Where It All Begins

Francesca Battistelli treats death as departure rather than ending in "Where It All Begins" — "my body may fall, like leaves from a tree, so let the wind blow, cause I know where it goes, I will fly away." The falling leaf is allowed to be a real image of decline without the song rushing past it.

"From dust I begin and to dust I'll return, so send me on my way" quotes Genesis's own language about mortality plainly, without softening it, right before naming what that same dust is actually headed toward. "This is the seed sown to usher the rise of hope" keeps the agricultural image consistent — a seed has to go into the ground before anything grows from it.

"Some glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away" borrows the old hymn's own phrase directly, and the repeated title line — "this is not the end, just where it all begins" — reverses the expected order of the whole song: what looks like a conclusion is named, throughout, as a starting point instead.