Mortality and Spirituality
Jessy Ssendawula’s interpretation of “The Pebble Is Breaking Me” advances the discussion of mortality and spirituality by focusing on these themes in relation to materialism and politics. In his account of the song’s various meanings, he expounds on the inevitability of death, noting that the composition talks about the belief that when one’s time comes, one must succumb to human mortality and the fate of death. When people die, surviving relatives and friends place them in graves, and though their loss might weigh heavily on the survivors’ hearts, the deceased will remain as stone, unmoving.
1Ssendawula personal communication, April 8, 2020. He then expands on the song’s refutation of materialism and emphasis on temporality:
Death renders all earthly pleasures useless. The big barns, parlors, courtyards, or compounds that are cleaned daily do not house the dead who paid for them. The only place for the dead is at the demarcation lines, at the margins of their land, where their relatives bury them. The dead leave their decorated houses, and grass covers their bodies as though they were puff adders. Surviving relatives and friends rain stones upon those who once enjoyed the spaces they built, and place them in plantations; the dead will never walk their compounds again.
2Ibid.While focusing on the song’s conception of death, Ssendawula also reflects on how such inescapable destruction mediates social relations. Death wrenches people from the relations they may have occupied in life, as human selves will ultimately transition from being a focal point in a complex set of relations to having their bodies displaced to the corners of property, at the peripheries of their relatives’ thoughts and spaces. Thus, death displaces people’s relationship to the world—not necessarily erasing it but relocating it so that it lies in the margins of social, political, and spatial life. This observation allows “The Pebble Is Breaking Me” to become a framework for discussing death as a type of status shift that shapes people’s positionality in the world. With this degree of nuance, Ssendawula’s perspective accounts for how death is a matter of relationality.
Connecting this song to politics, Ssendawula extrapolates a message that current leaders might be able to glean from it. Relating the realities of modern leadership with the inescapability of death, he reminds them of their vulnerability and how they will be unable to take their worldly pleasures to the grave:
Leaders who overstay their welcome and wish destruction on their opponents should take this song as a reminder that no man can conquer death. Regimes and generations come and go, and as the singer notes, the reigns of President Amin and King Muteesa II both ended. Similarly, that of President Museveni will, too. Those in power should avoid hubris and the mistreatment of their subjects, for humans are all but clay, themselves included. One day they will be the same as even the most common of citizens.
Many times, leaders amass wealth by stealing from government coffers and failing to provide the proper services to the people they lead. They do not care about the consequences of this gap in service, as they and their families can go abroad to receive better treatment whenever they want. But when death visits, it does not care who you are. It is like a disease. It isolates people from their loved ones and will take them if it so chooses, regardless of their possessions.
3Ibid.Ssendawula’s comments reflect the fragility and temporality of life, suggesting that one should make the most of its highs and lows, embracing it for what it is rather than desperately securing and protecting it. By comparing people to clay, he implies that they are evanescent and malleable, subject to nature’s ultimate ability to remake or reshape or dissolve them. It also affirms the idea that people should not treat life as something that they can freeze and protect indefinitely but instead as something that they can joyfully mold. This perspective helps us understand “The Pebble Is Breaking Me” through philosophies that encourage us to accept our ultimate fate.
In this vein Ssendawula further encourages leaders to avoid blindly accumulating material wealth. He asserts that death does not discriminate, regardless of the riches and land someone has hoarded. When their relatives bury them, they will not leave them in their great houses or with their riches but will bury them off at the edge of their land, which is what happens to ordinary Baganda. Such fleeting riches do not transfer to the next world. Consequently, Ssendawula argues, leaders should spend their time finding ways to engage with life more profoundly and subtly; relentless pursuit of self-interest is not worth the self-deterioration that accompanies it:
It is not worth sacrificing personal morals for the sake of mere impermanent success. Leaders who favor their kinsmen for important government positions should learn from “The Pebble Is Breaking Me” that no matter one’s status, when one dies one’s relatives will not bury one in the bungalows, cars, or yards they bought during a life of excess and wealth. Rather, they will take them down to the deserted plantations. President Museveni needs to refrain from his nepotistic tendencies because no matter what, all those whom he favors will eventually die. Death knows no tribe. There is no one who can conquer death. People are simply standing in its path, waiting for it to knock them down. When that happens, the earth and stones will cover them when their relatives bury them as though they had no significance to anyone in this world. It does not matter one’s status or tribe; death is the great equalizer.
4Ibid.This philosophy centers our focus on the notion of death as a challenge to contemporary political contingencies, showing us how “The Pebble Is Breaking Me” relates to current leaders and points to the value of death because it ultimately equalizes us.