To accept the alternative—the killing was planned and unprovoked—is to expose the murder to be a product of a racist society. (Photo: Ahmaud Arbery/Family photo)
“I will say that looks like a really good young guy. It’s a really disturbing situation to me (…) it could be something we didn’t see on tape.”
When Donald Trump made this comment about the murder of US jogger Ahmaud Arbery by a group of white men who stalked and shot him, he tapped into a long, ugly history of responding to the use of deadly force against black citizens by questioning the victims, and not the accused. By suggesting that something—anything—could have happened to make the killing of an unarmed black man defensible.
That “it could be something we didn’t see on the tape.”
What we didn’t see on tape.
The un-taped life.
The things that happen when the cameras aren’t rolling.
Work. Playing with your kids. Happiness. Shopping. Studying. Grief. Showers. Boredom.
Except, for African-Americans such as Ahmaud Arbery, these things are rarely assumed to be part of the un-taped life. The presumption of normality (let alone decency) is a luxury of privilege. Arbery’s un-taped life is framed as a potentially unlimited collection of invisible transgressions and provocations. He could be a thief. Why was he there? Why didn’t he comply with three armed men threatening him? What was he hiding? Even when white men film themselves stalking and murdering an unarmed black man, the internal logic of systemic racism dictates that the violent act so carefully catalogued must not, and cannot, be the whole story. Something that happened in the un-taped black life somehow forced the hand of those in the taped white life.
Because, to accept the alternative—the killing was planned and unprovoked—is to expose the murder to be a product of a racist society.
Think about how often the “what we didn’t see on tape” angle, and all of the variations on that angle, have been invoked: Michael Brown in Missouri; Oscar Grant in California; Eric Garner in New York; Eric Harris in Oklahoma; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Philando Castile in Minnesota; Tamir Rice in Ohio. Even when police officers are filmed choking an unarmed man to death as he begs for his life, or are videotaped shooting an unarmed man in the back as he runs away from the police after a traffic stop, questions on their un-taped life become the primary focus. Had they committed crimes before? Why were they engaged in illegal activity to begin with? Why were they even in that part of town at that time of day? Did they do drugs? Did they have jobs? Where are the parents? Do they take care of their kids?
In other words, we are supposed to believe that it’s not what you see in these videos—men murdering unarmed men—that’s the story. It’s what the videos do not show that’s the real story. And, what is that story? Well, we can never know, as the men and women who could actually tell that story—the story of their un-taped lives—are now dead.
So, Trump’s “what we didn’t see on the tape” line is a Catch-22 for African-Americans, an eternal Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card for white privilege and a key element in the perverted, self-perpetuating mechanism of discrimination.
This article was written prior to the pandemic, but still contains relevant and applicable information.
The Scorpio Full Moon brings the usual amount of intensity associated with this deep water sign but with added force — partly since the opposition of Sun and Moon adds an extra attracting or repelling dynamic. The magnetic side of Scorpio can manifest in feeling pulled towards something or someone in a compulsive, irresistible way. Yet, getting closer to the core can feel a little too extreme, even suffocating. At which point, the instinctive response may be to pull way back. This may just be the way of things for a while, and our job is merely to observe and understand the dynamic.
Indeed, with Mercury conjunct the Sun and opposite the Moon, there is an added analytical quality and a desire to understand more. We may also be triggered into hypervigilance, watching our backs. The Spy archetype is in play here, where trust issues are at stake and, in order to feel safe or keep in favor with the right people, we are compelled to gain more information.
On the professional front, this may simply have to do with extending our knowledge through training or study. At a personal level, perhaps it has more to do with fearing that security is at risk. Given the financial connection often attributed to Taurus, through a natural 2nd-house rulership, we may do well to be more alert to possible fraud attempts and be wary of easily parting with information that should be constantly guarded.
