The shimmering lights of the underground city flicker, casting elongated shadows that merge with the darkness. Here, unlit by the sun, illuminated only by artificial luminance, humanity has found a new haunt, far removed from the ravaged overworld it once called home. This is the bleeding edge of survival in a world torn asunder by relentless climate woes—where above is turmoil, below is retreat. Welcome to the melancholy of the underground existence, where even the blues are buried deep.
‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ captures the essence of life that has curiously crawled into the earth’s bowels. Like moles, humans have carved out an existence in these serpentine complexes of tunnels and caverns. But what does it mean to live where the sun doesn’t shine? This is the heart of our reverie—a deep dive into the oddly poetic despair of subterranean survival.
Lemoonie, the term lovingly coined by the underground’s pioneers, represents the artificial suns strung across the ceilings, giving off a pale glow akin to moonlight but with the dream of emulating the sun. In this endless night, the Lemoonie suns are but a consoling whisper of the once magnificent fiery orb. A constant reminder of what’s been lost, they serve as a dim proxy to govern the circadian rhythms of a displaced civilization.
The psychology of being permanently indoors has morphed into a quasi-science, with ‘indooretics’ becoming a buzzword among the underground’s dwellers. The absence of natural sunlight has ushered in a wave of melancholy that is palpable in the air—so thick you could slice through it. The human spirit wilts without its celestial nourishment; there’s a universal homesickness for the open sky, yet an undeniable apprehension about what lies overhead. Is the surface now but a hazy memory, a bedtime story told to soothe the young?
Agriculture, too, mutates here where fields should be sky-bound. Hydroponic gardens hang in layers, foliage draping off ledges like verdant waterfalls—a techno-Eden in dystopia’s embrace. But even the succulent crunch of hydro-cultivated produce can’t muffle the longing for sun-kissed fruit, for the natural disorder of an organic orchard.
Beneath the surface, culture has coalesced into pockets of resistance—art and music thrive against the odds, drawing from the raw despair of their surroundings like a phoenix from the ashes. Yet, it is in the silence between notes, in the emptiness of the galleries, that one truly hears and sees the sorrow. The cultural manifestations serve as a morose reminder of irreversible change. They scream in hues and melodies, encapsulating the shrouded depression that has set upon humanity’s heart—a lament composed by truncated futures.
Despite all technological advancements, pollution hasn’t relented in its siege on humanity. Air purifiers work tirelessly, filtering the acrid legacy left above, but it’s akin to trying to cleanse a sea with a sieve. And so, beneath the ground, the repercussions of what was set in motion decades ago continue to haunt—an echo of wastefulness in an era of want.
In these catacombs of despair, governance bends to the unorthodox. Societal norms have splintered, converging into a hive society, where the queen is survival and the worker bees are every soul scrambling through the dark. This new order is a haunting silhouette of democracy—where voting is less about politics and more about sustaining life’s fragile flame.
The underground existence might be humanity’s last stab at survival, yet it isn’t without its irony. As we huddle, burrowed within the earth, the aphotic zone becomes both sanctuary and sarcophagus. The tears we shed for the surface are in part tears for ourselves—for the world we understood but did not cherish. Our homesickness is a painful testament to our species’ relentless resilience and perhaps, an inadvertent hymn to hope—one we dare not voice deep down in our ‘Lemoonie-lit’ hideaway.
To live underground is to carry the weight of a world that now exists only in dreams and tales. It is a melancholic existence, tuned to the rhythm of what was once a planet teeming with vibrant life. Let our ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ resonate not as a dirge for the departed sun but as a poignant verse in the ballad of humanity—ever yearning, ever learning, in the shadow of its own demise.