I’ve written about this motherfucker twice already, so I’m not going to get into another long spiel about it. If you want to know what I wrote before, check it out here and here. Outside of this, I wasn’t about to let the completion of this momentous and elephantine-sized fucking work just go by unnoticed. This shit took 20 years to complete. Did you catch that? 20 fucking years! It’s a piece of work that runs about 7 hours and, stage by stage, represents and portrays what it feels like for someone to descend into dementia and oblivion. Like many people out there, I have someone in my life going through this fucked up shit. I’ve used this album, many times, to understand what the world looks like through their eyes. You could call it serendipitous, though I’d prefer to call it a seriously fucked up coincidence, that the progression of this album coincided (somewhat) with the development of this person’s illness. Now that their disease has reached stage 7, I can imagine that there is a strange relief to let go of memory. I remember listening to stages 3–5 and feeling terrified. This album is not an exact roadmap of what it feels like to have dementia, but it’s one of the best, and only, maps we’ve got. And what twat buckets would care if it’s not exact? This album inspires empathy for people with a disease that, basically, is a giant fucking void inside a black hole during a snowstorm with the lights off with our eyes closed. Anything more than this should be seen as a fucking gift. To James Leyland Kirby, I want to give my personal thanks and a giant bravo for creating this wonderful work of art. It brings empathy to those that can’t speak for themselves and have been, in more than one way, in the dark. Thanks for bringing this into the light. You’re one badass motherfucker.

If you want to make a donation to Dementia and Alzheimer’s research click here. (I’ve looked it up and this association looks hella legit and has been running since the ’80s.)