People are mined in Death Rattle songs. Their depths are plumbed and their insides are occasionally scooped out, examined and haphazardly placed back where they were found, where they might or might not serve a purpose or even function as they had before.
Sometimes this minor issue is a problem and sometimes it's exactly as the person hoped it would be - a change. They like that the heart's been scraped and that the guts have been aerated. They were able to see first-hand how much sludge and build-up was in there and how it was clogging everything up, making it impossible to live. It was a disaster waiting to happen, or it was a disaster that let out a big, booming bellow, a thunderclap that couldn't be ignored and it was what opened you up in the first place and let out your coils.
These people are alive, but some you could make an argument for being mostly otherwise. They've gotten themselves to points where it feels like they are tin drums, though they find that they still maintain the capacity for putting meals inside themselves and faking a lot through the daily trudge. They are on the knife's edge. They've been battered. They're feeling the slow trickle of time and tedium set in and take a little more control than they were asking for before.
These are folks looking to be sheltered from a storm that they see has no end. What's to be done there, but to keep a coat and an umbrella close and hope to God that the darkness of it all doesn't keep creeping ever closer?