Dan Deacon’s “Sat by a Tree” Is a Marvelous Meditation on Death

Dan Deacon does not fear death—on the enigmatic songwriter’s first single off his forthcoming record, Mystic Familiar, Deacon greets it with wonder. “Sat by a Tree” looks at the inherent beauty of decomposition and rebirth, all atop an energetic bed of sonic bliss.

“Sat by a Tree” contains much to be unpacked. The song is brimming with wonderful textures entering and fading to make room for more unexpected sounds. Though it follows a narrative on death, the joyous energy of the song shows little fear in the idea. Deacon himself shares perplexing lyrics like, “It may only last a moment / but a moment can last a lifetime in your mind,” to convey the near-infinite feeling of our consciousness. It’s not the first time he’s looked at these themes. His most popular song—“When I Was Done Dying,” from 2017’s Gliss Riffer—follows the experience of someone’s separated consciousness after death.

In the single’s video, directed by Daren Rabinovitch, we are also shown what happens after death. But unlike “When I Was Done Dying,” “Sat by a Tree” follows the decomposition of one’s physical form. As a woman—played by comedian Aparna Nancherla—lies lifeless in a forest, a host of different insects begin to crawl across her body. The video focuses on close-up depictions of these busy decomposers at work, stripping away flesh and bone until nothing remains. While some will be disgusted by the graphic imagery, the video makes a clear effort to cast this process in a wondrous light. After all, its final scene shows a plant beginning to grow from the replenished soil into which the body’s nutrients were broken down.

Mystic Familiar is said to revolve around the central concept of a “supernatural other being that we carry with us everywhere in our head, which only we can hear and with whom we live our lives in eternal conversation,” according to a press release. If we’re to see this “supernatural being” as the individual ego onto which one grasps, the parallels between Deacon’s music and the tenets of Buddhist belief become clear. Even the song’s title is an allusion to the fabled moment Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi Tree to reach enlightenment—thus becoming The Buddha. In an interview describing the inspiration behind “Sat by a Tree,” Deacon delves into his underlying philosophy on the significance of death:

I to see it not at all in this macabre sense, but just a part of life. So I liked playing with the concept and writing about it a lot …. The way the video ends is sort of in line with what I was saying with the song itself. Are we watching a prequel to that plant or are we watching the end of that human form?

Mystic Familiar is out Jan. 31, 2020, on Domino and available for preorder here. You can watch the fantastic video for “Sat by a Tree” and Deacon’s Paste performance below, and find his album details and tour dates further down.