"Earthmover" and the false consolation of invulnerability
"Earthmover" by Have A Nice Life tells the story of the powerful beings -- "golems" -- whose job it is to destroy the Earth at the end of time. They grind the mountains into nothing, leaving only "dust and sand." Furthermore, they have stone skin so tough that they are completely impervious -- they feel no sensations, and certainly no pain. Still, they are cursed with the predicament of being alive -- like humans, they have desires ("And want is not a need / Reserved for human beings"; it's a "pain that all things know"). Thus, even these mighty creatures who feel nothing suffer. The final lyric is the "just one word" they utter from their mighty mouths: "We wish we were dead." This is followed on the track by a 6-minute instrumental breakdown that seems to me to be joyous. It is a celebration that, their job finally done, the creatures are able to go into the silence of death forever.
The song also includes this couplet, which repeats four times:
More than a symbol,
More than I bargained for
Here the speaker is speaking as a human, telling us that, like many of us, he has also wished to be unfeeling, invincible and all-powerful. The wish promises an escape from our cares and pains. But the experience of the golems shows that this is an illusory promise -- it is no escape from the cycle. The golems are unfeeling and called on only to destroy, but they are not free of desire, and themselves hope for the escape of death. To be granted the wish of invulnerability, the speaker realizes, would be more than he bargained for, and less than he'd hoped for. The instrumental celebration that closes the song doubles as a celebration of this incremental wisdom. In a way it is a celebration of life. Giving up what is soft and vulnerable about us would not actually make the suffering go away; why do it?