bonnie 'prince' billy

so strap me on
and raise me high
cause buddy I'm not
afraid to die
cause life is long
and it's tremendous
and we're glad
that you're here with us
and since we know
an end will come
it makes our living
fun

I was recently introduced to Will Oldham, who also records under the bonnie 'prince' billy moniker. A profile from 2002.

For all that, he remains the most mysterious figure in contemporary American music, someone whose increasingly rare interviews often reveal nothing so much as their interrogators' fumbled attempts to get a handle on him. Oldham hates interviews. 'What are they for?' he asks me. 'They have nothing to do with the music. It's usually people asking a bunch of weird questions like, "Why are the songs so slow?" Well, maybe because they are. Because that's how we play them. Because I wrote them at a less rapid pace. It's always why, why why? Why everything? And the answer to "why" is because it just is. Things just are.'