(Not) Looking Back, Looking Forward: Post- and Future Memory in Everywhere at the End of Time

Everywhere at the End of Time is a six-album exploration of dementia by musician Leyland James Kirby as the conclusion of a twenty-year series of works released under the name "The Caretaker." When analyzed through the lens of trauma theory, this work raises a number of questions about the possibility of trauma in spaces beyond memory and into the future. Although the artist has stated in interviews that the idea is that the whole project suffers from dementia, the albums and the name "The Caretaker" also resonate on the level of a witness caring for a loved one with dementia. Additionally, with the breadth of a name like Everywhere at the End of Time, the work raises questions about the generalizability and scope of this depiction and the language of trauma to the loss of self and memory in death outside of the context of dementia. Finally, the way that internet culture has received this work highlights a lacuna in current trauma theories, that of the trauma of something likely but not guaranteed to occur, which has not yet happened: the potential trauma of one's bleak future. Overall, Everywhere at the End of Time resonates simultaneously along multiple traumatic wavelengths by drawing on the significant parallels between the loss of self in dementia and the loss of self in death more generally. In doing so, the album raises significant questions about Western attitudes toward death, what functions as trauma, and the affective functions of postmemory and of looking forward to what one can reasonably foresee in the future.

Everywhere at the End of Time is broken into six albums, from Stage 1 to Stage 6, each described in terms of dementia symptoms, effects on memories, and potential affective experiences of dementia both pre- and post-awareness. Kirby explains the idea behind the piece:

My final idea has been to give the whole project dementia. Originally I was going to make one recording and take it down into the abyss over a period of three years. So the idea would have been to do one recording and degrade it, to process it down so you would get a continuation from the start to the end point. But then I thought, "Wouldn't it be better to give the whole project dementia?" That then forces me to think, "Well, what do I remember from the project myself?" Because it's nearly 20 years since I started making the first record. And then I developed this idea of doing six releases each with a gap of six months between each one to give a sense of time passing.¹

Stage 1 is described as "the last of the great days" and contains upbeat, warm melodies with only a little static and names like "It's Just a Burning Memory" and "My Heart Will Stop in Joy." As the stages progress, the melodies begin to get lost in white noise, static, discordant pieces of other melodies, and abrupt jumps, skips, and repetitions. Transitions are sudden and frightening. Sometimes something almost like a voice comes in, through the crackling static and howling, impenetrable sound. It is bittersweet and nostalgic at first, then sad, and then disorienting and scary as one gets into the "post-awareness" stages, with tracks like "Post Awareness Confusions," "Temporary Bliss State," "Advanced Plaque Entanglements," "Synapse Retrogenesis," and "Sudden Time Regression into Isolation." Finally, one enters Stage 6, almost peacefully, but heartbreakingly, empty. Where the previous stages got paragraph-long descriptions, here we are told only that "Post-Awareness Stage 6 is without description." Then, in the last few minutes, in a track called "Place in the World Fades Away," the melody returns, warped but recognizable, and with haunting, unintelligible, but ethereally beautiful singing.²

Dementia as Personal Trauma

One of several trauma theory informed readings of Everywhere at the End of Time is as a personal trauma narrative. This is what Kirby himself had in mind when he chose to create this last piece of the "Caretaker" as a coda to the twenty...