This song occurred to me on a morning in Byron Bay when I was going to a friend’s 70th birthday in the evening. I didn’t know how that particular friend was going to take the reality of a number that big. It’s a “no shit” number. It’s a number that makes it hard to keep the reality of mortality at bay.
Byron Bay is full of young people who take no notice of their mortality and regularly do foolish and dangerous things. Just like I did, back in the day.
It occurred to me that immortality isn’t really about defeating death, it’s a way of living with no regard for the reality of death.
Just like youth is wasted on the young it seems to me that only the young really get to experience immortality. For a while.
But the song lies. I don’t really remember it very well. I’m just grateful for the little bits of my own immortality that I do recall.
A version of this song premiered at that birthday party. And that friend seemed to take turning 70 very well indeed.
Immortality
Verse 1:
I used to be immortal
I remember it very well
I had no fear of dying
Not as far as i could tell
I had no doubt I would live forever
Knew the day I’d die ‘cuz that would be never
I had endless time for any endeavour
I knew everything cus i was so clever
Verse 2:
Way back in the day
I thought I knew an awful lot
I guess I got away with it
At least i didn’t get caught
I was lucky, hanging by a thread
I lived to tell the tale, I didn’t end up dead
I suppose I became a man, you see
By surviving, my immortality
Chorus:
I lived through the never dying
Not for the lack of trying
But I got older and the time got short
Life got a hold on me
Years went by when I wasn’t looking
They got away from me
Then one day like it or not I lost
… My immortality
Verse 3:
It’s not what you remember
About me when I’m gone
It’s not about living
On and on and on and on
It’s the way I found myself living
It seemed there wasn’t any other way to be
If life was only going to be temporary
Why should I give up… my immortality
Chorus:
I lived through the never dying
Not for the lack of trying
But I got older and time got short
Life got a hold on me
Years went by when I wasn’t looking
They got away from me
And one day like it or not I lost
… My immortaliy
Verse 4:
Every year there are new immortals
Following in my wake
I watch take some silly risks
And make the same mistake
That I made back when the whole world
Seemed a risk free place to be
I really hope that they survive
… Their immortality
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