Morbid Beauty - Thoughts from an East Coast Transplant in Tacoma

Morbid beauty – We need a little music in death

“Just remember darling, it is pain that changes our lives.” (Steve Martin, Shopgirl)

I witnessed my first non-insect death this week. We had to put one of our dogs down at work and I accompanied my coworker to the vet for moral support as she had spent the last two weeks taking him home to watch the progress of his health- or rather, it’s decline. I was not particularly close to him; he went into a foster home soon after I started this job and he’s been in and out of emergency vet clinics for a couple weeks with seizures and fevers. But I had never watched something I cared about die right in front of me. And other than the obvious thoughts of how unfair it was that this 10-month-old puppy had an incurable condition, I was flooded with thoughts of how badly I wanted music to be playing. When it was over and we left, I nearly ran into my car and turned on the radio. I needed something, anything, that could block out the sounds of his breath slowing, the vet apologizing, and my coworker and I crying. Something that would have made the moment make sense as a whole, with nothing appropriate to say and nothing happy to hold onto. Which brings me to my topic and another depressing one to boot.  I apologize.

“Breathe Me” – by Sia
Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

The ultimate death montage, and in my limited experience, the best ten minutes of television, is the ending of the finale of Six Feet Under. What better way to sum up a show than to witness the successes of the characters you have come to love and how their lives play out. Many shows accomplish this. But rarely has any show ever killed off every single character. But why not? That is reality after all. At the end of everything, we die. And what better song to use than this one? Because SFU does not just kill all the characters in a house fire, or a rampant tornado. You see their weddings, their birthdays, their promotions, it’s the happiest ending you’ve been given as an audience. But the characters become real as we watch their family die and we know behind each happy moment they have been hurting inside. It is not sugar coated, which this show has never been. And it feels appropriately real, it is the same feeling I felt watching Banjo (the puppy) die, because moments before he was playfully biting my elbow and clumsily climbing in my lap. And what hurt the most about watching him die was knowing that minutes ago he was alive. The permanence of time had never made sense before. What Sia’s song provides is an escape from the pain of the reality of death. These lyrics represent the confusing vulnerability that you feel when you’re facing someone or something’s death. To have such a hopelessness crawl inside your ribcage that crying, or some semblance of it, only seems to happen because you cannot help it is overwhelming. But usually inevitable.

“Hide and Seek” – by Imogen Heap
Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

I realize I’m making quite a jump along the line of legitimate television. Don’t get me wrong, I love a little angsty over privileged representation of American teenagers now and then. But really, the OC is not Six Feet Under. Regardless. One of the factors that made the OC such a hit was their use of new music; I would guess the show is responsible for half of melophobe’s readers’ interest in this type of music. This song was used twice in the final episode of Season Two, for two death scenes, though these lyrics are not those that made each scene more full or complete. But they represent the feelings imbued in each. Like in a breakup the pain of someone being gone from your life is the surprise of it, and your memories of them having been right in front of you many times before. That notion of, “yesterday we were holding hands and today we are not because you don’t want to anymore.” With a death, there is the added pain of, “and we can’t ever again.” The permanence of what you remember being something stolen from you, gone for good. Insensitive is a very good word to use. The death of someone, or something, you love creates a very selfish version of you. The pain you feel is not only hollowing but deeply personal and you want to look death in the face and ask, “How dare you?” But, as a viewer of a television death (something surreal in its own right) you are rewarded with a releasing safety of music.

Even now, I am sitting on my couch with my computer covering my view of the television as my boyfriend sits next to me watching a film about the Vietnam War. I am nearly having an anxiety attack knowing my earbuds are in my car and I don’t have them to plug in and block out the sound of all of the dying. It is one artistic decision and point to not have music to disappear behind during these scenes of overwhelming violence and death. But as in Six Feet Under and the OC, these pieces of music not only provided this escape, but a restitution of sanity. I have never had music handy when I have been given the news of the death of loved ones. But I believe we deserve it. If only to assure ourselves that time keeps running, no matter how unfair that is.

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