A little Waverly, a little Fluss… Twenty Ways They Died

Svetlovska

“Since we are all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.” - Albert Camus. (killed in a car crash, aged 46.)

So I got to thinking of the myriad ways, some gruesome, some just plain silly, by which one might find oneself exiting this mortal coil, pretty much at any given moment. The real mystery being how any of us fragile meatbags get to stick around as long as we do, given the virtually infinite number of coincidences required to arrange for us to be here in the first place, and the improbably smooth functioning of the universe required for us to make a bit of a go of this living lark once we do find ourselves coping with Heideggerian thrown-ness. Although, as the old Viking gravestone dictum has it, short or long we all get what everyone does: a lifetime.

Hadn’t tried it before, so I used Fluss as an effect rather than an instrument here, on some King of Bass and Waverly instances. I like it! Vocals courtesy of elevenlab, triggered manually from Koala, knockings from Patterning 3.

Hope you do too, though Terror Management Theory, which explores people’s need to insulate themselves from their deep fear of living an insignificant life destined to be erased by death, suggests that this is unlikely, since I have committed the social faux pas, if not cardinal sin here, of reminding my putative audience of this uncomfortable fact. (Whilst engaging in a minor act of creativity, which TMT states is what we all do culturally to grasp at some straws of transmissible, death-proof meaning and therefore cling to a forlorn hope of a kind of immortality in the floodwaters of otherwise swirling meaningless chaos.)

So, er… enjoy! For tomorrow, you know…

myapologies

This piece is creative and fun. I appreciate your timing because somehow it cheered me right up. Memento (midi) Mori and all that. Thank you

Svetlovska

@myapologies : no, thank you! ‘Midi Mori’. I like that! All the events and deeds of my unremarkable life, all the little stories I’ve written, and all those noises I’ve made, sitting on my SoundCloud, just to be lost one day, like tears in the rain, as a great philosopher once observed.

I think this is one of the reasons why I am so drawn to the Viking world view. For them, there was Valhalla of course, and for a few maybe reincarnation of a sort, and the death-specific halls of various gods, and Folkvangr, and even Hel, which wasn’t quite the awful Christian Hell. (That would be Náströnd, the hall of snakes reserved within it for murderers, oath breakers and wife stealers.)

But what really counted was having your name remembered, down the ages. The only real immortality. And they weren’t wrong about that, were they? The real afterlife of remembered fame is a ruthless meritocracy, and very few of us make the cut.

rottencat

Well, that was quite an eye-opener this morning. Very well done indeed.

According to legend, the Greek playwright Aeschylus met a tragic death: one day, an eagle that had just caught a tortoise mistook Aeschylus's bald head for a shiny rock, and killed the author by dropping the animal onto him.

Svetlovska

@rottencat : Exactly! Life is a cosmic joke… on us!

id_23

A lovely bittersweet ending… was half expecting anaphylaxis amongst others, lulling me into the trap, the final line delivered like a surgeon’s scalpel!

Svetlovska

@id_23 : thank you! Anaphylaxis is in there, just oblquely: ‘An unexpected reaction to the sprinkles on a donut.’

id_23

@Svetlovska said:
@id_23 : thank you! Anaphylaxis is in there, just oblquely: ‘An unexpected reaction to the sprinkles on a donut.’

Of course!
🍩 ☠️ 😂

rottencat

Also, it puts me in the mind of The Gashlycrumb Tinies which is always a good thing.🙂

GeoTony

I do like a wild mushroom risotto 🍄‍🟫
I do like this 👌