Here’s another lockdown video for you , once more from a remix of an old recording of one of my songs. The views of The Vegetable Man have been encouraging, so the effort seems worthwhile.
This one’s in darker vein than the last, and would probably be more effective when countries produce their first emergency budgets after lockdown and, in the UK particularly, reveal just how big a knife we’ve stuck in the economy. The Nobel Prizewinner Michael Levitt estimates that, whereas the usual averaged cost of a death (using “quality added life years,” or “QUALYs”), and therefore the “economic” health cost of saving it medically, is £40,000, the cost of each and every COVID death, because of lockdown, probably runs into millions. Bearing in mind that the a majority of those dying would have perished from other causes within the year, statistically, that is a high cost indeed.
Anyway, back to the song. Because it is basically the apocalyptic imagery of the Revelation of John set to music, it was culturally relevant even when I wrote it many years ago, but the video tries to map the images rather literally to the current state of the world.
The almost subliminal images are deliberate – the Book of Revelation is awash with significant details that are lost on the reader until further reflection. It seems likely the book was written to be read out loud to the churches, and then taken and studied against the Scriptures by their prophets and teachers to understand more fully. So for any of you willing to embrace my pretensions, a second viewing with finger hovering over the “pause” button is required!
There is hope in the darkness, but not from the strategies of activists, politicians or scientists.