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I guess we'll just have to adjust.
Death is a hell of a thing to deal with. It's something we're never ready for and try our whole lives to escape, only to have that reaper come knocking at your door, coming to take you away. So how do you adjust? How do you deal with the loss of someone who means a whole lot to you?
I'm sure as little kids a lot of you lost some random relative. For me, it was my mom's aunt. I was about three years old. When she told me, tears were streaming down her face. I felt nothing. I was a little sad, but that was really only through obligation. I never went to the funeral.
The first time I really dealt with death was two years ago, though. I say it is the first time because this was a person I knew and interacted with frequently. He was a senior in high school, I was a sophomore. We were in the same guitar class(we called it instrumental workshop at our school.)
This is how he died: a friend of his, a sophomore who went to the high school in the town next to ours, did a stupid thing and was drinking and driving. He crashed into a telephone pole. He died there. Hours after it happened, by many accounts, my friend was grief stricken. It was 3 o'clock in the morning and he decided to do his own sort of tribute to his fallen friend. In the dead of night he went to the telephone pole where his friend died, acoustic guitar in hand, and sang dirges into the night.
He was struck by a drunk driver while playing his guitar. He was killed instantly. Pieces of guitar were scattered all across the road. The driver panicked and left the scene. To this day(roughly two years ago), the driver still hasn't been found.
Why ramble on about my experiences with death? Why not? Arcade Fire did it. The album is simultaneously a celebration and a dirge. An embrace of life and of death. The melodies soar into the stratosphere, yet beneath them there is an undercurrent of tragedy. It's almost a bittersweet resignation, an acceptance of the inevitable.
Consider the opening of the album, the song 'Neighborhood #1(Tunnels)', upbeat yet sad. The best example could be the song 'Wake Up', with the joyous chorus singing to the heavens.
Despite all the window dressings, it doesn't disguise the fact that death is a hell of a thing to deal with. I guess we'll just have to adjust.
8.5/10
