My Death Lyric Damage
I love songs about death and love. Here I talk about why by exploring relationships new and old, and discuss the sweet side of existential dread.
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WHAT’S MY DAMAGE?
Nothing makes my little emo heart flutter more than a song about death and love. These kinds of lyrics make me glow and cry with joy.
Have you ever had that feeling with a song lyric? Where hearing it, or even thinking of it, brings you instantly to a specific emotional state? Where the sound waves of the music and poetry of the words gather in your eyes like tiny swords, making your eyes swim in tears? Where your throat clenches up and you struggle to breathe? It can be so wonderful!
In lonely silence, however, when I’m lying awake in bed under layers of blankets, anxiety, and insomnia, that pang that starts in the pit of my stomach and radiates like shock waves to my fingertips and brings cold sweats to my forehead – there’s no joy in that, it’s just naked dread. There’s no romanticism about it, it’s just brutal, clanging fear.
It’s equal parts fear of death and fear of lost love. I’m gripped by the icy hand of death and I’m terror-stricken at the thought of an endless, blank eternity. Then my brain swells with the infinite sadness of imagining my partner – who is lying blissfully asleep beside me – having to experience my death, or my having to experience his. And there’s no resolution, just futile attempts at acceptance. I lie there frozen.
But when someone sings those same sentiments to me in melodic, poetic crescendos, I melt. Serenity washes over me and my eyes well up with commiseration. It feels like someone gently brushing my hair and telling me “It’s okay – I feel that way too. And it’s beautiful.”
To Lose My Life or Lose My Love:
I don’t think I’ve ever connected with a song more than with “To Lose My Life” by White Lies (off their 2009 album To Lose My Life…). These lyrics in particular sting my heart:
He said to lose my life or lose my love
That’s the nightmare I’ve been running from
So let me hold you in my arms a while
I was always careless as a child
And there’s a part of me that still believes
My soul will soar above the trees
But a desperate fear flows through my blood
That a dead love’s buried beneath the mud
[Chorus]
Let’s grow old together
And die at the same time
Let’s grow old together
And die at the same time
Literally every song on this debut album is about death, which is partly why I love it so much. The opening track is even titled “Death” and is about a fear of flying. But “To Lose My Life” in particular has always been an arrow through my heart. A little Cupid’s arrow, sharp and sweet.
When I first heard the song, right around its release, I was instantly in love. When I first heard it, I was also in the throes of my traumatic first marriage. I was not in love with that person. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself, it wasn’t love. But I was in love with that song. Even though I knew I would never feel “that” way (the song’s way) about my then husband, I felt that this song and its lyrics were deeply important to me.
One time I mentioned to my then husband how romantic I found the song, and his only response was a slight scoff. He didn’t feel “that” way about me either. I knew that, but it was still a crushing moment. I wanted in that moment to at least pretend I could apply the song to someone, to attach that feeling that was within me to an actual person. But I would have to wait. A pretty long time, it turned out.
“He said to lose my life or lose my love / That’s the nightmare I’ve been running from.” I felt this sentiment penetrate my skin even before I had a love that grounded that feeling. I didn’t realize it, but I had a placeholder in my heart for the person who would one day fill that space like a puzzle piece.
Morbidly, I’m glad I didn’t attach that sentiment to my first husband, in part because he died young. Recently, in fact – he died in March of 2022, just a couple weeks before his 45th birthday. We had already been separated for seven years, but we were still in touch enough for him to send me cruel texts every so often (usually from a new phone number).
Despite his young age, his death wasn’t very surprising. He had suffered from intense opioid, alcohol, and Xanax additions for long before I knew him (no one bothered to tell me this before I entered into a marriage with him, but that’s another story).
Due to his addictions and often reckless behavior, I sensed even during our marriage that he would not be long for this world. That, in part, made it unrealistic to hope to “grow old together and die at the same time” with him. His torturous treatment of me also made me gleeful during the rare times I was away from him during our eight year marriage, so the “nightmare” of losing him just didn’t resonate. (Why did I stay with him for so long? That, too, is a story for another time.)
Now, I count myself as among the exceptionally lucky on this earth. I have someone in my life with whom I want nothing more than to do exactly as White Lies prescribes: to grow old together and then die at the same time. In fact, the terror of not doing exactly that tears me apart by my very fibers. But god, I feel so lucky to finally have that love and the terror that accompanies it. That feeling “To Lose My Life” inspired in me so many years ago finally has a home. It’s terrifying, and so beautiful.
