At the Bottom of Everything

**At the Bottom of Everything** is the first song on the Bright Eyes album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. A music video was created for this song.

## Lyrics

**[Spoken]**

So there was this woman and she was, uh, on an airplane and she's flying to meet her fiancé, sailing high above the, the largest ocean on planet Earth and she was seated next to this man who, you know, she had tried to start conversations, and only, really the only thing she'd heard him say was to order his Bloody Mary. And she's sitting there and she's reading this really arduous magazine article about a third-world country that she couldn't even pronounce the-the name of and she's feeling very bored and very despondent. And then, uh, suddenly there's this huge mechanical failure and one of the engines gave out and they started just falling, thirty thousand feet. And the pilot's on the microphone and he's, he's saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh my God, I'm sorry" and apologizing and, and she looks at the man and she says, she says, she says, "Where are we going?" and he looks at her and he says, "We're going to a party, it, it's a birthday party, it's your birthday party, happy birthday darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much." And then, uh, he starts humming this little tune and, and uh, it kind of goes like this, it's kind of...

One, two, one, two, three, four

**[Lyrics]**

We must talk in every telephone, get eaten off the web

We must rip out all the epilogues from the books that we have read

Into the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair

We must stare, we must stare, we must stare

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell

Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell

Into the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn't dream

We must sing, we must sing, we must sing

(And it'll go like this, all right...)

While my mother waters plants, my father loads his gun

He says, "Death will give us back to God

Just like the setting sun

Is returned to the lonesome ocean"

And then they splashed into the deep blue sea!

Oh, it was a wonderful splash!

We must blend into the choir, sing as static with the whole

We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul

And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won

We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry where the bats and moonlight laugh

We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past

Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love

We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

(And then we'll get down there, way down to the very bottom of everything

And then we'll see it, oh, we'll see it, we'll see it, we'll see it)

Oh, my morning's coming back, the whole world's waking up

All the city buses swimming past

I'm happy just because

I found out I am really no one

## Notes and references

* The plane crash in the introduction is most probably a reference to a similar event in *White Noise* by Don DeLillo, whose work Conor was reading when he was writing this song (evident in the lyrics of Gold Mine Gutted, with the line "It was Don DeLillo, whiskey neat"). In the novel, the protagonist, Jack Gladney, and his ex-wife, Tweedy, are driving around the airport before picking up their daughter, Bee, who is flying in from Washington after a stay in Surabaya, Indonesia. When they arrive, the airport is in chaos. The flight before Bee's had lost power in all three engines and dropped twenty thousand feet in the air. While the passengers panicked, two voices came on the intercom. The first one was hysterical: "We're falling out of the sky! We're going down! We're a silver gleaming death machine!" The second one was calm and precise, even hypnotic: "...Our fear is so pure, so totally stripped of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, so to speak. They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance." When the parents reunite with Bee, she expresses incredulity at the lack of media: "They went through all that for nothing?"
	+ The parallels are clear: the woman and her fiancé (Tweedy and her new husband), the third-world country (Indonesia), the mechanical failure, the two contrasting voices, and the detachment with/acceptance of mortality.

## Music video

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## Sources

**B-sides:** "Well Whiskey" • "I Woke Up with This Song in My Head This Morning" • "True Blue" • "When the President Talks to God"