The Last Place

On this day in history:

Guy Faux starts a new holiday in England.

Doc Brown fell in his bathroom and came up with the idea of the Flux Capacitor, the device which makes time travel possible.

V for Vendetta came out in theatres, and quickly spit on the original (and much more awesome) graphic novel.

I blogged about Walt being emo.

So yes. Songs of Parting is when Whitman makes a mixtape of Good Charlotte, Dashboard Confessional and My Chemical Romance, starts shopping at Hot Topic, and changes the background on his MySpace to black to further reflect the dark depths of his soul.

Ok, that may be exaggerating it, but yeah, Whitman knows he’s going to die and this is essentially his swan song.

Although I’m usually proven wrong each week when I get to class and find out that whatever I thought was going on was stupid and there’s actually a much better answer for what Walty meant in his poems, but I’m rolling with “Swan Song” for this one.

Maybe it’s because this is the deathbed Leaves of Grass, and this is the Songs of Parting, and he talked about death and dying the entire time, but I’m going to be shocked if thats a metaphor for anything other than he’s old and about to die.

This, of course kind of saddens me. I’ve developed a caricature of Whitman as a dirty old man who bears a passing resemblance of The Gordon’s Fisherman, and runs about at 2.5 BAC (Blood Awesome Content). But having him talk about dying is a total downer.

Now, of course I know he’s dead. He’s been dead for a while, but it’s still a bummer to have him empty his heart out after we’ve all developed a (albeit small) connection with the guy.

That said, it was a bit Sunny Day Real Estate for my liking. I tend to lean more towards a “Do not got gently into that dark night” flavor in my deathbed poetry, which Walt did jump too quite a few times, there was just a few too many Adam’s Songs in there that got me all :(ed.