Older: One hour, twelve minutes, three seconds of my life.
They Might Be Giants wrote a song about time running out. I started a stopwatch and wrote about dying, and the heat death of the universe.
00:06.42
This song haunts me.
To help me feel the excruciated weight of existential dread that it places on my chest when I think about it too long, I decided to start a stopwatch while I write this.
01:45.36
Undoubtedly, one of my worst ideas. To be aware of the relentless marching of time in the back of my conscious thoughts is one thing. To glance down and see a timer displaying how much time has passed since I began writing is another. But the feeling I have while typing these words right now is very similar to the sinking feeling I get when I think about how much closer I am to the end of my life. And that is exactly the emotion I want to convey while I talk about this song.
04:26.25
The song itself is about 60 beats per minute which means for every beat, you are one second older. In a way, the song is talking to us about how the song itself, the day that we’re listening to it, and our own existence will be at an end soon.
There are two versions of Older with the main differences being some vastly different instruments being deployed. My preferred version comes from the Long Tall Weekend album (see the footnote below1). The Mink Car version is lead by a Contrabass Sarrusophone2 and a Rauschpfeife3 with John Flansburgh stepping in for the bridge vocals. Other than that, these are very much the same song.
07:40.44
It took me way too long to write that little blurb. If I’m being honest with you, the stopwatch gimmick is wreaking havoc on me. Admittedly, I paused it yesterday and walked away from this after just 4:26 minutes. I’m not going to count the time unless I’m actually sitting to write but still…
My mind keeps drifting to the fleeting nature of time and existing. It feels like too much pressure.
10:19.10
You ever go shopping at a place where you have to bag your own groceries? The anxious feeling that you aren’t moving fast enough and the people in line behind you are being held up? Or like being in a Costco on any given busy day and no matter where you stand to look at something you want to buy, you feel like you are immediately blocking someone’s way?
I feel like that right now.
Often, I feel like that when it comes to time passing in general. An appointment coming up after an already scheduled thing during the my day. Or thinking about how many more of my kids’ birthday’s I’ll be lucky enough to live to see. It all moves so fast. I’ll try to focus.
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13:31.34
In some promotional materials for the album, John Linnell and Flansburgh said that Older was “just as current today as it was earlier today.”
This is some classic recursive speak coming from the Johns, particularly from Linnell. The entire song has a sort of light mood, silly-vocal-affectation vibe that gives it this exaggerated Father Time feeling. I think, if you were to do a song like this completely straight, it would maybe come across too heavy or melancholy. Which hasn’t stopped them before (looking at you, Piece of Dirt.)
The sweet spot for TMBG is the often happy sounding, upbeat feeling song with the existential dread filled lyrics. That’s over simplifying but this stopwatch next to my keyboard is just… still counting.
17:31.19
Verse 1 begins with:
You're older than you've ever been
And now you're even older
and verse 2 brings us:
This day will soon be at an end
And now it's even sooner
During the bridge, when the rhythm stops and time appears to stand still in the song, Flansy shouts:
Time
Is marching on
and time
is still marching on
His point is hammered in by several consecutive bursts of instruments. In a moment where we might feel a respite from the entropy of the universe, the song keep remind us. There is no escape from time.
21:55.92
According to several different lifespan calculators, barring some unforeseen event, I’ll live - on average - to the ripe old age of 81 years old. That puts me in the middle aged part of my life. The Autumn if you will. Not news to me but I’m 46 years into my existence and I have around that much more ahead of me.
After I’m gone, my friends will shortly follow. Anyone I worked with, and the within 20-30 years, my kids will as well.
My dad sharing my first coconut with me when I was 2. Spending the night with my best friend and playing Street Fighter II until 3 in the morning. My first kiss. My kids being born, making them enormous blanket forts, watching them grow into adults.
Within 100-200 years (and that’s being very generous), there will be nobody alive who has a memory of these things. It will all truly be erased. Lost to time.
In fact, eventually, there will be a death for every particle of matter in the universe.
32:06.15
Depending on how the human race goes, maybe this newsletter is preserved somehow for a longer amount of time. Let’s suppose it continues existing for 500 more years after I’ve died and everyone who knew me or has a memory of anyone who knew me has also died. At a certain point, billions or trillions of years from now, there won’t be a planet Earth. Our sun will go supernova and envelope it completely.
