightening in the way it would be to someone in the prime of life, but rather consoling to those experiencing it, as they are able to to let go of the myriad distressing concerns that crowd our day-to-day and get in the way of appreciating what we have around us.
For me, not yet at this stage, it has been hard, painful even, to accept, and watch people I hold dear relinquish the reins of life as they slowly approach the dying light. But I have to let them go, and I simply hope their journey is not too hard.
As Robert Smith says:
This is the end
Of every song we sing
Alone
© L.A. Davenport 2017-2024.
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The end of every song that we sing | Pushing the Wave