Memo 9: Everywhere at the End of Time
The internet’s echo-chamber qualities are on the whole, probably not great, but it does help you find interesting gems that might have otherwise passed you by if a bunch of young adults did not revive it on its third wave of interest. This week, that’s the Everywhere at the End of Time album. British musician Leyland Kirby released the album in six stages over three years, from 2016 to 2019, as Kirby’s musical character The Caretaker goes further and further into Alzheimer’s. Now available in full on Youtube, I listened to it all in one go and was wrecked.
Starting out beautifully with ghost-like ballroom melodies, the music soon turns fractured to replicate the realization that something is wrong and memories are fading away. The music becomes haunting, melancholic, broken, but soon turns outright hard to listen to in the final stages as the music turns mechanical and experimental. This is to convey the stages of post-realization, when a person is so far gone that they are not aware anymore of what’s wrong.
There’s not much deep analysis to be said besides the fact that 1) the album is a genuinely touching experience and 2) it is refreshing to go on an emotional journey for 6 hours without one word said. I have joked¹ about becoming post-verbal often, but this alum makes the case for it effectively. The unusual length of the ballroom music as it descends and fractures into experimental sound art causes it to be overwhelming and thus, impactful. As RA mentioned, as one listens to this mental descent rendered in agonizingly slow motion, the listener experiences every minute change until everything is reduced to a dull, grey mush.
The album reminds me of something said in a favorite Radiolab episode² of mine, “Unraveling Bolero”. Neurologist Brice Miller discusses that there are several parts of the brain held back by the language circuit because a dominant circuit like language is wired to turn a bunch of other circuits off. When language falls to the wayside, it has all kinds of effects in the brain that allows other ways of processing the world to rush up until more parts of the brain which makes us human also fade, and the world becomes very simple. In the episode’s context, this was said about the basal ganglia in the reptile brain that motivates very repetitive motor actions seen in early stages of frontotemporal dementia. This can also explain a bit why Alzheimer’s, a specific form of dementia, is so accessible through this wordless album.
If you have 6 hours of remote work / reading / napping (which you should, since we are all good citizens staying at home) and want to hear something depressingly otherworldly, then take a gander³. This album accomplishes it well.
And because there is always more to consume, here are some LINKS from this past week:
A Fuller Picture of Artemisia Gentileschi. She was the Italian Baroque painter of my dreams in high school. Seeing her get thorough, insightful attention long overdue warms my heart.
Supermassive Black Holes Might Really Be ‘Traversable’ Wormholes, Astrophysicists Suggest. And with this, that Muse song from Twilight is now scientifically inaccurate.
LGB People Are More Likely to Get Migraines, which means that migraines are an ally to the LGB community!
The Farms of the Future Were Built for Outer Space. Will They Work on Earth? Another slightly depressing, very important thing to read.
I say this in jest, but also not in jest at the same time.
The episode is fascinating and very well-done, so it’s definitely something to listen to on your own time.
Just don’t read the comments on the video. They are almost more depressing than the album itself.