I throw this to the wind, but what if I was right? ...

Switching Off — Elbow, from the album Cast of Thousands

This is one of my all-time favourite Elbow songs. It chills me; hear me out on why.

Give it a listen and check out the lyrics and you’ll see what I mean. It tells the story of a dying man who, as his life replays before his eyes, picks out one coy evening spent with his lover. They weren’t consumed in lust, nor were they parted tearfully and at length.

He spent their “perfect day” “teaching her how to whistle like a boy”. There was nothing carnal too it, no pride, and no indulgence save for the company of one another. The memory is, to him, as ethereal, intangible but as clear as a “room in a radio play”. All else dies away, “all the clocks give in, and the traffic fades”, but there in his mind is the image of him and her. His life in an instant. Despite the highs and the lows that it knew, despite running to ground, he “came off pretty well” and made it through to this dying moment. This scene is what he chooses as his final view, so that in the end he is “switching off” with her.

I’m sorry, but how can that not be beautiful?