“Afterlife, Oh my God, what an awful word.”
Indeed.
This claim echoes a question at play throughout Reflektor. On the lead track, Butler’s Orpheus passes into the realm between the living and the dead and declares:
“If this is heaven, I don’t know what it’s for,
If I can’t find you there, I don’t care.”
And again,
“If this is heaven, I need something more,
Just a place to be alone, ’cause you’re my home.”
The same phrase shows up again in “Here Comes the Night Time”
“If there’s no music up in heaven then what’s if for.”
All of these moments on Reflektor beg the question of whatever lies beyond the experience of human death. The existential experience of love so powerfully grips and thereby transcends human existence that it has been classically deified by humans for millennia. The very phrase “God is love” betrays this classic identification. When we love deeply, we know we connect with something ecstatic; that is, something that has being beyond ourselves.
Music functions the same way existentially. As love is a “language” that transcends human experience in a “we know it when we see it” sort of way, so music has existential power that has the same ecstatic effect. There is something in a good rhythm that moves me and moves us together. The “muses,” to connect with a classic representation, transport us by song to another realm of experience. The muses speak to us from beyond, simultaneously communicating the essence of something present to us yet ultimately beyond the range of our everyday experience. Artists for millennia have praised the Muse for artistic inspiration and sought after their muse for the power to create. And when the Muse speaks, beauty emerges, and the result is often something that draws us – whether by art, or music or poetry – into the another, transcendent realm.
Whether we are talking about love, music, justice, truth or a number of other classic ideals, the question Arcade Fire raises throughout Reflektor is whether these things by their very nature point us to the possibility that life is not limited by human experience; that death is not the end of life. As the sense of the eternal embodies these ideals, so the essence of life these realities embody must endure. In the Orpheus myth, this is how he can move into death and draw Eurydice forth; by the power of love and beauty in song. There is no afterlife, only life manifest in human existence and something else that ultimately correlates with the ideals experienced in the course of human striving.
We hear this approach to life, death and the beyond throughout the song “Afterlife.” We find ourselves playing in the Orpheus myth once again as Win and Regine call back and forth to one another throughout the song as if across the chasm between life and death. In the second stanza, the initial question that is raised questions the finality of human experience in death. “Can we work it out?…Scream and shout ’till we work it out?” Whether the song imagines a conversation between humanity and God working out the sins carried over from life on the way to eternity, or a conversation between Orpheus, Hades and Eurydice, the quest is for some sort of continued conversation – and life – in the beyond. However, things move forward as Orpheus, let us assume, sees across the chasm to “what happens next” when he sees “just a glimpse of you” and wonders “could you see me?” This new insight convinces him that there just might be a possibility of continuity across the divide between life, death and the beyond. Whatever it is, “It’s like nothing else we used to know.”
With this, the inquiry in the song continues with the question uttered from beyond, “When love is gone, where does it go?” Here we encounter one of our ideals and the import seems to be that the experience of the move from life to the beyond correlates with the essence of love. As even the Apostle Paul admits, “Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13.8). So, Eurydice, calling from the other side, provocatively questions whether love truly ends. Likewise, the question is raised, “And where do we go?” Again, the import seems to be that if love endures, so existence also endures. Thus the final affirmation of the song as it fades into the beyond, “it’s just an afterlife, with you.” Both love and being endure the journey from life through death to the beyond, affirming a continuity and connection between human existence and heaven.
We also encounter this idea in “Reflektor.” When Orpheus cries out to Eurydice, “Will I see you on the other side?” He questions across the chasm between the realms of the living and the dead. If love, beauty and justice are the essence of life, then perhaps the “afterlife” is a reflection of “life.” This is, in fact, what Orpheus experiences. The power of his music to animate objects in the human realm also persuades Hades to release Eurydice. Could it be that the experience of the beyond correlates with human experience? If not, then what are the value of truth, beauty and justice? Do they simply refer to great human ideals, are they unrealizable pointers to something ultimate, or could they possibly participate in a reality that transcends human experience to the degree that it also draws us into that experience both now and in the future? When we experience something truly beautiful, do we in fact get a taste of heaven? Or even an actual experience of the beyond? I think Arcade Fire would say that yes the ecstatic existential experiences of love and joy bridge the chasm, and we find in these moments that earth and heaven are – if only for a season – one.
The potentially reflective nature of reality between the realms of life and death leads nicely into a consideration of the last song on the album, “Supersymmetry.” In theoretical physics, supersymmetry is a principle included in several theories that address key anomalies in what is called the Standard Model for understanding the cosmos. [Watch this helpful video from Fermilab] The principle of supersymmetry posits that the equations that describe cosmic forces and the equations that describe matter are identical. Because of the fact that the principle of supersymmetry makes rational sense but has not necessarily been observed makes it very difficult to disprove. However, the recent discovery of what may be the Higgs-Boson particle could turn the tide of physics toward a theory based on the principle of supersymmetry and suggest that, in fact, force and matter share a symmetrical relation. This is akin to saying that matter and spirit correlate, which sounds very similar to what Arcade Fire are moving toward in their discussion of “afterlife” on Reflektor.
The lyrics of “Supersymmetry” play this principle out existentially. The singer longs for one who “lives in my mind” as a memory, which he tries to supplant by reading books as he lays in bed by the window where he has been for a year. The situation sounds like one of deep love lost. Maybe, again, like Orpheus’ loss of Eurydice. But then, in the midst of his longing and despair the singer hears her voice like an echo. Is this Eurydice calling from across the chasm; the force that is reflected by the world of experience? Does the singer experience supersymmetry in the course of existence? Does the principle of supersymmetry work in this scenario and, if so, does the same dynamic play itself out throughout the cosmos? Arcade Fire appears to posit that it may be so, not only in the story but also in the very structure of the song. One of the unique features of supersymmetry is that when the song is played backward, it sounds nearly like it does when played forward. Arcade Fire record a song that has the principle of supersymmetry in order to affirm the notion, particularly as applied to human experience relative to an inquiry into the nature of what lies on the other side of life and death in human experience.
Such a perspective negates the common, Christian understanding that the experience of heaven is radically other than human experience. These songs cut against the grain of the classic spirituals that posit the future experience of the glories of heaven in contrast to the suffering and struggle of human existence. As the incarnate One comes with the promise of redemption in the present that leads out into the future, both within the context of human being and beyond, I think we see some room for the endurance not only of human personality (note those waiting under the altar in Revelation) but for love, joy, truth and justice. Note that when Jesus returns in the vision of Revelation, the new heavens and new earth come along with him and we enter that experience. This is not an experience of radical difference, but continuity. We are who we are, God remains who God has been, and the quality of relationality between us and God that sustains human life carries over. There maybe be a qualitative difference, but what we call love, joy, truth, justice, beauty correlates and participates in the future reality. it is not entirely other. If this is not the case, then we must find a compelling response to Arcade Fire’s initial question, “what’s it for?”