1.48

this essay explores the mystical implications of the cosmic portal created at exactly 1.48 of ‘don’t stop’ by the stone roses while at the same time trying to wed the author to the song in the same way that mark chapman did with his favourite book (catcher in the rye) by shooting john lennon. i cannot deny this. at the very basic level ‘don’t stop’ says something about my soul that i cannot say myself.

i have offered up the word orgasm to describe 1.48 on occasion but today it came to me in a startling eye-shifting moment that it is more likely to be the actual sound of dying. a kind of grande mort, like being sucked backwards through your (in)significant moments, or a sort of existential hedge that attaches itself to the barnet area and scalps you.

is it coincidence that ‘waterfall’ (which is ‘don’t stop’ the wrong way round) is exactly the kind of song any girl with real soul would like played at their funeral? i don’t think so. it is 1.48 when the coffin is engulfed in flames. it is 1.48 when the pacemaker explodes the body into a hundred different and newly-discovered colours, disintegrating the is into the IS.

‘there is the news for me, useless/ now so much waste’. the song is a kind of vehicle, first taking you towards the moment of death, and then away from it, there is a definite membrane that needs breaking from about 1.38 onward, then from 1.48 until 1.57 god speaks an actual sentence in music. the first (human) words start after this voice: ‘don’t stop- isn’t it funny how you shine?’

the human voices come from the dark, like the red glow of faraway stars- and the bassline is undeniably an upward stairway. this leads me to believe that the song as a whole actually takes place in space. this is an irrefutable truth (the music of the spheres would absolutely be backmasked- you cannot get away from it). 1.48 is the moment when you exit your own body/atmosphere to become a god yourself.

‘ease into my heart/He must be one of us’. Moreover, the song has a kind of insect quality to it, like a giant mechanical butterfly breaking out of a cocoon. another coincidence? i cannot believe it. ‘to steal what she never could own/and race from this hole she calls home’ (waterfall 0.28)

in conclusion, ‘don’t stop’ is a frozen piece of the universal song, captured by mistake like a ghost in the wrong part of the cosmos. i believe the stone roses unwittingly uncovered the voice of god while also revealing the sound and experience of dying using a kind of reverse magic. the lyric ‘don’t stop’ quite clearly refers to the life-source within and without every one of us.
 
in a very real sense 1.48 may actually be the number of god.