North Americans are just plain silly about having a good time. Give them a holiday, or an event to commemorate, and off they go, to dress up, eat, drink, and party. Hey, they say, gimme any excuse and I’ll prove that the Ancient Romans of c. 100 AD had the right idea with their tactic of “bread and circuses” to keep us ordinary folk in line. (And bugger the misery in the rest of the world.)
Halloween, sChmalloween
From this, you can surmise that I do not put up with Halloween. I do not do Valentine’s Day. I do not do Christmas, or Diwali, or Chinese New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, or the Day of the Dead. None of that stuff, particularly Halloween, has any relevance to me. And seems like a waste of time and money. In any case, most people don’t even know where Halloween comes from and whether it’s a pagan or Christian festival and what all that stuff means.
My view of the world, when it comes to the celebration or hallowing of the dead, saints or not, is a much more sober one, which came about through growing old and watching how the people around me have died. Everyone dies. The only thing you can control is the manner of your death. If you’re lucky, that is. I’ve seen people with horrible diseases, where all they wanted, and begged for, was to die. I’ve seen the problems with non-resuscitation and assisted suicide. I’ve seen, first-hand, the mercy shown by nurses to patients in their final extreme suffering.
To me, death is still the ultimate unthinkable no-go-zone. Every little cell in my body is engineered to not die, to resist death. We are all genetically encoded to survive. Don’t you also give a little shudder when you read about someone who has gone to Europe to go and die in a lonely bed in a suicide clinic? Even in a new-fangled suicide sarcophagus? Of course you do. But I always think that, I’m going to die, and I’d prefer to die when I don’t want to live any more, in a way that is dignified, peaceful, and painless, and most of all, unexpected.
This is why I wrote the song called “Reaperman” – which was released on SoundCloud last week.
I produced three versions of the song – one featuring Dawn Lief on lead vocals, the second one, the Poetic Mix, featuring Ben Alexander on vocals, and the third featuring both singers in a duet.
the reaperman comes
The song’s name refers to the “Reaper Man”, a.k.a. “Death” (with a capital D), one of the main characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Death, in these books, takes someone away after they have died (chopping off their life-line with his sharp scythe), to whichever situation comes next. He is the agent of Azrael, the Angel of Death. He keeps the lifetimer of every living creature on the Discworld. When the sands in someone’s hourglass runs out, he is there to show them mercy. Without death, the whole Discworld goes crazy. (Below is the link to the in-depth analysis.)
The Reaperman (Poetic Mix) version, has a spoken word Into of “Death” addressing Azrael, the Angel of Death.
Death, prisoners, birds, freedom
The lyrics to “Reaperman” depict death as a welcome, and merciful, release from suffering. It is a form of freedom. Suffering, or being trapped in pain, is a form of imprisonment. And in the same way that prisoners long for the freedom of birds flying outside, so people yearn for freedom from pain and misery. Ever wondered why prisoners are also called jailbirds? That’s why.
The lyrics of the verses are very loosely based on the poem, “Returning to Live in the Country”, from the collection of poems called “Like Water or Clouds”, by Chinese poet T’ao Ch’ien (365-427 AD). I was thinking that people who live in the high-rise condos in this city, in apartments the size of shoeboxes, must often feel as though they are in a kind of prison. Do they not long for the places they came from – which perhaps had space, family, community, and a garden?
Lyrics
VERSE
Waking up, I knew that my life had come and gone.
I was trapped in a cage of bricks and steel and stone.
The caged bird wants the air; fish in their pool, the stream.
My condo’s in the sky and freedom’s just a dream.
CHORUS
The Reaperman comes when it is time
and his scythe falls where it has been designed.
What hope then have we,
what mercy can there be?
If not the care of the Reaperman.
VERSE
My house had many rooms; willow trees at the back,
peach-trees reached the door, smoke whirled from the chimney stack.
Somewhere a dog barked deep, birds sang in the mulberry tree.
Now there’s silence behind my door, and loneliness, and misery.
CHORUS
The Reaperman comes when it is time
to leave all the world and its anguish behind.
What hope then have we,
what mercy can there be?
If not the care of the Reaperman.
ALT. CHORUS
The Reaperman comes when it is time
to leave all the world and its anguish behind.
When the moment comes in life, only once,
we hope for the care of the Reaperman.
VERSE
Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
I long to go back to where it all began.
How I hope for release from this pain,
and the merciful care of the Reaperman.
OUTRO
And the merciful care of the Reaperman.