Death tastes sweeter

This song is drawn from a comment my friend Wendy Bayne made the other day: “Today is a good day to die.”

She meant it. My old friend Tom Healey (now dead) used to say, “When I die, I’ll say to myself, ‘this is great. I should have done this years ago.’”

The song incorporates mythological elements (the sword of Damocles, the three fates) along with images of alienation (the mirror, duality and the pain it evokes) along with the religious path of psalms, hymns and prayer that all-too-easily combine with our exaggerated sense of ourselves and our faux bravado in the face of mortality.

The illustration is a Dall-e generated piece, a vague riff on French Academy painting of the nineteenth century, featuring the death of Socrates. His pupils are adding honey to the hemlock.

Of course the most famous painting of this subject is perhaps is the one by Jacques-Louis David at The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

This particular painting illustrates one of the more delightful features of French Academy painting, which required subjects to be shown in poses where they made pompous hand gestures. It was apparently believed that the hand gestures validated the emotional integrity of the moment. Or something like that.

Some other classics of this kind are, for example, from the Raft of the Medusa (Gericault) at the Louvre:

Ugh, grim—but this justly-famous painting is huge, dramatic, and well worth seeing.

And then we have the Judgment of Solomon by Poussin:

David was inspired by Poussin, who was actually (as anyone with eyes can see) a painter in the somewhat-very-different and earlier baroque style. The 19th century painters were a different cup of tea (or, if you will, hemlock) overall; but the tradition of pompous hand gestures was a durable one throughout.

But then again there are a LOT of French paintings with pompous hand gestures in them. It was a thing they specialized in. Visit the Louvre and see for yourself.

BTW Neal and I have taken to doing pompous hand gestures on our trips to Europe:

And we also do them in New Jersey (perfect place for them, by the way):

So that’s how we roll on the subject.

In order to see how other cultures handled the matter of pompous hand gestures, it is perhaps instructive to refer to the painting of Adam & Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder at the Uffizi:

Germans are on the whole a bit more more emotionally repressed than the French and as you can see Lucas Cranach the Elder decorously limited his pompous hand gestures to the pinky finger—the very model of Teutonic restraint.

One must admit it has a better effect overall.

On thinking it over, this song may actually be the audio version of a pompous hand gesture, although I like to flatter myself that it has been effected with only the pinky finger.

You can listen and decide for yourself.

Lyrics:

Sometimes I feel like the sword 
Is hangin’ on by a thread
And the fates are waving 
A pair of scissors over my head 
When I look in the mirror
I see an echo of life 
I’m divided in two
Like I been split by a knife

 And as I eat my daily bread   
I fear no evil— that’s what I  said 
As I walk through the valley
Holding my heads in my hands
Like a saint from a latter- day faith   

Someone gave me the book
With the hymns I should sing
But when I left home this morning 
Well I forgot the damn thing
And now I’m out here alone
Not a cloud in the sky
And I think to myself
It’s a good day to die

 And as I eat my daily bread   
I fear no evil— that’s what I  said 
As I walk through the valley
Holding my heads in my hands
Like a saint from a latter- day faith   

And they say 
That death tastes sweeter
With a little honey on your lips.     

And some times I feel
Like the light of the soul
Is bleeding out of my heart
Deep into the all
And I’m lookin for Jesus
Out here in the streets  
I just hope he remembers
To save me a seat

 And as I eat my daily bread   
I fear no evil— that’s what I  said 
As I walk through the valley
Holding my heads in my hands
Like a saint from a latter- day faith   

And they say 
That death tastes sweeter
With a little honey on your lips.