This is no idle musing on things that might be; it's tangible fact that the entire thing is finite, that whenever the force so chooses, this world is next in line. Whenever I've been confronted with this fact, there has always been a song in (or close to) my head. It makes me wonder: all the years of careful attention to this form, and what I go down with is something arbitrary, something that makes no statement. No great line of Dylan or particularly pretty melodic turn of Lennon/McCartney. All the years' worth of material that I've accumulated would be worth naught. It is partly a directive to go ahead and listen to all that music that's been piling up. Yet it's partly a reminder that music can save your life, but it sure ain't going to cause the earth to stop shaking.