Most people feel these sensations then get on with it. When I feel them I get stuck. I think the twinge in my chest and cough is pneumonia, which could cause me to faint if I exert myself. I think a skipped heart beat is a dysrhythmia that could cause my heart to stop at any moment.
Everything is dangerous. All day, surges of adrenaline from perceiving one thing, then the next, then the next, signal imminent collapse. In the morning, through the commute, during the day at work and on the way back my mind sounds a Penderecki threnody. After the day, when I feel safe, it feels like the overactivity has warped the physical material of my brain; my brain feels like a car engine after a road trip. It’s hot and creaks and pops and hisses. What the creaks and pops and hisses tell me: there is no escape.
It's true. There is no escape from body sensations. That's how we're built, to listen to them, it's how we survive.
What would help is a change in how I perceive them.
I can continue to perceive them in the same way, and fall into a cycle of fear and exhaustion. The outcome: isolation, depression and missed opportunities. Or I can perceive them in a new way, feel them but not obsess over them, and not have them dictate my actions. The outcome: well Jesus I know it's not going to be roses and peaches, but at least I'll get out more.
I’ve heard musical interpretations of shifts in perception. Some suggest that people have experienced a shift from despair to some hope. The best example to me is Gorillaz's “Demon Days”.
How many times when I was at my low point, before I understood what was happening, I’d play "Demon Days", and be soothed. Its creator saw, understood and handed me this song.
"Demon Days", the last song on the album, has enormous meaning when you consider the songs before it. Albarn’s lyrics are disconnected and vague, but they have specific concerns. Most of the songs focus on anxiety-filled modern day issues: school shootings (“Kids with Guns”), environmental issues (“O Green World”), war (“Dirty Harry”), loneliness (“All Alone”), alcoholism (“White Light”) and rapacious consumerism/colonialism (“Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head”).
The listener is dragged through this anxious world and finally arrives at the second to last track: “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”.
“Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” is deeply connected to the next track, “Demon Days”.
“Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” is despair. It’s a special type of despair, Dostoevskian. Dostoevskian despair is deep despair under a veneer of false hope. It’s in The Double, when an overwhelmed clerk goes crazy and crashes a rich person’s party, thinking it was meant for him. Or in Crime and Punishment, in Raskolnikov, who, after being isolated for too long, goes up to a stranger and asks him if he likes the street music. Or in Svidrigailov, who, overwhelmed by guilt, strolls through the streets, jokes with a stranger, then shoots himself.
The deepest despair is thinly cloaked in politeness, humor and hope. This banal pleasantry is a hollow reminder of what the despair has taken away from the person. To see someone in complete despair imitate politeness, humor and optimism is like seeing a deer hit by a car try to take some steps before it dies. That’s what “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” is.
The lyrics are depressing. They seem to be a quick reliving of the 13 despairing songs prior. The singer deals with the anxiety of those songs by using drugs, which are directly or indirectly mentioned multiple times.
The melody, if you can forget about Albarn’s dead-eyed delivery, sounds like a 50’s pop melody: old fashioned, wholesome.
But the lyrics depart so much from that tone. Especially at 1:16 - Albarn is calling someone a whore:
“you’re a whore…
yeah you’re a ha-whore”
The melody here is like a verse ending flourish you’d hear in a ‘50s song, but the singer would sentimentally croon it and call her a peach instead of a whore.
There is despair and anger in the lyrics and despondency in their delivery, all painted over with a Leave it to Beaver melody. The sum effect is Dostoevskian despair: deep despair with a veneer of politeness and cheer.
Further adding to the off-putting feel are the choir bits, the disturbed choir moans from :08 to :10, :59 to 1:01, 1:22 to 1:24 and 1:40 to 1:42. They begin like they have the potential for beauty, but they lose their beauty and become strained and distorted. They embody the idea of “Getting Lost in Heaven”, of turning something potentially beautiful into something haunting. The electric guitar has a similar effect, is off key in a way similar to how the choir is off key.
The above effects make this song despair. But all is not lost.
There is a conflict between the despondent singer and the choir. The singer sings despair. But the choir responds, over and over, “don’t get lost in heaven”. The choir is saying, the place you are at can be heaven, if you’re not lost in it. Something inside the despairing person is telling him not to despair, not to turn to drugs, not to disconnect himself, some spiritual force embodied in that choir. “You’ll make a big mistake,” it says to him, to go down this road of despair.
