New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Golden Globe-winning indie music trailblazer Alex Ebert has dropped his new single "To Feel Alive," the theme song to the stunning forthcoming documentary "The Last Ecstatic Days". The film, directed by Scott Kirschenbaum, tells the inspiring story of Ethan Sisser, a man who faced terminal brain cancer with unrelenting positivity.
Death has played a pivotal role in Ebert's poetic thinking and has been a recurring theme in his songwriting. Ebert's philosophical conviction behind how we see death showcases the realities of dying on your own terms. "I think this documentary could be the spark that returns conscious dying to popular culture," says Ebert.
"It's an honor to be a part of this important story in some small way," stated Ebert. "While death plays a role in pop storytelling, it's usually conveyed at a certain distance. Here we are invited into the real life of a dying man and reminded that the process of dying can be as beautiful, communal, and ceremonial as birth. Reckoning with mortality has always played a central role in my creativity, so to participate in such a raw and true instance of such a reckoning is really special to me."
Ebert is also a philosopher who explores ideas around death, spiritualism, and self-hood, which he discussed in his interview with The New York Times. He recently created a Substack newsletter Bad Guru, which blends the philosophical, spiritual and cultural analysis of these concepts.
2023 will mark a milestone year for the multi-hyphenate with lots of projects in the works including the release of new songs. Stay tuned for more info.
LA-bred, New Orleans-based Alex Ebert is a musician, filmmaker, activist and father. He founded the bands
Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros and Ima Robot, and won the Golden
Globe for Best Original Score for his work on All Is Lost. Ebert established himself as one of alternative music's leading voices with a folksy, whimsical musicality and a surreal onstage persona that has garnered praise from SPIN, Consequence of Sound, Variety, KCRW, and The New York Times. A social activist, Ebert is the founder of Big Sun Foundation, which specializes in facilitating Community Land Trusts. He is also the CEO of crowd-sourced social radio app Tuners, contributed a song to Shia LaBeouf-written 2019 drama Honeyboy, and is writing a book called 'Kingdom Cool'. He penned the theme song for The Last Ecstatic Days, a new documentary about conscious dying.
Ethan Sisser, a young man afflicted with brain cancer, sits alone in his hospital room. When he begins live-streaming his death journey on social media, thousands of people around the world join him and celebrate his courage. Still, Ethan envisions more - to teach the world how to die. To honor his final wish of filming his death, his doctor, Aditi Sethi, transports him to a quiet house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. What unfolds next is a story that's rarely glimpsed: how a community of strangers helps an unhoused man die on his own terms. A sensory immersion into leaving the body "The Last Ecstatic Days" reveals a man who will not let us forget him - even after he's taken his final breath.
