Death

When my nephew was six or seven years old, he composed a short poem which still gives me chills -- he had no idea what it meant (or maybe he did) and I have no idea how he wrote it, but it's as deep and dark as anything I've read:

Soon it comes to every person,
See it happen in one black curtain

Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, are names from my youth who have now gone behind the black curtain. Not to mention the far more disturbing murder of Neda Soltani, whose life bled away in front of us, her eyes staring off into that infinite distance only the dying see.

I wrote this on Twitter: "With the loss of anyone famous what we're really mourning is the passage of our own lives, their death a marker on OUR journey."

I wrote it because death is ever-present and life is ever-shrinking. For some of us, death is an obsession, for others, barely an afterthought. My childhood was bombs and bullets and bodies and burning buildings, so I'm of the former. The thought of eternal non-existence is unthinkable, mortifying beyond words. If that's the fate that awaits us, it's a wonder that we don't all curl up and scream in endless horror. Some people do, figuratively.

Death is life's greatest motivator, for good and evil, fueling our futile quest to 'matter' - futile, because the people we seek to 'matter to' are themselves reaching out to us to give them meaning. It's like two jumpers hurtling to earth, each reaching for the other, but neither with a foothold and both doomed to the same end. Some try to matter by helping others, some by hurting others, all with the desire to be remembered, to bridge an unbridgeable gap, to leave some kind of a mark, to prove that they existed.

Humans are impossibly lonely creatures, staring forlornly into time and space, without an anchor or a reference point, probing the depths of physics, philosophy, psychology, poetry, but forever bumping up against the unknowable.

My father, who died a decade ago, adored Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat -- this quatrain in particular:

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help--for it
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Searching for the light behind the dark curtain, we turn to religion, to faith, to drugs, to music, to love. We get a glimmer of hope with stories of near death and other paranormal experiences. We meditate and pray. We look to nature and art and beauty. We dream.

And I think we do get glimpses of the light behind the curtain. In hypnagogic states (the twilight before sleep), in moments of transcendence when our thinking brain is suspended, in vague remembrances of a home, a place of origin whose location is timeless and dimensionless, in the sudden opening -- and closing -- of a portal during moments of intense fear and love and pain and pleasure, in the stillness of night and nature, in strange confluences and coincidences, in the inexplicable faith that somehow, somewhere, there is an answer.

It's amusing to me that science, in its quest to deconstruct and debunk, has reaffirmed the ephemerality of the physical world -- quantum theory paints a wonderful and mysterious picture of a universe that is merely thought and potential. Just imagine that when you look out across the horizon, everything in your sight is energy, nothing solid, and that it's all a thought in your mind. And that you are a thought in someone else's mind.

We've seen the black curtain this week and it gives us pause, as it should, and it hurts, as it must. Still, we have reason to believe that behind the curtain is something even more mysterious, more frightening and more beautiful than the world we know.

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UPDATE: shireengonz, one of the commenters in the discussion thread below, recommends a gripping video that raises fascinating questions about the subject of this post:

Follow Peter Daou on Twitter: www.twitter.com/peterdaou

Comments

[ogomezmontes]

I'm 70 years old and in Nov. 2003 was diagnosed with a large lung cancer.Given until Christmas in Feb 2004 I so entirely disagree with you.I'm still here and seems cured.I never was scared of that black curtain you talk about .Why?. Because my life was the sum of my acts,some good,some bad,but in general so proud of my good ones that the bad ones fade away.Immortality or celebrity,whatever you want to call it,is inmaterial.Whether someone remembers you 1,2 generations or longer you are still dead.Death is not to be feared but not to be loved either or wanted for the sake of death.I don't know what religion,if any you profess,but I brought up catholic was taught that death should be accepted for a better world awaits.BS.I found out is not really true, we die and it is it.So life should be lived to try to help others when possible and fade away,like in a Hollywood movie,when your time is up.
I have look at death in the eye in the nform of some of my friends that died in my arms of AIDS and believe me when I say,death is neither pretty nor ugly, is just ...

[Subhra]

Take some solace, hurting heart
Death may be a joyous start
To another life, another game.
Some ways different, some ways same.
Nonphysical ecstasy or juicy physicality.
Within our fragile shells, may be,
Pulsates immortality?

It hurts to lose a familiar face
But may be in death’s fierce embrace
The only things that end are fears,
Doubts, sorrows of earthly years
Leaving nameless, endless grace.