At the end of the song, we even find that the disturbed choir moan (heard from from :08 to :10, :59 to 1:01, 1:22 to 1:24 and 1:40 to 1:42) has a seed of hope in it. At 1:35 to 1:37, the choir sings a consonant, almost soothing version. The distorted choir instantly responds back at 1:40. But then the soothing version sounds again at 1:43, and again at 1:50, and again at 1:58. That last time, it’s harmonized, making it especially beautiful, and it leads into the soothing violins of the next song, “Demon Days”.
To me, there is a battle going on for the singer’s soul, between the disturbing moan version of this choir call, and the harmonized, soothing version of it. At first, the moan wins out, but at a certain point, the soothing version takes over.
To me it’s a sonic metaphor for that undercurrent of despair that fights with hope inside the despairing. And it seems all the more true, that the despair is a broken version of the hope - it seems true that despair isn’t its own thing as much as it is a broken hope.
From here comes “Demon Days”. It’s not triumphant, but there is a sober enlightenment to it. It’s dealing with the world, it’s found some peace.
The backbone of the first part of “Demon Days” and “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” are the same. Their basic structure is a two chord harmony, one long chord and then one long chord slightly above it.
The songs don’t just share a basic structure, but also specific melodies. “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”’s queasy lead guitar from :03 to :09 gets translated into Albarn’s somewhat sad but still soothing “wooo-oooos” from from :19 to :26 in “Demon Days”. It’s the same tune.
These similarities reinforce that we are still in the same world as “Don't Get Lost in Heaven”, we are just seeing it form a different perspective: we’ve gone from seeing the world through despair to seeing the world through hope.
These similarities reinforce that we are still in the same world as “Don't Get Lost in Heaven”, we are just seeing it form a different perspective: we’ve gone from seeing the world through despair to seeing the world through hope.
I love the violins in the beginning of “Demon Days”. It takes about 14 seconds for them to go through one cycle. During this time, there are two violin layers.
The first layer is the prominent one, it’s the one that lifts dramatically at :04. There’s two phrases of the first violin layer in those first 14 seconds. One dramatically and satisfyingly rises at :04. The next phrase is similar, but instead of rising, it holds its level. :11 is where the second phrase should rise, if it were to follow the example of the first phrase, but instead it restates the note it has been playing, and then falls off. To me it suggests, sometimes you will rise, sometimes you will just endure.
The general tone of the violin is beautiful: melancholic but hopeful. It gives the impression of seeing hope through tears.
The second layer of violin compliments the first layer. The second layer is best heard from :07 to :14, when the first layer is holding its note. From :08 to :10, I can’t help but see a mother’s hand beckoning, can’t help seeing a mother goose motioning with its wing at a wayward duckling. To me the violin from :08 to :10 sounds like it’s saying “hurry home; hurry, hurry home”. And I don’t just mean metaphorically: I hear those words. That cadence, that pitch produces those words. It’s the mother violin. It’s a voice from singer’s past, beckoning him back to the right path.
After this soothing introduction is a series of developments that suggest transformation from despair to hope. At :19, we hear the queasy guitar lead melody from “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”, except now it is a soulful, soothing vocal.
At the same time, we hear a guitar fuzz that lets off at :23. That fuzz comes back at :26, then lets off again. Then comes back at :35 and sustains itself. To me that fuzz is tension, it’s the tension of a limp hand making a fist, and then going limp, making a fist and then letting go, and then finally, making a fist and holding it. The song is fighting again.
The best touch is at :23. A disturbing howl sounds, reverberates underground, gets drawn out, until finally, at :30, it transforms into the choir, into something pure and declarative. This is the part that brings chills every time. It’s the song in a nutshell, transforming a disturbed, despondent howl into pure, strong, resilience. This resilience comes back at 1:23. It bolsters the singer, whose lyrics and melody are mixed, generally hopeful but oscillating a little, stringing together some hope and momentum at 1:10, but falling down a little after that, before it’s picked up by the choir at 1:23.
Then the song quiets down, and becomes a reggae hymn. If reggae’s not your thing, it might disappoint. But it still gets across the message, the journey of the singer from despair in “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”, to some hard won, sober enlightenment in the first 2 minutes of “Demon Days”, to some less dramatic, sustainable ease in a better daily life that the pop reggae suggests.
He’s made it, transformed the Penderecki threnody to Bob Marley.
I know, from how this song feels, that its writer has despaired, but found a way to shift his perception. Not permanently, I bet. But he’s done it once, and he’ll do it again. Thank God for music.
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