No one gets out of this alive. You know, this. Whatever this worked body or this body of has been through or done, respectively, whatever it is. It can be called all kinds of different things, all variations of blessings and curses. We're all aware of this very harrowing fact and conclusion. We can't take anything with us either. Our teeth stay here and so do our feet. Any of the badass sweatshirts with howling wolves on them remain behind for the grandkids to fight over, along with all of the cash sewn into the mattress of our old man bed. So, we try to take enough walks along the river, eat enough pancakes, waffles, steaks, apples, etc. to literally last us through an eternity. As we get older, we give longer and more heartfelt hugs because we're almost always sure that the next minute is going to be the last one for us. I think it was just the other day that I read that Adele believes that every time she gets on a plane that she's going to die. We know that Aretha Franklin thinks the same thing because the Queen of Soul hasn't flown since 1982. True story.
We'd like to offer here that Wil Wright, the leader of the Knoxville, Tennessee group Senryu, might have the complex of a hypochondriac running through him as well. He's one of those guys that you always want to talk to because there is an endless supply of wit and daffiness that appears to flow from him like a spigot whose handle has been busted off by a malicious crescent wrench or some wild sex act. He's not planning for the nothingness or whatever comes next after our heart attack or the cancer gets us, but he's definitely not ignoring it either. There are many times when we think that he may even be mocking the big D and we've found that he's good at it, seemingly impervious that it could get prickly and vengeful if rubbed the wrong way.
"Great. Expectations," from Senryu's latest album, "Half Wild," is a vivid and honest song that teases our feeble interpretations of what death's gonna be like for us. There's an insinuation that we're all wrong about it and that we're all just planning for the wrong thing and we should probably just try to deal with the great black hole of it all. He sings, "While you were waiting for the door to explode/I heard whispers through the keyhole/Saying secrets if we knew how to look past the fire/"It's just a walk if you forget that you're on a high-wire"/Were you expecting the end?/I was expecting a big finish/Were you expecting to fall through the floor?/I was expecting to fly through the earth/Were you expecting your heart to perform?/I'll be surprised if it works." It's as if, we're to believe that we're going to find ourselves ill-equipped to deal with the mechanics of those dying breaths and the charms we're going to call on to help us through the procedure, so it might be okay to just let it all naturally fade out - to have it all hit us, unplanned and definitively. We can still try to take those wolf sweatshirts with us. It doesn't hurt to try. It doesn't hurt to go down with the shit, laughing our heads off or with a heart that chokes.