There may also be a scenario, however, where we are the ones doing the digging, trying to find out more details about a certain matter. Whilst our queries may be legitimate, we may benefit from being sensitive to other people’s needs for privacy. Scorpio is often considered a mute sign, and there may be good reasons why words cannot easily be uttered within a certain context. Others will likely let us know, either with a lack of or a limited response or by specifying the conditions under which a freer dialogue can take place. Homing into these details, rather than insisting on trying to do things our own way, could save some grief, and may increase trust and warmth in a volatile or previously rigid relationship.
With the Moon trine Neptune in Pisces, there is a fluid, easygoing tributary in the stream of life that offers greater flexibility and peace. One of Neptune’s strengths — and a Piscean quality — is the ability to tune into people and situations on a deep, psychic level, which is accompanied with compassion and understanding. This is almost opposite to the harder side of Scorpio which, traditionally ruled by Mars, has a penetrative, edgy quality and can relate to feeling under threat. Scorpio can also share that Neptunian sensitivity in a healing way, once any real or perceived threat has passed. However, with Pisces, there may be an initial sense that we’re all in the same boat, rather than on different sides, making it easier to align with others. This may strengthen certain relationships and connections, which become special to all concerned.
It is fair to say that, with all signs, there is a flip side. In this case, it can relate to knowing when there has been enough of going along with others, and we need to diverge. A bonus with the Full Moon is that it usually does help to show things in black and white. What is important becomes clearer and we see where we need to take action. This can therefore be a time of great energy, when we can go at life full force, wherever that is appropriate.
This article is from the Mountain Astrologer, written by Diana Collis.
NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with New York Times Magazine correspondent Nikole Hannah-Jones. She won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the 1619 Project, about how slavery shaped the nation.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In August of 1619, the first enslaved Africans landed on American shores. Last year the New York Times launched The 1619 Project. Its aim was to reframe the American narrative around slavery 400 years after that first arrival. Nikole Hannah-Jones created the project and just won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, welcome, and congratulations.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Thank you so much.
SHAPIRO: You know, it’s an enormous task to view American history through a different lens, and reading the essay, I thought, this could fill several books. So how did you focus the task in front of you? I mean, like, when you told friends what you were trying to do with the essay, what did you say to them?
HANNAH-JONES: Well, I guess I should start by saying this has filled several books.
SHAPIRO: Right. Yes (laughter).
HANNAH-JONES: You know, I relied very heavily on the work of historians for this. This essay was about democracy and the unparalleled role that black Americans have played almost always without getting credit and actually creating the democracy that we have and making those glorious words of the declaration actually true for all Americans.
SHAPIRO: Because you do begin with the detail of the flag that your father always flew outside your childhood home, I’m curious how writing this helped you better understand your own family.
HANNAH-JONES: There’s a part in that opening where I say, you know, as a child, you think you know so much when, in fact, you understand so little and that I finally understood why my dad flew this flag that, when I was young, used to deeply embarrass me. And people ask me all the time, well, how – you know, when did you come to that realization? And I said, when I was writing the piece. And that’s actually true. I truly never really got my father’s patriotism until I was immersed for weeks upon weeks reading about black people’s really dogged patriotism and dogged belief in a country that has never treated us as full citizens. And thinking about what that meant allowed me, as a 42-year-old woman, to finally understand where my father was coming from, which is kind of miraculous.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. And did it shape how you think about patriotism and your relationship to this country?
HANNAH-JONES: For sure. We’ve all kind of been fed this particular type of patriotism and that, you know, patriotism is this unquestioning loyalty to a certain brand of Americana. And that necessarily excludes so many of us who were on the outside of those patriotic borders for our entire history in this country.
But when you think that patriotism is actually truly believing in these founding ideals of equality and saying, our country is not there, but we are going to challenge our country, and we are going to be honest about our country, that is actually true patriotism. And black Americans certainly can claim not the flag-pin-wearing, outward, abstract notion of patriotism but the type of patriotism that has been built through the blood sacrifice of black Americans and so many other marginalized people. So yes.
