Really just listen to the power and poetic beauty of this song, especially it's lyrics and vocal intonations which so succinctly express our grounded reality so awkwardly and yet so beautifully combined with fascinating conspiracy theories about the possible existence of a subterranean ancient civilization and its "discovered" technological artefacts and his ability to entertain such ostensibly crazy theories but never be fully convinced by them. He also beautifully sings up a verse about racism throughout history in a way that gorgeously and successfully attempts to put himself within the truth that he is an aperture through which the Universe experiences itself, where he says he no longer cares whether "it's a black one or a white one out on the trail".
Throughout and within all this, he refers to so many grounded and seemingly menial aspects of existence, and despite this, still distills a clear beauty and significance to it all.
Even when openly admitting to his own insecurities and vulnerabilities by admitting he "left a nervous little boy out on the trail today" because he judged him to be "just a mortal for the shouting cavalcade" (think of a 15-19 year old working, and perhaps succeeding in and thus maintaining their first job at McDonalds), he also addresses death in such a beautifully allegorical way. As he sings and wrote: "I left my heart" (eg. faith in any old traditional or new secular religiosity of prolonged longevity as both a species and an individual) "to the wild hunt a'comin'" (eg: struggle and death, because both truly are inevitable, whether it's as soon as tomorrow or as distant as a billion years from now).
His willingness to be vulnerable enough to lay it all out in song speaks volumes of his courage. I mean, think about what he's really saying here: "I left my heart to the wild hunt a'comin, I live until the 'Call', and I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone... cus I'll be leaving in the Fall." In this case, the Fall is being used as a metaphor for death. It's also a cheeky Biblical and Greek theological reference to the Fall of Man and how imaginations of and beliefs in a utopian afterlife were and still are being used and abused as a collective form of self-medicating to relieve one of the fear of being dead.
Hopefully, when my time comes, "I will sleep out in the glade just by the giant tree, just to be closer when my spirit's pulled away..." (if you're missing the final two obviously implied words which were part of his final lonely thoughts, and yet which death would not give him the mercy to finish... think something along the lines of "...from me" in a way which truly gives this song a gorgeously spooky sensation in which you're not doing something so unnatural and impossible as speaking to the dead, but experiencing a truly ghostly presence felt by any and all witness(es) who are passing in a way which is natural and so simply down to Earth).
This song is an example of both music as well as poetry in absolute perfection.
Kristian Matsson is 5 feet and 7 inches tall.
A vast majority of studies have shown that some 68% of men are in or around this height, perhaps highlighting his own perception and fear of conformity.
Yet when he accidently stumbled across a way to make what he loved doing as a deep and genuine passion into a living, perhaps he was proving something. Perhaps he was proving he didn't fit standard category.
Perhaps it was his way of proving to both himself and this entire globular spec we call the 'world' that, in spite and because of his seeming mediocrity, he truly was (and still is) "The Tallest Man on Earth".
