Sometime around the release of Ball of Wax 38: Songs of Protest, I began referring to the genre Virgin of the Birds occupies and has mastered as “Wiki Rock.” This is due to the large number and wide range of references that typically inhabit their songs. For that release, Virgin of Birds offered “In 1970, Across Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo Broke the Black Panther Party,” a song that in a small handful of verses travels backwards and forwards in time to reflect upon Frank Rizzo, the Black Panthers, Richard Nixon, MOVE, white flight, Nativism, Bishop John Hughes, John F. Kennedy, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Pelagius, free will, and T.S. Eliot. There are several Ph.D.’s waiting to be explored in this and other Virgin of the Birds songs . . . or days’ worth of web browsing and screen time for the less academically minded but equally curious listener. It is striking that the Virgin of the Birds track found on Ball of Wax 53 is without words.
“The Earth Won’t Die, We Will” is a quiet and contemplative instrumental piece. Without its title this song would sit comfortably with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports or as a companion to “Laura and Jennifer, Bright in Some Soft Sky,” the Virgin of the Birds’ song found on Ball of Wax 51: Long Songs. However, words are important, and these six little words employed by Virgin of the Birds steer the listener in a different direction. We live in a world out of balance. We will die. This is a certainty. A planet will remain.
“The Earth Won’t Die, We Will” is the soundtrack of what comes next. It evokes images of dust traveling across a barren landscape and plants reclaiming city sidewalks. But, as creatures of free will, one can, if one chooses to, also hear within the song a new day rising. Perhaps, if we can learn to live in harmony with the environment generously offered to us, the earth won’t die, we will, and in passing we will provide to future generations a life in balance with all that is around.
Perhaps if we were to again pair Virgin of the Birds with T.S. Eliot, we can hope to find some resolution. “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”