SHAPIRO: I want to ask you about another aspect of yesterday’s Pulitzers, which is that Ida B. Wells, the groundbreaking journalist from the late 1800s – African American woman who fought for racial and women’s equality – received a special Pulitzer Prize citation yesterday. Your Twitter profile name is Ida Bae Wells – B-A-E. You’re one of the founders of the Ida B. Wells Society at UNC Chapel Hill. So what meaning does it hold for you that the two of you, working more than a century apart from each other, received this honor on the same day?
HANNAH-JONES: I have long said that Ida B. Wells is my spiritual godmother. I understand that my ability to do the work that I do is only because Ida B. Wells existed. And in 1894 The New York Times called Ida B. Wells a slanderous and nasty-minded mulatress because of her advocacy and reporting about the lynching of black men in the South. And for me…
SHAPIRO: The New York Times, your own current employer.
HANNAH-JONES: Yes. And here I am more than 125 years later, receiving the Pulitzer Prize on the same day as Ida B. Wells from the same newspaper that called her that and for writing about the legacy of slavery. I am not a religious person, but there is some cosmic intervention that feels like it happened there.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, and her essay launching The 1619 Project just won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
Congratulations, and thank you for talking with us about it.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
I was born this day 74 years ago in a small municipal hospital a few miles south of where I am typing this.
But I’ve been a Translator for over 50 years and I keep telling myself, indeed proving to myself, that i am birthless, deathless Truth being.
So who the hell was born 74 years ago? A lot of phylogenetic information, dna codes, cellular memory and so on.
Thane (founder and late dean of The Prosperos) used to speak of the sub-micro-databank or SMDB, indicating that underneath all the dna codes and cellular information is another code, the code of our infinite being.
So, really, I was never born. And I will never die. And neither will you.
So, as Lewis Carroll once wrote, a Happy Unbirthday to us all!
Sam Whiting May 5, 2020 Updated: May 7, 2020 (SFChronicle.com)
Beat poet Michael McClure is seen on his deck with sculptures by his wife, artist Amy Evans McClure, at their home in Oakland in 2010.Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 2010
Michael McClure, the young poet recruited to put together the famed Six Gallery readings in 1955 that launched the San Francisco Renaissance and the legend of the Beats, died Monday, May 4, at his home in the Oakland hills. He was 87.
McClure died from the lingering effects of a stroke he suffered in spring 2019, Garrett Caples, a close friend and editor at City Lights Publishers, told The Chronicle the day after McClure’s death.
“Michael was incredibly gracious, erudite, and totally dedicated to the poet’s calling,” said Elaine Katzenberger, publisher of City Lights, which put out McClure’s works going all the way back to 1963’s “Meat Science Essays.” “He was a sometimes-trickster, most definitely a provocateur, and yet, quite solicitous and patient, a sage who was beautiful inside and out.”
That first public reading for McClure, then 22 years old, was overshadowed by the introduction of “Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg. But McClure outlasted all of the Beats in a career that spanned more than 60 years. He published more than 30 books of poetry, plays and anthologies, most recently 2017’s “Persian Pony” and 2016’s “Mephistos and other Poems,” the latter anchored by a poem that took him 16 years to write.
“The poems dive through time and space like dolphins through the waves,” McClure said at the time of publication of “Mephistos,” released by City Lights.
With his cinematic looks and mod three-piece suits, McClure made it onto stages far bigger than those offered at poetry readings. He read at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park that launched the Summer of Love in 1967 and at the Band’s “Last Waltz” at Winterland in 1976.
“Without the roar of McClure, there would have been no ’60s,” actor Dennis Hopper once said.
Poet Michael McClure, photographed on Feb. 5, 1967.Photo: Chronicle archives 1967
An article in the Los Angeles Times described him as the role model for Jim Morrison of the Doors. He later had a long association with another member of the Doors, Ray Manzarek. They recorded together and toured together, with McClure reading to the accompaniment of Manzarek on keyboards.
“Michael was one of the most significant American poets of the latter half of the 20th century,” Caples said. “He had a place in popular culture in addition to literary culture that not many poets have been able to occupy.”
