Al Stewart - Turn Into Earth

Water and dying are a delicious dijonaisse on our life sandwich. Death and the surf have been embroiled in a wonderfully symbiotic cross-marketed circlejerk for time immemorial; well before we wrested ourselves from their sodden grip and shuffled ashore to build boats, submarines and diving bells, to be swallowed yet again.

Nothing good has ever happened underwater.

That’s *cough* what your problem is. Expending energy considering, bemoaning, naming blogs after death and drowning. All that effort, spilled in the name of this bedraggled terrorist. You die dying; after spending a year carefully feeding the maw that ultimately snapped you up; liquefied you. Later, the gnarled sinew; the useless and indigestible parts of you are barfed ashore, collected by enterprising truants and ultimately sold as fertilizer to a co-op run by tattooed lesbians. Time passes. You are sprinkled over someone’s basil garden on the 5th floor balcony of some charmingly appointed factory loft; a timid salvo in their battle to beat back the encroaching half-built edifices with their bent rib cages of re-bar, decaying even as they are being born, indiscernible from the burnt shells they replace. Take that, progress! I grew herbs! But -

You live and sway in sunlight and concrete dust. For a while. Then, you are clipped in your prime; shredded; prepared and arranged painstakingly alongside heirloom tomatoes and the clotted secretions of buffalo for a visit from Benjamin and Rebecca who are in an open relationship and want to discuss Baudrillard and Old Montreal. The indignity is ceaseless. Is that what you want? Can’t you just die proper-like? Turn into dirt, as we’re meant to?

Anyhow, this song is a Yardbirds cover by Al Stewart.

Fig 1.1: Seriously.