Things Rise And Fall
We have become accustomed to reading life as a graph. Growth is good, decline is failure, and a flat line suggests that something has gone wrong. Careers, relationships and even personal wellbeing are measured through the same logic, as though existence should resemble a company’s quarterly report. “Things Rise And Fall”, the second single from Dan Webb’s forthcoming album Lion Dance, takes its title and outlook from Taoist philosophy, where change is not evidence of disorder but part of the natural movement of things. Written in the wake of Webb’s relocation from Melbourne to Singapore in 2023, the track considers what happens when familiar structures disappear and identity can no longer be treated as fixed. Moving country makes this instability unusually visible, but the experience is hardly limited to migration. Most of us are continually becoming strangers to former versions of ourselves. The presence of bassist Logan Kane, drummer Clive Deamer, string arranger Stevie Blacke and percussionist Nate Werth gives the single an international cast, yet the names matter less than the collective principle behind them. Webb’s cinematic scale suggests that impermanence need not be quiet, solemn or defeated. Change can arrive with momentum, and uncertainty can feel expansive rather than merely threatening. That distinction separates “Things Rise And Fall” from the familiar language of reinvention, which often turns upheaval into another compulsory success story. There is no promise here that every ending produces a better beginning, only an acknowledgement that neither state can last. In a culture obsessed with maintaining relevance, accumulating proof and presenting an uninterrupted ascent, that acceptance feels almost subversive. Webb does not offer control over the cycle. He offers something more useful: permission to stop mistaking movement for failure.