McClure also wrote novels, plays and songs, most famously “Mercedes-Benz,” which he co-wrote for Janis Joplin. With Manzarek, he played 200 gigs across America, Mexico and Japan. This helped McClure buy the home at the base of Butters Canyon in the Oakland hills, where he lived for 20 years with his second wife, sculptor Amy Evans McClure.
Michael McClure in the Oakland hills where he lived.Photo: Penni Gladstone / The Chronicle
“I never got any poetry to make a cent,” he told The Chronicle in 2003. But teaching paid, and for 43 years he was a professor of poetry at California College of the Arts. He started there in 1963 and was still teaching when he was bestowed an honorary doctorate degree, in 2005, as the longest-tenured faculty member at the art college.
“There is no way that you can read a poem by Michael McClure without experiencing some kind of connection with something primal and cosmic,” Juvenal Acosta, dean of Humanities and Sciences and professor of writing and literature at CCA, told The Chronicle in 2018. “He has changed the way we speak and read American poetry.”
Well into his 80s, McClure remained a poet in demand, both for his current work and for his association with the Beats. He and Gary Snyder were the only poets still alive who had read at Six Gallery on Oct. 7, 1955.
McClure was living at Scott and Haight streets and coming over the hill to Six Gallery, which had sculptures hanging from the rafters and a plank stage on the floor, on Fillmore at Greenwich streets. He had been asked to organize the reading, but his time was tight, with a wife who was expecting. He foisted the organizational duty on Ginsberg, who recruited Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Philip Lamantia and Kenneth Rexroth. Each of the poets read several works. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was in the room, but did not read. Neither did Jack Kerouac, busy as he was with his drinking.
In his nonfiction account of that night, “Scratching the Surface of the Beats,” published in 1982, McClure sets the stage for the revolution that was to follow in the mid-1950s:
“The world that we tremblingly stepped out into in that decade was a bitter, gray one. But San Francisco was a special place. Rexroth said it was to the arts what Barcelona was to Spanish Anarchism. Still, there was no way, even in San Francisco to escape the pressure of the war culture. we were locked in the pressure of the Cold War and the first Asian debacle — the Korean War. My self image in those years was of finding myself — young, high, a little crazed, needing a haircut, in an elevator with burly crew-cutted, square jawed eminences, staring at me like I was misplaced cannon fodder. … We saw that the art of poetry was essentially dead — killed by war, by academies, by neglect, by lack of love, and by disinterest. We knew we could bring it back to life.”
Each of the poets was given about 10 minutes to read and McClure’s contributions were “Point Lobos: Animism,” “Night Words: the Ravishing,” and one simply titled “Poem.” (“There was no other title because it was as far as I had been able to go in poetry.”)
Poet Michael McClure reading.Photo: Nat Farbman / LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
His final reading that night was “For the Death of 100 Whales,” which is credited with launching the concept of eco-poetics and presaged the “Save the Whales” movement by Greenpeace by about 20 years. Put together, the works read that night brought verse out of the rigid form and into the free-form literature most commonly associated with Kerouac’s 1957 novel “On the Road.”
“It was the critical moment for the Beat Generation, the grouping together of five young proto-anarchists and Buddhists,” said McClure of the Six Gallery Reading. “As we spoke, we realized from the results that we were speaking for the people. We were saying what they needed and wanted to hear, and that encouraged us. We drew a line in the sand and decided not to back off that line.”
In addition to his own books, McClure figured as a character in others. In Kerouac’s autobiographical novel, “Big Sur,” he is portrayed as Pat McLear.
“McLear is the handsome young poet who’s just written the most fantastic poem in America, ‘Dark Brown,’ which is every detail of his and his wife’s body described in ecstatic union and communion and inside out and everywhichaway and not only that he insists on reading it to us,” exults Kerouac’s own fictional character, Jack Duluoz.
McClure was a literary bridge between the Beats, the hippies, and the animals in the zoo he once read to.
