lyrics:
I say, I say I don't want to be here 
anymore
This place, this place is worse than it ever was 
before
I always thought that I could be
something the world would think it would never see
But ending up being alone 
is what have taken all control

I hope that after this
that all I really wish 
will be possible to pursue for real 

Goodbye to all of you
I can't stand you seeing me lose 
We'll meet again sometime 
This is my suicide

-------------------------

Appendix:
The pseudonym Simon Lack has earlier been used as a pseudonym by danish poet Michael Strunge for his collection of poems, Verdenssøn (translated: Son of the World)(1985). This particular collection of poems does, as my song does, address the longing for another world when one feels that one is not in control of the conditions that one is living with. One is rather controlled by these conditions, which may induce one to ponder upon the consequences of suicide or to actually kill oneself. This is indeed a controversial subject to discuss, though it is also an important one. 

As Strunge writes: 

“I miss the dream of driving in a car
knowing that I will crash.
But I hate always waking up
not being able to sleep.” (The Dream of Crashing, Son of the World)

The subject of suicide has been examined by many great writers such as Shakespeare (e.g. Hamlet), Goethe (Sorrows of Young Werther), Lord Byron (Manfred), Flaubert (Madame Bovary), and Dostoyevsky (Demons). Though the circumstances behind each instance of suicide or pondering upon suicide can be very different, it seems that a number of particular occurrences of contemplation are to be found in almost every instance. The most encapsulating reflection upon suicide may very well be the most famous “to-be-or-not-to-be”-soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. An excerpt from the passage goes as follows:

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing them: To die, to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished.” 

The title 108,000 is a number that occurs in Dostoyevskyian novella Notes from Underground in a passage where the idea of a completely rational society in which everything can be calculated, including our individual future actions, is discussed and criticized: If nothing is left to be explored; if nothing is uncertain, what is one to do but to kill oneself? With this in mind, it seems absurd to aim for the so-called Crystal Palace; the society in which there will be no doubt; no questions that do not have answers; no art; no magic, no mystery. The number 108 is also a holy number in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, which I imagine Dostoyevsky has been aware of at the time.

The song has not been mastered at all due to a personal wish of keeping all dynamic nuances, as it were, intact. It is also partly because I need a digital mastering tool capable of showing the applied amount of compression throughout the song (on a two-dimensional mathematical diagram showing signal-amplitude over time), which is apparently nowhere to be found, and I do not know how to code. Because of this, one may have to turn up the volume.

All sounds except piano and vocals are made on a Moog Mother-32 semi-modular synthesizer. Except for a bit of eq’ing on the vocals and a bit of reverb on the piano, no effects have been applied to any of the individual layers of the song. 

The drawing on the cover is made by me (Oliver Carstens) using crayons on black paper. It is partly inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Scream and the idiom of Basquiat.

Simon Lack

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