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admits . So her passing hit them all equally hard . And it brought up the existential question of which is worse for a loved one – a quick , painless death , without closure , or a protracted illness , wherein relatives have time to tie up loose ends ? “ And I ’ ve heard it both ways ,” Sanders muses . “ When it ’ s slow and really horrific to watch happen , some people are like , ‘ I wish this would have happened quickly – this is wrong and undeserved .’ And I ’ ve heard other people when it ’ s quicker , go , ‘ Oh , my God – I didn ’ t have time to say goodbye !’ So I guess it ’ s just bad , either way .” Which leads to the moral of the story , a variation on the old Nike slogan . How many times have you attended a funeral or memorial service , bumped into a friend from the past , and both scratched your heads , wondering why you haven ’ t how it ’ s a therapy for us , because we pull positives from this severe darkness . And so can you . So it ’ s basically how we deal with grief , and I ’ ve never realized until now how incredibly powerful a positive attitude is . For me , personally , being hit with something this heavy , it was like , ‘ Alright – we ’ re going to do whatever it takes to get through this .’ Otherwise , I could have easily gone into a stupor , put my head in a corner and cried in a fetal position and just started the downward spiral into nothing . So we ’ re thankful to have this place where we can put all these thoughts and moments of grief and anger , and create something good out of it .”
The Brendan O ’ Brien-produced Emperor has a Far Eastern , almost Indian feel , even though it ends in the verdant jaguar jungles of Mexico . Those influences
26 illinoisentertainer . com march 2017 stayed in touch ? he asks , rhetorically . Then you make plans to get together again , but you rarely follow through – the fast pace of your individual careers , and indeed life itself , practically precludes it . “ I ’ ve had that conversation , and I ’ ve overheard that conversation , dozens of times ,” he says . “ So one of the bottom lines of this record of ours is , if you ’ ve been planning a trip , or you want to upgrade your house , or you want to take your parents on this vacation , or do something special with your girlfriend or wife ? Just do it . That ’ s something that no one should need to be reminded of .”
And yet … Our very online-centered culture is leading inextricably to a numb , depersonalization , best exemplified in that classic South Park episode where the family loses the Internet , and has to pack up the station wagon and searching for it like Dust Bowl Okies . And when two long-distance chatroom chums finally meet face to face at a migrant-workers camp , they have absolutely no idea what to say to each other without the safe distance of their devices . With the web up and running again , they ’ ll text each other when they get back home , they nervously tell each other . Mastodon stands as the warm , heartfelt antithesis to such cold , clinical technology . “ And we ’ re comfortable writing about all this because , One , that ’ s how we prefer to write , being very real , and Two , it ’ s extremely relatable ,” Sanders elaborates . “ Everyone on Earth has been – or will be – touched by something horrific or tragic , so we ’ re sharing this , and how we think , and didn ’ t pop up by accident . When the Sanders clan was blindsided by the deadly disease , they didn ’ t have time to react – they had to treat it immediately , with trusted Western methods like radiation and chemotherapy , which seem to have worked . But that didn ’ t stop the man from considering other forms of medicine from around the world , like Mexico ’ s Hoxley Clinic , which has a highly successful remission rate , or the basic diet in India , where the cancer rate is much lower than in fast-food-devouring America . “ I can ’ t believe that I wasn ’ t awakened to those numbers a long time ago ,” he says . “ But a lot of times , you ’ re uneducated about things until a subject really hits you . So when this hit , one of my first thoughts was , ‘ I ’ d like to explore alternative methods .’ But there was no time to explore that . So we ’ ve summoned the spirit of the jaguar god , and Mexico is a place that we want to travel . And we want to visit the Hoxley Clinic and just talk to people there , because we find it fascinating . So maybe we ’ ll tie that in with a beach vacation down there or something .”
This , in part , explains why Sanders was a Game of Thrones no-show – real life simply demanded that he be somewhere else . Somewhere more gut-level important . And real life , John Lennon once said , is what happens when you ’ re busy making other plans . What has Sanders learned from Mastodon ’ s trial by fire ? He has a ready response . “ The first thing that comes to mind is how I spend my time ,” he says .
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