How Nightwish changed my view of life
Having an epiphany at 32 thanks to Charles Darwin and symphonic metal
TL;DR: a Finnish metal symphonic band has changed the way I manage my emotions about my purpose in life, by publishing a video of a 2015 concert with ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins, who quotes the words of Charles Darwin from a book published in 1859.
What was my outlook on life and how did a song change it? I try to explain this in this article, which is more of a personal journal during a stream of consciousness — but which I hope will help those who find themselves fighting bad emotions from time to time.
Nightwish: a symphonic metal band formed in 1996 in Kiite, with 9 studio albums and two harsh line-up changes.
Pioneers in mixing operatic singing with metal music, they came into my life in 2006, while their first singer — Tarja Turunen — was being fired from the band.
“What a pity, I found a great metal band the year they stop making music”. Nope, I couldn’t be more wrong.
Nightwish hired a new singer, Anette Olzon, and recorded two of the most successful albums in their history. Not for me, I hated them. I hated these albums until the lockdown, when I had the time and focus necessary to listen to the music and understand it, managing the old and new emotions that were brought out.
Returning to that time, while on tour Anette leaves the band and Floor Jansen — whom I already knew from After Forever and ReVamp — joins Nightwish to finish the tour. She soon became the official singer, the third in the band’s history. With her, the band releases three more albums, the latest this April.
Thanks to Floor, I begin taking singing lessons, eager to learn how to sing and how to excite the audience as she does in each performance.
But even then my outlook on life was unchanged: my life was insignificant, I felt useless, I had no purpose in life… I was just waiting to die while trying not to hurt the planet and other people too much.
Don’t get me wrong, my life is pretty good. I have a job, a house, a car, I’m in a relationship, my parents are alive and healthy, my cats tolerate me, and I may have learned how to take care of a plant: it’s a good life. But I couldn’t see it.
Sometimes I still do not see it.
That’s where The Greatest Show on Earth kicks in and saves me. It may seem too poetic and dramatic, speak of “saving someone”, but that’s how I felt at that moment. That moment, six days ago.
Six days ago Nightwish published this video on their YouTube channel. At that time, I’ve had already listened to the song several times, I’ve had already seen the DVD of this show, I knew the song… listen to it again would be a pleasure to my ears but nothing more.
I was wrong, again.
As I said before, during the pandemic I had the time, but above all the right attitude to listen to “my” music again. Slash and Myles Kennedy, Battle Beast, Blind Guardian, Beyoncé, Lizzo — she is the friend I didn’t know I needed. I really dived into my personal musical journey from the nineties till today.
Precisely for this reason, I decided to watch the video without any distraction: no email to write while listening or play games on the phone, nothing. This was probably the best decision I could have made, because the end result was, well, me crying, but crying for good reason.
At the end of the song, professor Richard Dawkins recite:
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
I’m going to die and that makes me lucky? Isn’t Death supposed to be a bad thing?
The quote continues, if possible worsening the situation, explaining how we won the genetic lottery at the expense of great scientists or artists who could have been born in our place — I didn’t have epiphany here, that’s for sure.
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
The potential people who could have been here in my place
But who will in fact never see the light of day
Outnumber the sand grains of Sahara
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats
Scientists greater than Newton.We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA
So massively exceeds the set of actual people
In the teeth of these stupefying odds
It is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds
How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state
From which the vast majority have never stirred?
Just when you may think it’s over, Richard Dawkins himself pops on the stage, quoting “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers
Having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one
And that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
According to the fixed law of gravity
From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
And most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
There is grandeur in this view of life […] from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful, and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
That’s it!
That’s the phrase that made me switch point of view. Darwin’s paragraph is the inspiration behind the album and also its title, I could have caught it sooner? Yes, but hey, I never said I’m a smart one. I needed two years of therapy to be prepared to deal with these emotions, but I’m ready now.
What I perceived — and I speak of a personal interpretation of melodies and lyrics, beyond the literal meaning of words — is that we are the fortunate ones who have the honor of living, seeing the world and experiencing it. It doesn’t matter if we are not the greatest singers of our century, or if we have not got through college: we are the Greatest Show on Earth, we are here and we should appreciate every second of it.
That’s why I started crying: I suddenly realized that I was a unique specimen, a genetic mix that will never repeat itself, that has the opportunity to live here and now. Even if I am not the most successful person, the most beautiful or the strongest in the world, I am here and, moreover, my life is not useless.
It is not necessary to leave a mark in the history of the Earth, it is not necessary for one’s life purpose to be something as high as peace in the world or the discovery of an alien people. Of course, it would be beautiful, but humanity does not only need that.
I can do something small, a tiny gesture of kindness, smile to someone, listening to a friend who need comfort, help a coworker finish his project… but add that act of kindness to the ones of all the people who have lived and live, and what we obtain is the evolution of the world itself.
I’m 32 and I’ve probably had *the epiphany* of my life listening to a song.
Is it weird? I don't’ think so. Music is made to inspire people and that’s what Nightwish did.
Is it weird writing an article about it? Maybe, but this guy had his life-changing moment thanks to a Chinese poem about water, gave a TED Talk about it, and helped people release toxic stress in less than 10 minutes.
That’s why I decided to publish this article, overcoming the fear of exposing my inner self, hoping to help someone else who is struggling as I did.
