Song 12 of 26 - The End of the World

The twelfth of the 26 songs is called "The End of the World". Scroll down below the following videos for the lyrics and a brief discussion of how this song ties into the project. A blog post which lists all 26 songs, including 1 video for each song can be found by clicking here.



A direct link to the above video is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Y9m34iJVY


THE END OF THE WORLD
words and music (c) by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)
The end of the world
Oft predicted, never realized
The end of the world
Never here, it’s such a surprise
How could millions be so wrong?
The end of the world
The end of the world
Has already been, it’s come and gone

Looking back through history
We oft encounter prophecies
Of end times so very very near
Next year, five years, ten from now
A state of flux, some way somehow
The process of postponement never clear

The end of the world…

With space and time a continuum
Of everything that is to come
And might have been, in one infinite ball
Multiple timelines, now I see
Apocalyptic destinies
Prophets proven prophets after all

The saucers?
Already landed
Our star bodies?
Already attained
Y2K? The global pandemic?
Huge disasters
The big freakin’ asteroid?
Destroyed the world

The end of the world
Oft predicted, never realized
The end of the world
Never here, it’s such a surprise
How could millions be so wrong?
The end of the world
The end of the world
Has already been, it’s come and gone
The end of the world has come and gone

This song, which is more of a tongue-in-cheek show tune, could be thought of as a companion piece to the song we just looked at, "The Anthropic Viewpoint". Here are song blog entries that talk about the ideas within this song:
FAQ 13 - Is this about The End of the World, the Mayan Calendar, Kurzweil's Singularity?
The End of the World, Death, and the Tenth Dimension
How to Make a Universe
Addictive Personality
The End of the World
The End of the World 2
Spirituality, Connections and the Tenth Dimension

One thing that should be clear from all this is that we're not necessarily talking about an apocalypse or an environmental catastrophe (or whatever) here: any of the other big shifts people are currently talking about qualify just as much as, let's say, World War III would, for creating an end to the world as we know it now. This is why I'm happy to lump the Mayan Calendar's accelerated world consciousness, or Kurzweil's Singularity, or everyone attaining their star bodies (and so on) under the general heading of "That End of the World". Again: no matter what prediction you care to look at, eventually it will either come true, or we will still all be here asking the people who made the predictions "how come nothing happened?". With songs like Everything Fits Together, The Unseen Eye, and The Anthropic Viewpoint, we have now arrived at a place where we can see that all of those other timelines may continue to exist as potential within the multiverse: they're just not part of the spacetime tree we're currently on.

Or, even more amazingly, some day we may well find ourselves on one of those timelines where one of these transcendent or frightening predictions do actually come true. This song shows us that a long history of failed predictions that the "end-times are nigh" should not leave us sitting smugly, saying to ourselves that it will never happen: after all, in the multiverse of all possible parallel universes for our universe, those predictions have already come true - somewhere, somewhen. Really, we have no way to prove one way or the other (until we get there!) which predictions will end up being true, and which ones will end up being hot air and much ado about nothing.

Next song: 13 of 26 - Blind Faith