REM hit the world stage with ironically "It's the End of the World (and I feel Fine)" as one of their biggest hits, albeit in my mind, one of the least deserving as such.
It is strange what makes one popular and what makes one obscure. One such obscure poet is Robinson Jeffers, a naturalist and rather man of solitude, two things I can surely relate to in my life.
There is also a line in a lesser-known REM song when Michael Stipes sings "when I was young I spirited a rattlesnake," which to anyone not from the South or Southwest sounds odd, but being a child of New Mexico, this sounds perfectly normal to me. To spirit an animal is to become one with it, or for it to become you. I get that. I get that about a rattlesnake. Being here in Europe, and listening to those lyrics again, it sounds so distant, almost made up, fantasy-like. But, when I was living in India, this would have been so visceral, so cogent to my daily existence.
Europe is cold. Europe is very stale and full of BMW's as the standard of life. It is like the 80's of America. There is a false sense of superiority here as well that really grinds on one's nerves.
There is that same sense of superiority that Jeffers' must have felt...that we are above Time...and yet, we are not. A fancy car and a cushy job with 35 days of holiday is not the ultimate goal of life. I have been asked several times of late "Does Philosophy/Literature answer any questions?" or is it merely a band-aide? Well, I don't believe there are definitive answer that it does answer, but it can give us the feeling that we are not alone, that others have thought such thoughts and that it can at least give us solace in that simple fact.
Currently, I am rather disillusioned by Europe. The tribal atmosphere is asphyxiating. The false sense of having "open minds" is ludicrous. The hypocrisy is rampant. The future is elsewhere.
End of the World
When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War,
We used to take it for known that the human race
Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem
About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore
Of the last sea, alone, alone, alone, remembering all
His racial past. But now I don't think so. They'll die faceless in flocks,
And the earth flourish long after mankind is out.
Robinson Jeffers
It is strange what makes one popular and what makes one obscure. One such obscure poet is Robinson Jeffers, a naturalist and rather man of solitude, two things I can surely relate to in my life.
There is also a line in a lesser-known REM song when Michael Stipes sings "when I was young I spirited a rattlesnake," which to anyone not from the South or Southwest sounds odd, but being a child of New Mexico, this sounds perfectly normal to me. To spirit an animal is to become one with it, or for it to become you. I get that. I get that about a rattlesnake. Being here in Europe, and listening to those lyrics again, it sounds so distant, almost made up, fantasy-like. But, when I was living in India, this would have been so visceral, so cogent to my daily existence.
Europe is cold. Europe is very stale and full of BMW's as the standard of life. It is like the 80's of America. There is a false sense of superiority here as well that really grinds on one's nerves.
There is that same sense of superiority that Jeffers' must have felt...that we are above Time...and yet, we are not. A fancy car and a cushy job with 35 days of holiday is not the ultimate goal of life. I have been asked several times of late "Does Philosophy/Literature answer any questions?" or is it merely a band-aide? Well, I don't believe there are definitive answer that it does answer, but it can give us the feeling that we are not alone, that others have thought such thoughts and that it can at least give us solace in that simple fact.
Currently, I am rather disillusioned by Europe. The tribal atmosphere is asphyxiating. The false sense of having "open minds" is ludicrous. The hypocrisy is rampant. The future is elsewhere.
End of the World
When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War,
We used to take it for known that the human race
Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem
About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore
Of the last sea, alone, alone, alone, remembering all
His racial past. But now I don't think so. They'll die faceless in flocks,
And the earth flourish long after mankind is out.
Robinson Jeffers