100 billion years from now, galaxies will drift too far apart to see each other until, eventually, the last stars will burn out. About one hundred billion trillion trillion years (10^34 Years) after you read this, proton decay begins. All matter in the universe will begin to dissolve. Existence will begin consisting of only black holes and light. Until 10^100 Years from now when the last remaining supermassive black hole completely evaporates.
There will be
nothing.
50:47.07
To me, Older is not just a clever song about aging while listening to the song. It is a haunting reminder that time is running out.
You are reading an essay of sorts about a song that will end. Written and performed by artists who will be gone one day. An essay typed up on a keyboard and PC that will dissolve into nothing from an author with a comparatively speaking very short amount of life left. The device you are looking at right now is running out of time along with everything you’ve ever known and everyone who has ever known you.
Since you first began reading this post, you are now even older. And time has continued marching forward toward that inescapable end of all things. This song is why I can’t sleep at night.
1:12:03.23
You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.
See all Mink Car posts - Start Here
Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)
My Favorite Version (and official video for Older)
Contrabass Sarrusophone in action:
Learn something about the Rauschpfeife:
I choose not to be creeped out by the song but both musical deliveries here (and the performance video) lean into that interpretation, so I get where it comes from. OK, so here's my positive spin: at the end of the song, I'm two minutes older, and two less minutes remain in this life of mine. How did I spend them? By listening, respecting, appreciating a TMBG song (probably while driving to/from work or to some other errand-accomplishing destination). I didn't spend those two minutes listening to bozo sports analysts or bozo news pundits acting like bozo sports analysts. I didn't spend it arguing with anyone or doing anything useless or negative. Any given two minutes seems minute and inconsequential but I'm 57 and aware that what's left of this life of mine should not be treated so. For what it's worth, I deeply hold and profess a faith in Jesus, and experience the spiritual blessings that accompany that, so that probably mitigates the fears I could have about reaching this two-thirds (or beyond) stage of physical life. But what I do acutely feel is that each activity and its duration is a choice. What is worth reading, doing, listening to, accomplishing, participating in, serving, during the opportunities this day presents? Right now, the best thing I can think of is to compose this comment--hopefully primarily out of appreciation and respect for the time you, Chase, take to make these posts, with my prayer that you might find it somehow encouragjng, and not out of my own selfish anticipation of any response of yours to my thoughts here.
I don't think They-ir point of view is that time is running out, but that it marches on. These are different things. Yes, the day (my life here) will soon be at an end and now it's even sooner, but there will be a next day, and a next, and a next, for a very long time. What we do each day leaves traces for us and others to carry on and do something with next. Maybe that's serving coffee-ish drinks, as my daughter is doing right now, all day at a swanky hotel nearby to sometimes very friendly, sometimes over-entitled customers, and doing that with a pleasant smile and attitude she may not actually be feeling in those moments, yet she still briefly blesses their day. Maybe that's scoring homework and tests, as I need to do this weekend, for students who care far less about seeing and contributing to the beauty of mathematics than about getting good final marks. Maybe that's celebrating a colleague's retirement later today--about as positive an event as possible when it comes to reminding people that they are older than they have ever been and will not get younger. Maybe that's having less beer at said event than I would really like to have, so that I will feel good enough Sunday to have more good choices about ways to spend that day. And maybe it's just washing my daughter and son-in-law's days-old dishes so they have a little more of their limited time together today to not do chores. Hopefully all of those choices contribute by their traces, if only incrementally, infinitesimally, to a better way people live, feel, believe, work, serve, do math, do dishes, read, listen, comment, encourage, support, enlighten, self-educate, self-entertain, etc., long past the years when all memory of me specifically in this world has disappeared.
I hope no one ran a stopwatch while reading this comment that severely reaches into "shut up and go get your own blog" territory. You would have been better off listening to another TMBG song. But Chase, thanks for your time spent writing what you write here and any attention you gave this rambling shamble.
A note of musical appreciation: Flansburgh's "Time! Is marching on!" interruption reminds me very much of that other other John's beautiful interjection that "Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend." I don't know if Flansburgh & Linnell ever work full Lennon-McCartney mode, but this is one of a few moments where we hear something like that from Them.
Love this post! I, too, prefer the Long, Tall Weekend version. I had forgotten about the Mink Car version. My very first TMBG post featured this song. The TMBG wiki says that Flansburgh isn't credited on the song, which is surprising if true.
I love the stopwatch idea, and I can see how it would be anxiety-provoking. I still think it's a great concept, especially since you faked it after the first day. For some reason, I thought you were going to do it backward. Like giving yourself a countdown to finishing the post. I don't think that would make you younger, but it's worth a shot.