If it Meant I Would See You When I Die:
Let’s jump right into this one. Phoebe Bridgers, in her 2020 Punisher song “Chinese Satellite,” sings in the second verse:
You were screamin’ at the Evangelicals
They were screamin’ right back from what I remember
When you said I will never be your vegetable
Because I think when you’re gone, it’s forever
But you know I’d stand on the corner
Embarrassed with a picket sign
If it meant I would see you when I die
She caps this verse off with a call to the heavens: “I want to believe!” (I added the exclamation point, and this line is followed by some lines about a tractor beam and wanting to go home, but I like to think of it as an addendum to the above set of lyrics.)
I’m not a religious person (although I do believe in ghosts – yet another story for another time). I was raised in a secular home, however I grew up in a very evangelical community. Being surrounded by all that made me especially grateful to not be a part of it. The countless hours my friends spent at church; the treatment of sex like it was a fearsome, disease-riddled, pregnant hell monster; the science denial; the Bible verses hanging on living room walls; the oppressive, heteronormative patriarchy of it all; the pastel color palettes… Yikes, it was bad! My skin crawls just thinking about it.
And yet…possibly I would stand there “embarrassed with a picket sign” depicting some anti-choice bullshit or whatever “if it meant I would see you when I die.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m about as pro-choice as you can be. Depriving vagina-havers of their reproductive rights is monstrous and is the patriarchy in its most distilled, evil form.
But…what would I sacrifice to not lose you to the cold and vacant eternity of death? What would I give up for the gift of being able to hold you forever, like in actual forever terms? To still be kissing you while the earth turns to dust and our sun snuffs itself out and the universe shapeshifts into something wholly unrecognizable? I would certainly be tempted to trade that for a few embarrassed moments of morally-compromised picketing.
In my softer moments, it a little bit makes me sympathetic to the evangelicals. I can’t and won’t forgive them for the endless number of individual torments and systematic catastrophes they have caused. Those are manifold and ongoing. But a part of me gets the impulse to do anything for the sake of an afterlife, for even the possibility of an eternity with your love.
I want to believe in heaven. It seems divinely comforting to believe that this isn’t it, that there will be more. I want to believe that the afterlife is a garden filled with everyone you’ve ever loved, frolicking freely without any pain or worry. That’s the most splendid and lovely image ever conjured. The universe is full of magic and shit no one understands, so here’s hoping.
I wish – I wish with my entire soul – that this life would continue beyond the death of our physical bodies. But if it’s true that “when you’re gone, it’s forever,” then we better make the most of what is guaranteed – which is this moment right now, and not much beyond it. Then, if it turns out there is some kind of cosmic garden of loved ones waiting for us, hooray what a sublime bonus!
The specter of death can be motivating in that way. It can make you want to drink in a happy moment through every cell in your skin and savor the cosmic uniqueness of that moment, because that’s it, that’s all there is. And it’s so blissfully wondrous sometimes. But I still wish I could see you when I die.
I Finally Found My Pot of Gold:
Bat for Lashes released a heart-wrenchingly touching concept album in 2016 called The Bride. It follows the story of a bride whose groom-to-be dies on the way to their wedding. Oof! Heavy premise.
But Bat for Lashes holds our hands through this heavy premise by giving us a series of beautifully shot music videos that tell the album’s story (there’s Joe’s Dream, In God’s House, Sunday Love, and a live performance of If I Knew).
The opening song, Joe’s Dream, reveals that Joe, the groom, has a premonition of his own death the night before the wedding:
He saw angels at his bedroom door
And a body on a checkered floor
There was lightning in his black leather
And it struck out his name
The bride tries to comfort him, but can’t help but feel the dread herself:
No more tears, baby, please don’t cry
I tried to tell him everything is fine
Cross my heart and hope to die
I won’t say goodbye
The bride then sings (internally to herself, in my interpretation) about the upcoming woe she is destined to endure. She speaks to how much in love she is, and how deeply it would hurt to lose that love:
I’m falling in love
(Don’t say goodbye)
I’m falling like a star from above
(Don’t say goodbye)
And I finally found my pot of gold
(Don’t say goodbye)
And now I can see just what my heart can hold
Not long ago, I traveled for work to a place far, far away from home. I had been there many times before, and this time I was set to be there for three weeks. I’ll refrain from naming specific locations to avoid further stigmatization, but the area was and still is at least civil war adjacent. That was the whole point of the work trip, to monitor rapid relief programs for wartorn villages.
