July 4 - Half Dead

Our tour of loneliness takes us somewhere quite specific this time: the loneliness not of being alone but of being without one person in particular. And, John being John, it does so in the most jaunty, breathy way possible.

There's a curse: life goes on. We can't help it, we don't really have any control over it apart from the obvious, but the wheel keeps turning even when it shouldn't. This isn't a new phenomenon, and some of the best art in the world has come about as a result of this. Auden's Funeral Blues is an anguishes plea for a world where this isn't the case. Half Dead is much happier in the domestic, even the sundered domestic.

"What are the years we gave each other ever gonna be worth?" is a hell of a question but a deeply rhetorical one. The years are worth the years. They are their own reward. What you get from loving someone is sometimes that they loved you too but always that you got to love them. And when that's over (or when that's no longer possible) what you get is that you were that person.

And that's enough.