24. Big Thief - “Mary”

A lot of people (and religions) like to hypothesize (or claim) what happens after death. That rather than returning to the nothingness and oblivion from which we emerged, we somehow remain or repeat or continue in some way or another. I have mixed feelings regarding the hereafter. I’m an agnostic at heart – resigned to everything and confined by nothing, but as a tepid pantheist, I like to imagine that in death we finally transcend the limitations of our own physicality and merge with the whole, gaining the perspective – some might say the omniscience, of the universe in its entirety, becoming our own gods of sort – powerless to alter or affect, but full of knowing.

This jam reminds me of that process, of those beautiful and fragile moments before, during, and after death, where we see our life from a new perspective, watching everything that took years to occur pass before us within a montage of mere seconds. Time is warped, no longer contorting to our linear sense of time, but rather finally free to fit the needs of the moment. As we stare back upon our solitary existence the camera begins to slowly pan out until it encompasses everything we remember, but then, just as that ends, the camera pans out even more, beyond what we ever imagined or thought possible, and we begin to see everything – from the very beginning of the universe up into the present, and in that moment we finally begin to recognize our role and acknowledge the undeniable necessity of our existence. We see where we fit into the overarching narrative, our place within the whole, spread out amidst the pain, the devastation, the joy, and the mystery of it all. We understand, and in that moment we at last have meaning, because in death we finally find the purpose and contentment that had always eluded us in life.