“Michael was the youngest of the poets that became known as the Beats,” Ferlinghetti told The Chronicle three years ago, at 99. “He was not only the youngest, he was completely different than anyone else. He spoke in beast language.”
Poets of San Francisco in front of City Lights Bookstore Dec. 3, 1965. According to the back of the photo: Upper top row: Stella Levy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti; 2nd standing row: 1. Donald Schenker, 2. Michael Grieg, 3. ?, 4. Mike Gibbons, 5. David Miltzer, 6, Michael McClure, 7. Allen Ginsburg, 8. Dan Langton, (. Steve Broston, 10. Gary Goodrow and son Homer, 11. Richard Brautigan (behind Goodrow), 12. Andrew Hoyem (on stretcher), 13. Lee Meyerzaw. Seated: 1. ?, 2., Shig Murao, 3. Lew Welch, (4) Peter OrlovskyPhoto: Peter Breinig, San Francisco Chronicle
McClure was born Oct. 20, 1932, in Marysville, Kan. His parents divorced when he was young and he moved to Seattle. After graduating from high school, he attended Wichita State and the University of Arizona before finally earning his bachelor of arts at San Francisco State University in 1955, shortly before the Six Gallery reading.
His first book of poetry, “Passage,” was published in 1956, and he hustled to earn a living, with his first wife and fellow poet Joanna, and daughter, Jane, to support, until 1963 when he was hired at CCA.
By the time Acosta came to the faculty in 1998, McClure was semiretired.
“He was always the cool cat. He always wore black,” Acosta said. One time, Acosta ventured to ask why. “Those of us who wear black are in mourning for ourselves,” he was told by McClure.
A practicing Buddhist, he liked to start his day with meditation and a hike in the redwood forest uphill from his house. At age 83, he slipped on slick footing under the redwoods and his legs went out from under him. “I was temporarily suspended in the air like Wile E. Coyote and then dropped,” he recalled.
He required hip surgery and it took a long recovery, which left him with a tremor and unable to read poetry off the page. But it didn’t stop him.
Beat poet, novelist and songwriter Michael McClure in San Francisco in 1970.Photo: Harold Adler / Underwood Archives 1970
For one of his last Bay Area events, a 2015 reading in Palo Alto, he had his poems written on the wall, as captions for a series of horse paintings done by his wife, Amy. He walked around the room repeating the words and horse whinny sounds, and the audience was entranced.
At the end, the audience wanted more, so he reached for his book, “Ghost Tantras,” published in 1964 and reprinted by City Lights in a 50th anniversary edition. His hands were so shaky they could barely turn the page, but they found their way to tantra 39.
“This poem comes from 1962,” he announced before beginning the reading.
“MARILYN MONROE, TODAY THOU HAS PASSED THE DARK BARRIER — diving in a swirl of golden hair. I hope you have entered a sacred paradise for full warm bodies, full lips, full hips, and laughing eyes!”
In June 2016, McClure appeared at a six-day festival in Manhattan called “Beat & Beyond.” The hipsters who organized the event called McClure “El Authentico,” and asked him to portray himself in a poem-by-poem reenactment. He declined and instead played the role of Kenneth Rexroth, who was the emcee of the affair.
The house was full and it was filmed for a documentary, further evidence that the Six Gallery readings will live on and on, just like the legend of the Beats.
So will McClure’s journals, which are now in the collection of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. McClure’s last book of new poems, “The Persian Pony,” was released by Ekstasis Editions of Victoria, B.C., in 2017.
Beat poet Michael McClure in 2008.Photo: Penni Gladstone / The Chronicle 2008
“Just driving around with Michael was an amazing experience,” said Acosta, who often picked up McClure to attend matinees at the movies. “He would tell you stories about Ginsberg, about Jim Morrison, about Richard Brautigan. He wasn’t a name dropper. He was talking about the people he loved.”
McClure’s first marriage, to Joanna McClure, ended in divorce. Survivors include his second wife, Amy Evans McClure of Oakland, a daughter, Dr. Jane McClure, of Bethel, Alaska, her husband, William Eggimann, and grandsons James Eggimann and Michael Eggimann.