I was always safe. That is, aside from some fairly intense food poisoning; but I went to a cottage hospital and the incredibly kind staff fixed me right up. And I’m not typically afraid of flying, but I’ll admit that rickety UN jet that carted me between cities had my nerves on edge and the White Lies song “Death” stuck in my head like a thorn. But the places I visited were closely monitored, and I was generally safe.
The days before I departed, however, were terrifying. My partner and I had a special night before I left – maybe there were lots of drugs involved, maybe! – and, as we are wont to do, we watched music videos. The Bride series is among our favorites and we watched them. Mere minutes (maybe even seconds?) into “Joe’s Dream” we were both drowning ourselves in tears.
The lyrics hit me then in a way they never had before. “I finally found my pot of gold…And now I can see just what my heart can hold.” My partner and I found each other later in life, both divorced and a little jaded in love. But we had finally found each other, finally, after so much heartache and pain. Losing that seemed unfathomable.
As I said, I had been to that part of the world many times before. I loved the adventure and foreignness of a part of the world that was so remote to me. I loved the work, it allowed me to get to know people I would never have met otherwise. Wonderful, smart, kind, funny people. I loved being exposed to a culture I had previously only ever read about.
There’s a lot to criticize about white savior complexes and the very mixed results of foreign aid programs, and I have very mixed feelings about my most recent trip there especially – the one that examined rapid relief programs. My earlier trips were more research-based, and did a better job at elevating local scholars and voices. In all, I know I benefited more from my being there than anyone there benefitted from my work, and that’s problematic. But I cherish my time there, and I try to exercise the empathy and exposure I gained from my experiences.
I had never been afraid to go, not before this last time. I was single for my first few trips, and couldn’t wait to be on the other side of the world for weeks on end. I was in a shitty relationship back then, and was glad to get away.
But this most recent trip was different. I had finally found my pot of gold. He had finally found me, and he loved and appreciated and cherished in all the best possible ways my pot of gold. (Yes, okay, by “pot of gold” I kind of mean my pussy, but I mainly mean my heart!) What if something happened to me? How could I be the reason he’d have to see what his heart could hold? What if I pushed his precious heart to its breaking point?
I only became concerned about my own safety when I experienced what that loss would look like through his eyes, what it would feel like through his heart. Love is funny like that. Hurting my partner would have felt worse than dying. I want to protect his heart, I don’t want him to have to learn what sorrows his heart can withstand, what tragedies his heart can endure.
And that goes beyond death. I never want to hurt his heart or soul or spirit or body (or anybody’s!), not even a tiny bit. My first husband did not treat my heart with such care, and unfortunately I learned that my heart can hold a tremendous amount of pain and sorrow. He was tormented, and so he tormented. That’s not an excuse, he had agency. It’s just sad, all around.
In my previous marriage, my heart was like an inflated balloon, full of bad feelings, but when that dissipated the empty space remained. I’m in a new phase of my life where that space is full of love and kindness. And I only ever want to bestow love and kindness, as much as possible. Sad moments will come, made sadder by the love, but hopefully made softer by the kindness.
I still went on the work trip, of course, and I was fine. I came back home the day after my birthday (I was on the plane my entire birthday, because that’s how long those flights take), and we had the best sex we’d ever had, up to that point. (We’ve since topped it, if your dirty mind is wondering.) In fact, we experienced one of those rare “perfect moments” where everything comes together in a surreal and beautiful way.
Obviously, a song was involved in that perfect moment – a White Lies song called “There Goes Our Love Again.” I won’t go too far into the mushy details of our perfect moment reunion, and this particular song isn’t about death (as far as I know, it is White Lies after all). But the lyrics were perfectly right for that moment: “I didn't go far, and I came home.”
I did go pretty fucking far, but I did come home. Inevitably, one day one of us will have to see just what our heart can hold. The thought of one of us losing the other terrifies and baffles me. Where will the love live without the other to house and reflect it? Where does the love go? Where do the perfect moments go? Surely they must go somewhere? Maybe that is heaven – a tiny realm in the universe where all the precious moments live on forever.
