Monday, September 14, 2009
Andrew Bird's Small Apocalypse
I received Andrew Bird's song "Yawny at the Apocalypse." It is a three minute and forty second long piece, predominantly string based with the beginning and end sprinkled with birds chirping. It is exactly the way I would want to experience the apocalypse. A quiet, gentle, lullaby of an end to the world. How lovely. The song seems to connect to the New Yorker cover we discussed the first day of class. There is nothing left in the world but nature. The song is purely instrumental; there are no need for words after the apocalypse. Bird exemplifies what I imagine would be left to do after the end; you would sit, sleep, and be. After all, there would be nothing much else to do.
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I find this statement extremely intriguing: "There is nothing left in the world but nature." What if the apocalyptic thought, though, is that this is *always* the case: there is nothing left—ever—in the world but nature? Or rather, to rephrase the revelation, we might say, like Wittgenstein, that "The world is all that is the case." In other words, what if we can't think or make anything that *ever* escapes the conceptual gravity field of 'nature' (i.e., "the world")? This rather explodes the concept of nature, and maybe makes it useless...but such a conceptual shift could also make what we do and think more vital: within this field of no escape, look at everything that can happen. (See Kerry's post below on 9/11 and the comments for a related conversation along these lines.)
ReplyDeleteI think my answer to your first question is that what wrong is there in "nothing but nature." I believe in bookends and the world began with "nothing but nature" so it it right that it should end the same.
ReplyDeleteTo your other statement, should I be correct in my understanding, nature is such a broad spectrum. Haven't we lived for millennia without escaping the binds of the natural world? Though perhaps I have changed my idea since is a world of nature and the natural world the same thing?