A memorial service is being planned for the fall.
“Michael’s genius, passion, wit, and compassion were equaled only by his great love for all beings,” said Evans McClure.
In his words: “I am a mammal patriot.”
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com. Instagram: sfchronicle_art
If you are on Facebook, perhaps you’ve seen the new reaction emoticon that has been added to the repertoire: “Care” with the message “Even apart, we’re in this together”
And this made me think of Thursday’s Full Moon in Scorpio. The Full Moon on May 7th is at 17° Scorpio, right in the heart of the Scorpio.
The Full Moon is trine Neptune in Pisces. Both Scorpio and Pisces are water signs, and both the Moon and Neptune are “water” planets, so we will get a 4x dose of “water” or emotional intensity, creativity, intuition and empathy.
Even if Scorpio has a hard shell, it is still a softie inside. Not that it will show it! But (the very few) people who get to know a Scorpio know that deep down, Scorpio deeply cares.
Scorpios don’t just say they care, they DO care. Their emotions are intense. Their love is real.
The Moon is in detriment in Scorpio, and that’s because the Moon qualities don’t naturally blend with Scorpio’s qualities. The Moon brings light into darkness and has a quality of illumination, reflection, and openness. Scorpio prefers dark corners, and it doesn’t open up easily.
That’s why Scorpio’s number one lesson is that of trust. Scorpios don’t trust easily, because they know that the world can be a dangerous place to live in. People can let you down. A disaster can strike at any time. And because of that, they are always on guard.
We can better understand Scorpio if we look at the opposite sign, Taurus. Taurus is what we have as a result of our own efforts. Scorpio is what we have as a result of merging with others.
And that place of merging is dark and scary – it is filled with mystery, secrets, and danger. But it is the only place where true intimacy can happen. In total surrender. When we know that something can hurt us, yet we surrender because surrender, trust, and intimacy are an inherent part of the human experience.
And it is in that dark, invisible and mysterious place that true connections are formed. Invisible, yet indestructible ties.
The Full Moon in Scorpio is here to tell us that we don’t have to be physically together to care for each other. We don’t have to be together because we’re in this together anyway.
And it is in the deep knowing that trust is all we really have, that we can ultimately burst the bubble of separation and find true connection with one another.
Detail from the Dance with Death by Johann Rudolf Feyerabend. Courtesy the Basel Historical Museum, Switzerland/Wikipedia
‘Despite all our medical advances,’ my friend Jason used to quip, ‘the mortality rate has remained constant – one per person.’
Jason and I studied medicine together back in the 1980s. Along with everyone else in our course, we spent six long years memorising everything that could go wrong with the human body. We diligently worked our way through a textbook called Pathologic Basis of Disease that described, in detail, every single ailment that could befall a human being. It’s no wonder medical students become hypochondriacal, attributing sinister causes to any lump, bump or rash they find on their own person.
Jason’s oft-repeated observation reminded me that death (and disease) are unavoidable aspects of life. It sometimes seems, though, that we’ve developed a delusional denial of this in the West. We pour billions into prolonging life with increasingly expensive medical and surgical interventions, most of them employed in our final, decrepit years. From a big-picture perspective, this seems a futile waste of our precious health-dollars.
Don’t get me wrong. If I get struck down with cancer, heart disease or any of the myriad life-threatening ailments I learnt about in medicine, I want all the futile and expensive treatments I can get my hands on. I value my life. In fact, like most humans, I value staying alive above pretty much everything else. But also, like most, I tend to not really value my life unless I’m faced with the imminent possibility of it being taken away from me.
Another old friend of mine, Ross, was studying philosophy while I studied medicine. At the time, he wrote an essay called ‘Death the Teacher’ that had a profound effect on me. It argued that the best thing we could do to appreciate life was to keep the inevitability of our death always at the forefront of our minds.
