To give personal thoughts based on my listening experience:
Stage 1 represents the bittersweet feeling that something is coming. The listener is able to enjoy their experience listening to the bright, jazzy music, but there is also a clouded veil over it- like things will not stay this way forever.
Stage 2 begins with a similar vibe to Stage 1, but this cloudy feeling grows heavier. No longer can the listener deny that something is happening around them. Memories that used to be clear and concise begin an internal battle to stay afloat.
The static and echoed effects grow much more present in Stage 3, as it becomes harder to hear the music clearly. Tracks frequently stop and start, and are interrupted by brief silences. It is becoming more difficult to feel comfortable and safe with the music playing, and confusion becomes much thicker.
In Stage 4, it is as if a switch has been flipped. The listener can no longer clearly discern when music is playing, as notes have begun to play for around half a second on average before cutting off. This stage introduces even more prominent feelings of confusion, but after a while this pattern of sound becomes somehow calming.
Stage 5 feels less like confusion and more like horror. The tone is dark and brooding, and noises weave together in loud entanglements of sound. Memories are vague and indecipherable, no matter how hard the brain attempts to make sense of them.
Stage 6 is a perfect conclusion to the project. The loud noises and static quiet down, making room for a calming sensation that foreshadows the end of everything. In the final track of this song, the listener experiences terminal lucidity, where memories come flooding back in the moments before death. Then, there is a minute of silence, representing the end of The Caretaker’s life.
Overall, I had a great time re-experiencing Everywhere. In terms of challenges I faced, I would say the time restraint created a lot of problems. I frequently felt like I didn’t have enough time to get everything I wanted done, and I was unable to investigate all of the concepts I had wanted to cover when initially starting my project. This means that my analysis wasn’t where I wanted it to be, and if I had more time, I could have performed a deeper analysis.
Another challenge was my mental health – the topic itself occasionally weighed on me, and made it very difficult to continue working on the project. I had to be in a very particular headspace to work on this project, and keep listening otherwise it would make me feel worse. However, I feel as though I have grown a lot throughout the course of this project. Through both my background research and my experience listening to Everywhere, I have learned a lot about the stigma behind dementia and the feelings of those who have personal experiences with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Everywhere at the End of Time is a groundbreaking experience, and if you ever find yourself in a good enough headspace to do so, I would highly recommend finding a day to listen to the project yourself. Learn about experiences you may not have personal connections to, and broaden your worldview. Even if you will never have to personally deal with dementia, take a step outside your own mind and try to connect with a different side of the human experience.