Listening to the radio for philosophical content rarely yields much beyond platitudes and sexualization, but some music playing recently cuts to the heart of a deep modern anxiety about life and death. I read recently, most people of the younger generations feel compelled to make a deep lasting impact in the world, and that not doing so constitutes some sort of failure or shortcoming. In that sense, life is less an experience and more a countdown timer on a test, where there is a correct answer to be found before time runs out. This is unsettling and scary but doesn't seem tremendously different in substance from the fears of earlier generations save perhaps the intensity of the fear and the grandiosity of the goal. Most people have a driving set of values though in life, and a set of goals born out of those values that feel imperative to accomplish before a fast encroaching deadline. It's what marks the human experience, at core, that we die and have to do things before that happens.
Pop music has its purpose usually as a distraction from the heavier aspects of life, as a sort of escape and release from the frustrations of the day. Or better yet, as a vague trope to find one's specific circumstances in. In the latter configuration, it throws a connective lifeline to the listener, something to say "you're not alone in your experience, let's experience this together." Which is a nice feeling, whether for a break-up or the excitement of first love, or the adreneline of a pump-up song.
Recently though, I've heard a few songs grappling more directly with the philosophical challenge of mortality in an way that may be suggestive of a political split, or a rural-urban split, or a young-old split, probably an amalgamation of all of them.
Country is the well from which the first set is drawn. 7 years and Don't Blink are the two I heard today that resonated to this topic. Both take the position seemingly of a caring parent advising wistfully, to not take life for granted, to enjoy it along the various steps, from childhood to marriage to parenthood to death. It is a conservative traditional life path they champion and they proudly own the virtue and success in this way of living. It is a short life, cherish it, but don't feel compelled to do crazy things. It is enough to be just a person, and just do what people do. Live simply and happily and cherish what you have along the way. The vision is a balmy, beautiful, fulfilling look at life. It runs aggressively counter to the internal narrative of so many in a younger generation told to do everything better, bigger, more important, to be worth it. It drips with some of the best parts of paternal advice, the "I told you so" that you're happy to accept. Songs like this are like a compassionate hug, lifting a scared kid off a ledge.
On the other side is the sort of "life fast, die young" hedonism that older folks love to hate. Beautiful Now is a decent example of the deeper roots to this culture. These songs are born out of the same well of anxiety that drives the fatherly advice discussed above. Except in this world, sitting back and enjoying isn't enough. The patience to allow life to happen and be satisfied isn't there. They need to do something now, no matter what that is, there is no alternative, they're practically jumping and screaming from the pent up energy. So much of these songs are dominated by action in the present: "We're beautiful now," "Dance like there's no tomorrow," "We'll forget life till the sunrise." These smack of an almost desperate wringing of life for all it's worth, like today is the last day ever. And there is a wisdom to this despite all insistence to the contrary. Yes, it is short sighted logistically, there are bills to pay and lives to plan, and STDs to avoid. But this is a cultural thread felt the world over for as long as we have history. It is a celebration and cherishing of fleeting youth, flowering before decay: the Kouros of Greece, the poetry of Heian Japan, the paintings of the Renaissance. We have known in our bones that life is fleeting and the passing of youth is a microcosm of that slightly larger flicker of our lives in time. These songs grapple with death in opposition to it, challenging back that it's not ok to cherish and let time pass, that life has to be wrestled out of passing time, stolen and gorged upon while one has the energy to take it. It resonates to young, urban, antsy souls.
Both surprise with their candor in dealing with the fundamental questions of our time alive. They seem to offer divergent paths by which to deal with the challenge of living under the shadow of death. Maybe these reflect the ways people distinctly deal with this, I fall pretty clearly on one side most days, but the decision doesn't necessarily have to be that stark. I think there is a compelling way to live with both mentalities, coexisting as a toolkit to live fully in any situation or mood.