I don’t know that this is true
But then again neither do you
Know for sure that this is not
As true as your anguished thought

Since we don’t know either way
My humble entreaty today
To you o moving writer Daou
Is to believe what liberates you
From the ancient angst that shaped you so.
It did its job, now let it go.

[RosieLee]

Thank you for this beautiful article, Peter. It's so moving and thought provoking. And what a stunning video too, thank you for that, shireengonz.

[SILVANUS]

I'm still grooving to "Zipless".

[LMPE]

While Ed McMahon was getting on in years and Farrah Fawcett had reached a terminal stage, I never expected David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson all to leave this life within a month of each other. I was never a Michael Jackson fan, but my heart goes out to his family (and the families of the other three).

[mjc]

Trying to never get old, to live forever young in Never, Neverland, was Jackson's life-goal and no doubt the real reason for his death as well; sad.

[SouthJerseySteve]

Thank you for your post -- I am still grieving the sudden death of my "father-in-law" who died 2 weeks ago yesterday. I will always now think of Thursdays as Death Day because this is the day I lost Michael, Farrah, and my partner's Dad.

My only regret is that it took MJ's death to finally get me to download his greatest songs to my iPod, where I can listen to his music forever.

[Dolmance]

Well, they're all in Heaven now. With Freddy Prinz and Princess Diana and George Reeves, standing with Jesus and the Holy Father who made the universe and everything in it.

And here I'd had the impression that the only crazy people left in the world were the Republicans.

[shireengonz]

Beautifully written piece. Thanks for your thoughts. I wanted to offer a comment on what you said about that glimpse behind the curtain. I think it's a different way the brain interprets your surroundings, a right brain hemisphere view of the world. Check out this interesting lecture by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, who suffered a major stroke. She describes an interesting perception of the world when her left hemisphere was cut off during the stroke. It sounds quite mystical.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

[sb250guy]

This was very nicely written, It was thought-provoking and almost poetic. I don't usually comment on blog posts but I really liked this one. I too, have recently lost some childhood icons (Walter Cronkite as well) and I'm reeling a bit. There's been a disturbance in the force. The world I grew up in is really gone. Boy, I wish George Carlin had made a few more years.

[Margaretpoa]

Three famous people have died this week. One of old age, one of cancer and one from excess. Michael Jackson probably shortened his own life by abusing himself and credulously doing things that the quacks around him told him would keep him young. His sleeping in a pure oxygen environment being just one example of that. Yet of the three, people are most upset about the one who is most likely to have done it to himself. In my opinion, the very worst part of his death is the fact that we now have to put up with thirty years of Michael Jackson sightings.

And just when the Elvis sightings were finally tapering off....

[karendragon]

Your nephew was extremely insightful for 6 or 7! I'm going to put that poem with other beautiful works I've read. Thank you for the wonderful way you put this post together - I will save this one as well. Death is not an easy topic for many, but you nailed it. Your writing caught me when you covered Neda's death and when you bring her up again in this post, I am floored by your ability to describe what I feel. Anyway, I'm a fan now - thank you Mr. Daou!

[bertha112]

It is so true that part of the reason we mourn the death of these “icons” is that we use their existence to “mark” our time here on earth. It has indeed been a tragic week. I know there are many who are my age who 1) owned a Michael Jackson “ALBUM”; 2) owned the Farrah poster (esp. males); and 3) who repeated -in the same tone and manner - that historic introducti­on..”Heeee­rrrreeeees­sss Johnny!!

I know I did.

RIP all.

[Dolmance]

Yes, I think now we've come to a place where the living can only envy the dead.

[NedroidPrime]

Very good post.

I had a friend pass in Jan of this year, and it is funny how you don't realize how close you are to someone, or just how much you care about them until they are gone. Then you are left with regrets, guilt, etc.

People really need to keep this feeling in mind, and to live like every day is their last. Don't leave angry, and don't leave anything unsaid. You just never know when it will be the last time...

[heavysole]

I was telling my mom yesterday that at 42, Fawcett and Jackson passing at too early of an age makes me feel old. I was a little kid when these two entered my life and forever made an impression upon it.

I'm also sorry for McMahon, but at least he made it to 86, a long and full life to be sure.

Yesterday was a sad day, the kind that leaves a hollow feeling.