If Someone Had Told Me

I really liked this song when I first heard it. I later realized that no one had put a cd version of this song, therefore I took the liberty to do so.

I wrote a little story to this song, and the video shows somewhat the story. The idea behind the story is... well... life after death.

The story is titled: "If Someone Had Told Me":

A man in his late 30's was on his way to a grocery store. He had just left his apartment. He was a guy who had lost hope on life. He had been dissappointed about many things that had taken place in his life. Slowly, he allowed the bits and pieces of everyday life, to chip him away. He was unemployed, his wife had left him, some of his children in jail, others he had lost touch with.

His routine was, whenever he got his social security income check, to visit whore-houses, the liquor store and your local crack dealer. That day, he had just gotten his checked cashed, and he had planned to buy liquor. As he went into an alley, he passed two men, who were smoking a few joints and talking. When he noticed that he was being followed, he got scared and turned back and forth. He walked quicker... he wanted to reach the major road. Fearing the worst, he began to run.

The thieves, determined to pounce on their prey before he got to the more lighted street, ran faster. The man trips as he ran and fell... As they reach him, they have no remorse or pity. They beat him and stab him, and drag him behind the trash canister. Before they leave him, they take his cash....

The man dies from massive bleeding... his body now lied there motionless. The moment his heart stopped beating... and consciousness on Earth gone forever, his spirit, began its trip into the afterlife.

Like the turbulent wind that is created by a vacuum, his soul was sucked into some sort of invisible cannal that flew him through the skies... through the stars, the galaxy and across the universe. He was eventually "drained" into an empty, white, deserted space.

There he sat, until that empty space darkened, and as it brightened once again... dark silhoutes appeared, revealing a massive crowd... He joined the millions of souls that were drained there already. Everything is so fast and sudden, that he doesnt even have time to realize what had happenned.

The only thing he could understand... is that what he could see. He saw a sea of people-spirits... and all of them seemed to be walking towards a special path, or road, that had one direction, no end and apparently, no beginning. The other spirits, now clear to his eyes, had translucent bodies. They seemed to take the shape of the body they left on Earth. He saw the different shapes of bodies, all ages... some even had glasses, some kiddies with their toys...

The man, before his tragedies, had always liked to explore... and saw this as a potential new beginning for him. "Is this the path to paradise?" he thought. He had always loved to "ride the wave" among the crowds in his younger days.

Still excited, and suspecting that he had died, he knew for sure that this was "another adventure, a new beginning" and finally, he thought, "I can now rest" and "reach the paradise." He questioned nothing and ran into the "path." He was eager to pass people, to slide through others, pass the slower ones, and push himself through towards what he thought was the end of the road. He pushed and pulled, pressured others out of his way, and to others he moved them out of his path... He did this for hours.

As his excitement died down... within this path obscured by the millions of others... he realized that there had been nothing new to discover. Eventually, he too was being pushed and pulled by the new comers. People-spirits, acting instinctively, and selfishly, hurt each other, fought and competed amongst themselves... to see who could get "there" (paradise, I supposse)... first. He soon began to think about his home. The very few things that he once owned, were now gone forever. His TV, his apartment, the people he knew, the contact with his family. He remembered how beatiful his youth was (he loved nature), and he remembered how he used to dress "to impress." He now owned nothing but his naked, translucent body... and his deteriorating memories. Now, he could not remember the name of his loved ones...

New waves of souls arrived every second. No one ever spoke, for... there were no voices that could be made from thin air.... on top of that... no one recognized anybody else... as time passed, they all slowly lost their unique facial characteristics and shapes... all turned into silhoutes... like stick figures... looking the same.

What remained... still... was his ability to think.... And the sudden realization struck him... he was alone. He had no one to speak to, he had lost everything... and he began to accept that death was not like what he thought. He saw what happenned to those that fell behind. He turned to see... and all those he had pushed aside... seemed to be far behind, hidden between the masses... and he could still, not see the beginning.. nor the end to that matter... of that path.

He had always thought that "heaven" would be like the stories he heard in life. They talked of peace, brotherhood, rest, of 'finding yourself with your kind'... flowers, weightlessness, being worry-free... Life would be paradise. He never argued this, because it was a well accepted idea that that's how it was going to be like when you died.

The idea of life after death as it now unfolds before him, was not how he always thought of it. There was no rest. There was no weightlessness... there was a pulling force that you fought in order to not be left behind. You must lose your identity and yourself. You must go along with the rest and shove, pull and push yourself forward amongst the crowds so that you were not left behind. There was no home. The purpose of this life was to move and run to a place you couldnt see. You were squished in with the rest of the crowd and stampeded others... the way large crowds do when they run towards exit doors, along narrow hallways, during an emergency.

There were no gods, no angels and luckily... no devils... and there was no need for them... the company he was with, was evil enough. The idea that he was going to be here for an infinite amount of time... this place which was now going to be his reality... was evil enough. He knew only one thing to be real... uncertainty. Every day now seemed like it was going to be... the same as the last one.

He turned to see other souls... expressionless... "Were these good people, disappointed at the fact that they had no justice in the after-life for all their good deeds done in life?" he thought... "Who knows? They can't speak. Who knows how long they've been walking..."

Stopping means that he will be pulled back by others... he will be pushed... and he will roll past everybody else... and he does for a while... he extends his arms out and holds on to whatever his hands are able to grasp... this gives him enough time to think...

"Damn..." he said to himself... "if someone had told me this to begin with... I would have probably enjoyed my life a little bit better."