When airplanes (in literature and song) fall from the sky, there is liable to be some manner of “Happy Birthday” whether your name is Conor Oberst or Salman Rushdie, whether you perish or are reborn. Even if another name or fate possesses you, there may yet be candles and cake.
To demonstrate, I have interwoven selected words from Conor Oberst’s “At the bottom of everything” and from (the audiobook of) Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses“.
TRANSCRIPT:
Oberst: “There was this huge Mechanical Failure and one of the engines gave out”
Rushdie / Narrating: “Flew too close to the sun is that it?”
Oberst: “And they started just falling and 30 thousand feet.”
Rushdie / Chamcha (trying to reason the miracle out of existence) “God, we were lucky, he said, How lucky can you get?”
Oberst (strumming percussively): “It’s a birthday party. It’s your birthday party: happy birthday darling.”
Rushdie: “Born again, Spoono, you and me. Happy birthday, mister; happy birthday to you.”
Oberst, having published his song “At the Bottom of Everything” in 2005, follows chronologically after Rushdie’s 1988 Satanic Verses, but perhaps both the artist and the author exist rather in the imaginary place that might be described as a perpetual birthday.