Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 180: Zach

Prompt: "A song about forever"

Selected by Zach

"On and On and On"

Wilco

Sky Blue Sky, 2007

"So Moses, the servant of God, died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of God.: (Deuteronomy 34:5)

There's an idea that God dictated the entire Torah (Hebrew Bible) to Moses, who wrote down every word. If this sentence is part of the Torah, and it tells us that Moses died, how could Moses, himself, have written it? His death would have clearly precluded him from writing these words, or any further words at all.

Rashi, the foremost Jewish commentator on the Torah, brings the following answer: God did dictate these words to Moses, and Moses did write them down. When God told Moses to record his own death, however, Moses was overcome with emotion. He was unable to write the words with his typical steady hand. "God dictated the words," Rashi tells us, quoting the Tannaitic sage Rabbi Meir. "And Moses inscribed them with his tears."

Every time I think of YSC ending, I think of this idea.

Something so immense is coming to an end. We've all spilled so many words on this blog, about literally everything in our lives. How does one end such a project?

I picture myself sitting in my room, with a blank page in front of me. I have nothing new to say on Day 180. I want to wrap this up, and I don't know how.

So I cry.

I cry, and my tears fall on the page in front of me. And then, before I know what's happening, the tears that fall on the page start to take shape.

They form their way into words. Words that I don't know how to write myself. Words about everything and anything. About my dreams, and about anyone else's dreams. About hot takes on trivial music, about love letters to our favorite bands. About our families, and our soul-sucking problems, about love and hate and wars and political candidates and pop musicians and motherhood and fatherhood and Wilco and the Philadelphia Phillies and delis and sobriety and Bandcamp and commuting and so many other topics, literally any topic you can think of. Sentences multiplying upon themselves, words and words and words that spin and spiral out of control as the tears just keep falling and the tears just keep morphing and so you keep writing and writing and you don't even know what's coming out anymore, you can't even control it, the story just comes pouring out of you, you watch it take shape, you can't believe it, you can't believe you're capable of something like this, you never realized your soul could write the story of your life all on its own.

And then, out of nowhere, the tears stop.

I thought this life would go on forever. I thought I could write another 180 books with my tears, another 180 posts, the well never drying up, another endless resource in a world full of them. But the faucet has gone dry. There's no more crying to be done. Every word has already been written.

I take a step back. And my mouth drops open with wonder.

My tears have filled the page entirely. There are too many words to count. They all come together, blurring into the other. I can't read each word from this far away. But they've unmistakably bent themselves into a story. One that covers all of me and all of everyone else.

All along those tears, those words, moving me, step by step. To wherever "there" is. The endless journey, trying to get "there," and it hits me like a lightning bolt—I'm there, now. I'm there, and there's nowhere else to go.

***

So I type up these last few words as I listen to the Wilco song, the one I've cried to so many times, the one I'm crying to once again.

"Go ahead and cry," Tweedy sings. "On and on and on, we'll stay together yet."

There are only a few words left for me to write, only a few more tears left for me to cry. I want them to go on forever. I want to keep writing. Deep inside my heart, though, I know something. That there are no more words left to write.

Because we'll all stay together yet, however we will.

And I close the document, copy it to an email, paste it inside, type JMK's name into the "To" bar. I take a deep breath. My cursor hovers over the "Send" button.

And off it goes, and off we all go, into the scary and beautiful future.