Eliot and Our Mediocre End

Song & video alluding to the master of half-hearted apocalypses

I “felt the song coming” late in May 2020. I sat outside—unfortunately on astroturf due to the landlord’s preference—bored from months of California lockdown and with a deep sense of dread in my chest about something.

I wasn’t unhappy that day particularly. It was just one long day among many where I would make a point to at least enjoy the sun in the backyard by the lemon trees.

But I felt the song that was scraping from inside, asking to be let out. Any serious artist knows the feeling.

It grew out of the phrase that had kept coming to mind characterizing our times, and especially our leaders, that was particularly agonizing to me: that our villains were exceptional only in their astounding mediocrity. “Mediocre villains, mediocre villains” kept reverberating in my brain, always followed with a slightly delayed remembrance of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Eliot: the master of expressing our whimpering arrival at half-hearted apocalypses.

I wrote it and 4 days later the George Floyd riots began and things really haven’t been the same since. We are still in free fall, but one that expresses itself in the cinematic slow motion so common in times of upheaval, personal and collective.

A little later, a Brazilian filmmaker reached out to film a video for the song, and this is what she did while we were miles away.

I thought some of you would appreciate it today, and so I share, with the lyrics below.

“Eliot”

Is this the way the world ends—with a whimper not a bang?

Mediocre villains; nonchalant decay?

Is this the generation that mocks at Noah’s Ark,

Dancing while it’s raining then drowning in the dark?

.

It’s funny how it feels like the world is turning fine:

Balanced on its axis, keeping perfect time.

Is this the generation where the cosmos start to shift,

And all we do is shrug and sigh while falling off that cliff?

.

Eliot, how’d you know then that we’d end up just like this:

Laughing while the world burns, betraying those we kiss?

Is this the generation where we see just what we are?

In a faithless, fallen world will we fight or join the ranks fallen stars?