When the Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware interviewed scores of people in the last 12 weeks of their lives, she asked them their greatest regrets. The most frequent, published in her bookThe Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2011), were:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me;
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard;
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings;
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends; and
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
The relationship between death-awareness and leading a fulfilling life was a central concern of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose work inspired Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist thinkers. Heidegger lamented that too many people wasted their lives running with the ‘herd’ rather than being true to themselves. But Heidegger actually struggled to live up to his own ideals; in 1933, he joined the Nazi Party, hoping it would advance his career.
Despite his shortcomings as a man, Heidegger’s ideas would go on to influence a wide range of philosophers, artists, theologians and other thinkers. Heidegger believed that Aristotle’s notion of Being – which had run as a thread through Western thinking for more than 2,000 years, and been instrumental in the development of scientific thinking – was flawed at a most fundamental level. Whereas Aristotle saw all of existence, including human beings, as things we could classify and analyse to increase our understanding of the world, in Being and Time (1927) Heidegger argued that, before we start classifying Being, we should first ask the question: ‘Who or what is doing all this questioning?’
Heidegger pointed out that we who are asking questions about Being are qualitatively different to the rest of existence: the rocks, oceans, trees, birds and insects that we are asking about. He invented a special word for this Being that asks, looks and cares. He called it Dasein, which loosely translates as ‘being there’. He coined the term Dasein because he believed that we had become immune to words such as ‘person’, ‘human’ and ‘human being’, losing our sense of wonder about our own consciousness.
Heidegger’s philosophy remains attractive to many today who see how science struggles to explain the experience of being a moral, caring person aware that his precious, mysterious, beautiful life will, one day, come to an end. According to Heidegger, this awareness of our own inevitable demise makes us, unlike the rocks and trees, hunger to make our life worthwhile, to give it meaning, purpose and value.
While Western medical science, which is based on Aristotelian thinking, sees the human body as a material thing that can be understood by examining it and breaking it down to its constituent parts like any other piece of matter, Heidegger’s ontology puts human experience at the centre of our understanding of the world.
Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with melanoma. As a doctor, I knew how aggressive and rapidly fatal this cancer could be. Fortunately for me, the surgery seemed to achieve a cure (touch wood). But I was also fortunate in another sense. I became aware, in a way I never had before, that I was going to die – if not from melanoma, then from something else, eventually. I have been much happier since then. For me, this realisation, this acceptance, this awareness that I am going to die is at least as important to my wellbeing as all the advances of medicine, because it reminds me to live my life to the full every day. I don’t want to experience the regret that Ware heard about more than any other, of not living ‘a life true to myself’.
Most Eastern philosophical traditions appreciate the importance of death-awareness for a well-lived life. TheTibetan Book of the Dead, for example, is a central text of Tibetan culture. The Tibetans spend a lot of time living with death, if that isn’t an oxymoron.
The East’s greatest philosopher, Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, realised the importance of keeping the end in sight. He saw desire as the cause of all suffering, and counselled us not to get too attached to worldly pleasures but, rather, to focus on more important things such as loving others, developing equanimity of mind, and staying in the present.
The last thing the Buddha said to his followers was: ‘Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence!’ As a doctor, I am reminded every day of the fragility of the human body, how closely mortality lurks just around the corner. As a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, however, I am also reminded how empty life can be if we have no sense of meaning or purpose. An awareness of our mortality, of our precious finitude, can, paradoxically, move us to seek – and, if necessary, create – the meaning that we so desperately crave.
A short while back, I came upon this very funny and inspiring TED talk by conductor/cellist/composer/pianist/educator/comedian Benjamin Zander:
Some thoughts of my own:
One of the several reasons “the c makes the b sad” is that, in the symbolic language of Classical Music, the descending semitone figure (in this instance, c” to b’) signifies a sigh – probably a kind of musical onomatopoesis. Another sadness-related interval in this piece is the descending tritone (here, c” to f#’), symbolic of a sob (more musical onomatopoesis, more than likely…); though filled in, and somewhat obscured by the emphasis on b’, this interval is still pretty prominent, since c” is the highest tone of the opening section, and since it’s on the arrival at f#’ that the first section ends, and the melody turns around and starts over.
