Verbally Described Meme #81: Everywhere At The End of Time
Request by YouTube user MrAwesome172
Presented without description
#verballydescribed #verballydescribedmemes #memes #audio #thecaretakerchallenge #Everywhereattheendoftime #TikTok
Transcript:
A TikTok trend requested by the YouTube user MrAwesome172, which shows people listening to the musical series Everywhere at the End of Time created by the the Caretaker. The music explores the concept of Alzheimer's and memory loss. This has a complete runtime of about six and a half hours and participants would film their reactions over the course of an entire day. The trend started going viral around the beginning of September 2020. participants listen to six different "stages" of the album, each depicting a different stage that an individual goes though while suffering from dementia. The music starts out as slowed down ballroom dance music which progressively goes through distortions, temporal shifts, reverberation, and other digital effects which mimics the progressive decrease in function and capacity of a dementia patient. Participants would document their own experience, mental state, and emotive response (often exaggerated for viral effect like this guy). Overlaying music from the specific sections, people would give their own breakdown of the section. Oftentimes there would be significant warnings for people attempting the challenge to only do so in a positive mental state as it's a challenging piece to confront.
The Caretaker was a moniker created by musician James Leyland Kirby. The different stages have been released from 2016 to 2019, with the final stage coming out in March of 2019. As of November 2020 there are almost 5 million views on the YouTube video of the entire project. There is much critical acclaim and publications remarking on the viral aspect of this challenge and the reception of it by an unexpected audience. Each of the stages has a corresponding painting that was created by the artist Ivan Seal, which explores the concept of Alzheimer's and memory loss. The first stage is characterized according to section titles like "It's just a burning memory, we don't have many days, slightly bewildered, all that follows is true, quiet internal rebellions, my heart will stop in joy" and is defined by Kirby "Here we experience the first signs of memory loss. This stage is most like a beautiful daydream. The glory of old age and recollection. The last of the great days"
The second stage is described as "...self realisation and awareness that something is wrong with a refusal to accept that. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in. The third stage "Here we are presented with some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists form and fade away. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled. As we progress some singular memories become more disturbed, isolated, broken and distant. These are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages." Stages 4 5 and 6 are what he deems the "post-awareness" stage filled with failure to recall the theme, horror and confusion. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. Stage 6 is presented without description.
The album is exceptionally well acclaimed for it's portrayal of a horrible disease that is fundamentally unrelatable. Brian Browne, the president of Dementia Care Education, an organization which trains real caretakers, praised the work for its expression of the disease, stating that "it's a much welcome thing, because it produces the empathy that's needed" for young people who otherwise would not understand how dementia affects patients.