Low, "Just Make It Stop" (Track of the Week)

Over on my Substack page I wrote about how January 6th is a test that we are currently failing. That reality is hard to hold in my head sometimes, as is a lot of news these days. The daily reports of carnage in Gaza and Ukraine fill me with such sadness, and America's political scene does not fill me with hope. It is hard not to get stuck in a doom loop.

Beyond distancing myself from social media, I have managed to cope by paradoxically embracing my negative emotions. Our broken world is a cruel, capricious place where virtue goes unrewarded and the worst people never face justice. If you try to deny that basic, unalterable fact you will make yourself insane with anger and grief. The best artists and philosophers instead teach us how to endure this existence and even flourish in it despite its inherent absurdity. 

To that end I have been reading Kierkegaard again, but also listening to the right kind of music. Last week while listening to WFMU I happened to hear the song "Just Make It Stop" by Low and it stopped me in my tracks. 

I'd listened to some of Low' music before, but not this song. For a band considered "slow core" it's pretty fast-paced. The lyrics, however, are harrowing. The singer's heart is broken by this world and she begs and pleads for all of it to just stop. She's not suicidal or anything, just tired and worn out and needing a break from the never-ending pain and horror that she knows actually will not ever stop. 

This is an emotion I have felt at many times in my life, a desperate need to escape the inescapable, cruel reality that none of us can break from as long as we are living. Kierkegaard calls despair "the sickness unto death," and "Just Make It Stop" articulates that feeling better than any other song that I've heard. In an especially cruel irony Mimi Parker, the singer of this song, was cut down by cancer in 2022.

Lest you think I am horribly depressed or something, I am not. Making peace with the wretchedness of this world is necessary to overcoming it. In a year that I am sure will prove to be an awful one, the soul needs preparation. Once we dispose ourselves of childish optimism, we can actually get down to the real work of fighting the good fight against the worst of this world, victory or no victory.