One day we will have to say a final goodbye to each other. One day one of us will slip away, leaving the other behind like a lonely half of a BFF necklace. One day it will just be one of us… Unless, of course, we manage to grow old together and die at the same time. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll see you when I die.
I Would Never Turn it Back Around
It’s not the final song on the album, but the Bat for Lashes song “If I Knew” offers a kind of comforting conclusion. “Baby, if I knew what I know now,” she sings about her groom’s untimely death, “I would never turn it back around.” I take this to mean that even if you are lucky enough to find a true love and then unlucky enough to lose them, it would still have been worth it.
It’s perhaps selfish to say, but I’d rather have a short time with my true love than no time at all. “Wrong or right,” she adds, “you held me up to the light.” My partner has made me more myself, has helped me discover myself in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible. And I hope, given the choice, he would always choose to spend a short amount of time with me before my death, versus never knowing me at all.
“If I Knew” is almost certainly inspired by these famous lines from the 1833 Alfred Tennyson poem:
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
There’s nothing new about this sentiment. And we can feel this way about people, animals, moments, places, or anything at all. We can feel it anticipatorily, or maybe only after the love has been lost. That Tennyson feels this sentiment especially when he “sorrow[s] most” is telling; it’s a medicine we’ll need to keep handy for the darkness feelings.
It’s reassuring to hear that the inevitable pain of loss can be a worthwhile price to pay for the love that has already happened. Because, really, what option do we have? We can close ourselves off. Never risk loving someone or something enough to feel the sting of loss. And it is a risk, because sometimes you invest your heart in someone or something and don’t get the reward of love, but still end up suffering the painful loss.
I don’t feel this way (the Tennyson or Bat for Lashes way) about my first husband. Not all loss, not even all painful loss, comes with that alleviating medicine of past love. Sometimes loss is just painful.
In a lot of ways, I wish I had never met my first husband, had never had to suffer through his abuses. But now, I wouldn’t risk a life re-do without him, because what if that path didn’t lead me to my current partner? Damn unpredictable butterfly effects! I would never know what I was missing, but I would feel what I was missing something, someone. I felt it from the first time I heard “To Lose My Life.”
It’s a nightmare worrying about losing my love, worrying about my love losing me. But isn’t that life? Thank god for songs about love and death. They soothe my soul and somehow make the terrifying beautiful.
POSTSCRIPT – Death is Coming for Us All, But Not Today:
The sweet side of existential dread is being reminded to revel in the joyous moments of life. As Yard Act put it in their 2022 song 100% Endurance, “It’s all so pointless…but it’s not”:
It’s all so pointless, ah, but it’s not though is it?
It’s really real and when you feel it, you can really feel it
Grab somebody that you love
Grab anyone who needs to hear it
And shake ‘em by the shoulders, scream in their face
Death is coming for us all, but not today
Today you’re living it, hey, you’re really feeling it
Give it everything you’ve got knowing that you can’t take it with you
And all you ever needed to exist has always been within you
Gimme some of that good stuff, that human spirit
Cut it with a hundred percent endurance
TAKEAWAY:
I love songs about love and death. I find them soul-soothing. They make me feel connected to the artists, as humans, who have also felt love and sorrow, who fear loss but want love, who harbor both terror of death and joy in life. I like that these songs remind me to appreciate the delightful moments of life, in between fearing death and loss.
I like being reminded to hold the ones you love close. To do it now and often. Whether they’re a romantic partner, a family member, a pet, a plant, a book, a song, a place, an object, or whatever. It’s important to feel your love now. To revel in it. To treat it like your pot of gold.
SOMETHING NICE:
I had the pleasure of meeting the White Lies band members in 2022. It was at a signing event before a music festival in Mexico City. They were super nice, and they seem to really appreciate their fans. The music festival itself was amazing – Phoebe Bridgers was there too, in fact. And now I have two signed White Lies posters on my living room wall – a wall that has become a tribute to White Lies and Blondie, two of my favorite bands. I even got to see Blondie perform live in the UK in 2021, and it rocked my socks off. Go see live shows whenever possible!! Create those perfect moments now.
SO TELL ME . . . WHAT’S YOUR DAMAGE?
