The thesis statement of the book of Ecclesiastes is the second verse of chapter one, in which the author remarks “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” He goes on to make the point that everything repeats itself. The sun comes up, goes down, and then returns and does the same the very next day. The rivers run to the sea, but the sea is never full. The wind blows to the north, to the south, going round and round forever.
He goes on to say that there’s nothing new; everything has been done before and will be repeated and done again.
A generation comes and a generation goes… there is no remembrance of former things by those who come after. That’s certainly a sobering thought. 
It reminds me of Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.” He wrote it in 1817, practically antique and ancient from our modern, refined and digitally enlightened sensibilities, but I suspect he was wiser than most of our pontificating prognosticators. Not suspect. Know.
Back in my grim Chicago days, I wrote a song based on Shelley’s poem, used the same title, and my band The Autumn War included it in our regular lineup. Playing late night shows in smoke-filled bars, complete with floors sticky with beer and peopled with a wide assortment of characters, will certainly make you question the purpose of life. Almost get you in a so long and thanks for the all the fish mentality if you don’t watch out.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ecclesiastes is a fascinatingly dark book. It’s a book of shadows. However, it can be read in two different ways. If you’re philosophically a materialist (and, by that, I don’t mean a materialist in terms of being consumed with acquiring and owning stuff–material things) and believe that the material matter of the universe is all that exists, then you will find only darkness in Ecclesiastes.
However, you can read Ecclesiastes in a second way. If you’re a Christian, then it’s still a dark book of shadows, but you realize that the shadows exist because of the light. Obviously, that’s a metaphor, but it reflects the reality of physics. Makes me wonder which one is the metaphor… the philosophy of light and shadow, or the physics of light and shadow.
Anyway, that second kind of perspective makes all the difference. And that difference gives tremendous meaning and value to the endless rising and setting of the sun, the endless flow of water to the hungry sea, and the unending need for the eye to see and the ear to hear.
Thank God! That means I can write more stories and songs in good faith that there’s reason for them. Reason and need.
JB Proof
By the way, speaking of music, check out my fifteen-year-old’s ever-growing catalogue of instrumentals that he’s been writing and recording. All on his own!