The song (by Sabaton) came on as I was heading to work this Thursday, and I found myself tearing up. It’s the first time in a few years that I heard it and it hit differently. I’ve got relatives and friends of friends in active duty.
Not anyone I’m in touch with, but I’ve met them, and I hear of them. The price of a mile is the suffering and lives of them, their friends, and so many other young men.
One of my bubbles has been burst by what’s happening in Ukraine & Israel. War is no longer history, news and reports. It has become a lot more real to me, and it’s something I could end up being a part of.
This feels like a rather serious topic for a community called casual conversation, but feel free to share your thoughts on this, or a “bubble bursting” moment of your own.
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“This God is Dead” by Seven Spires hit me really hard after I started HRT.
Adrienne starts “Oh mother, I wonder if you knew. Oh father, if only I could speak with you. Did you love my smoke and mirrors?” and then in the next few verses Roy Khan replies “Your mother, she watches over you. My daughter, just know we are proud of you.” And she can’t hear him, of course, becausehe’s dead, and that’s the boat I’m in. I lost them both, I’ll never really know.
“I wear this skin like someone else’s clothes” and “Everything I’ve been feels like it’s a lie.” Yup. A whole wasted life before I came out, living my life like a disembodied ghost and trying to pretend like I’m not a skinwalker living out a fake life in someone else’s skin.
“See the earth through young eyes. Feel the universe through an ancient soul.” Yup. The whole world is new again, but I didn’t start transitioning until I was 29! It’s a strange feeling, to be going through puberty while also being a grown-ass adult. Ancient.
“This has been my final death, finally accept all that I am, and all that I’m meant to be” Yup. People change a lot throughout their lives, but my pre-transition self is dead. That’s it for him. We call them deadnames for a reason. This is who I’m supposed to be.
And then of course, the title of the song and the final spoken verses. I’m an atheist, became one a long time before I realized I was trans, but my transness can’t be ignored as an undercurrent for it. The “Guide of the lost” is dead. The “Guardian of the broken” is dead. The “Bringer of peace in final hours.” is dead. “Happiness is a choice” because I had to choose to be happy. This is contrasted “And purpose, a charted course” and what was charted for me, by birth, was never a course that would let me find happiness. I had to choose it.
“I am but a soul-keeper, and this god is dead.” I don’t believe there’s an afterlife. I don’t believe there’s salvation, or damnation, or anything. I believe my parents live on through me, that all of the dead live on through us. I am their soul-keeper.
There’s more parallels. Before my transition I just liked it because, yeah, god is dead and powermetal is very good. After I started HRT, though, the back-and-fourth she has with her dead father hits hard. I sobbed while listening to this song (and also doing this write-up!). It’s very cleansing. This is what this song will always mean for me.
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The song itself was lost on me as I don’t understand the language, but the imagery and text were quite evocative. Yet, with these kinds of things, I try to remind myself that the perpetrators of these horrors are long gone. The important part is to prevent these sorts of things from happening again, because if all of these “debts” of our long-gone ancestors were to be repayed in kind, nothing would remain of humanity but a pile of corpses, nigh all of them innocents.
Personally, I hope for a future where our great-grandchildren will think of war and its horrors as a legend of the past, barbarity consigned to the history books, lest it be forgotten and repeated.
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