Even more striking is something that the composer (that would be Frédéric Chopin) leaves out, namely the picardy third at the very end of the piece. In Classical Music, compositions in the minor modes will often end on a major chord, both for a better resolution (from a purely acoustic point of view, that is, since major chords more closely track the overtone series), and for a slight sense of uplift in spite of all the preceding dolorosity. But Chopin concludes this piece on a very dark e-minor chord, voiced in the mid-range of the piano but, with the root reinforced in an octave much deeper down, probably symbolizing a kind of deep rest in sadness. All of which is particularly poignant, since e-major (the chord on which the music would have ended up had Chopin deployed the aforementioned picardy third) is generally used as a symbol of heaven.
(For more on this symbolic musical language, mostly skipped over in musicological discourse and pedagogy on this side of the Atlantic – though I’m sure Zander is cognizant of it, due to his having been born, brought up, and educated in England – see The Language of Music, by the British musicologist/critic/composer Deryck Cooke; there is also what a very interesting-looking series of twenty-four articles about the the closely-related subject of the feelings and emotions generally associated with the various keys of Classical Music, as derived from the theories of Austrian pianist/composer/educator Ernst Pauer, at a website called Interlude.)
Also note how, in this piece, the slow, ultra-simple, almost oscillating, melodic figures in the right hand seem to subtly change pitch as the underlying chords played by the left hand shift slowly downward. Said shifting is also worthy of note, since, rather than going from one discrete chord to another, the harmonic texture transforms gradually, almost one tone at a time (I’ve sometimes heard this referred to as “the creepy-crawly technique”…).
Finally, if this music sounds familiar, it’s because just about everybody who studies piano under conventional pedagogy learns it at some point or another. Since popular music is full of people who’ve studied piano that way, various bits and pieces of this composition have been percolating out into the wider world for at least the past century.
(The piece under discussion here is Chopin’s Prelude, Opus 28, Number 4 (often known as the E Minor Prelude or Prelude in E Minor), for more on which, click here and here; for the score, click here. For Benjamin Zander’s own website, click here; for more Benjamin Zander on YouTube, click here.)
I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail and I am waiting for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier and I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead and I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy and I am waiting for the final withering away of all governments and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming and I am waiting for a religious revival to sweep through the state of Arizona and I am waiting for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored and I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American and I am waiting to see God on television piped’ onto church altars if only they can find the right channel to tune in on and I am waiting for the Last Supper to be served again with a strange new appetizer and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called and I am waiting for the Salvation Army to take over and I am waiting for the meek to be blessed and inherit the earth without taxes and I am waiting for forests and animals to reclaim the earth as theirs and I am waiting for a way to be devised to destroy all nationalisms without killing anybody and I am waiting for linnets and planets to fall like rain and I am waiting for lovers and weepers to lie down together again in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to ‘be crossed and I am anxiously waiting for the secret of eternal life to be discovered by an obscure general practitioner and I am waiting for the storms of life to be over and I am waiting to set sail for happiness and I am waiting for a reconstructed Mayflower to reach America with its picture story and tv rights sold in advance to the natives and I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in the Lost Continent in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day that maketh all things clear and I am awaiting retribution for what America did to Tom Sawyer and I am waiting for the American Boy to take off Beauty’s clothes and get on top of her and I am waiting for Alice in Wonderland to retransmit to me her total dream of innocence and I am waiting for Childe Roland to come to the final darkest tower and I am waiting for Aphrodite to grow live arms at a final disarmament conference in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting to get some intimations of immortality by recollecting my early childhood and I am waiting for the green mornings to come again youth’s dumb green fields come back again and I am waiting for some strains of unpremeditated art to shake my typewriter and I am waiting to write the great indelible poem and I am waiting for the last long careless rapture and I am perpetually waiting for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn to catch each other up at last and embrace and I am waiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder
