The Sound of Inevitability

"You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That's the sound of inevitability." -- Agent Smith, The Matrix

I have had cause recently to think about the nature of despair, what leads us to believe that there is no hope, no point, and no reason... to anything. It is a subject often addressed in poetry. I do not think I have ever encountered a more eloquent expression of sadness than the following poem by W.H. Auden:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos, and with muffled drum,
bring out the coffin and let the mourners come.
Let the airplanes circle, mourning overhead,
scribbling on the sky the message, "He is dead".
Put white bows around the necks of public doves.
Let traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my north, south, east and west,
my working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon. My midnight. My talk. My song.
I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
for nothing now can come to any good.

The poem is recited in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. The last four lines, wishing for an end to a world in a metaphor of packing, cleaning up, and turning out the lights, are simply heart-wrenching. It is a request for the giant hand of God to descend and bring an end to His creation. Sometimes there are moments like that.

Then there are the following lines from Philip Larkin, the poet who said "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth."

Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
Dockery & Son (1964)

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
This Be The Verse (1974)

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives -
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly.
High Windows (probably my favorite Larkin poem)

As Robin Williams says in Dead Poet's Society, "We're all food for worms, lads." It's true. One after another after another after another, we're all going to die... person by person, blog by blog, until the current population has been completely replaced by another. Who will remember what went before? What will have mattered? Kids? Work? Blogs? Anything? Is life really just "boredom then fear"? I want to disagree with Larkin, but I'm not sure I can entirely. What is life when we're young? A search for things to do. A search for things to occupy our time. Things that give us money, and comfort... satisfaction... relief from boredom. What is life when we're old? The cold hard fear that death is just around the corner. Being scared that the next time the phone rings you will find out that someone else is gone... or will soon be gone. Surely there must be more to it than that? you ask. Surely something must matter. Surely there must be some point to it all. The children we raise to greet the future, the work we do to make some difference in the world, the memories and experiences we share with others... surely it must matter?

Jorge Luis Borges writes a wonderful story about the last person who ever remembered meeting Jesus Christ. It is a fascinating tale about what it means to remember something and what it means for that memory to die. Who was the last person to die who met Abraham Lincoln? People remember meeting JFK, but for how much longer? Somewhere, in the future, the last person who actually met him will die. Then what? Who will be the last person who ever remembers reading these lines? Who will be the last person living who shook your hand? Who will be the last person living who has ever heard of you or recognizes your name?

Harlan Ellison laments often in his work about a phenomenon he calls "cultural amnesia". We forget what has gone before.... things important 50 years ago are important no longer. Even in a short timespan, you can look back and see so much that has been lost, so much that has dwindled into dust and exists only in the minds of those who remember it fondly. What happens when they go? There will be something else, but what relation will it have to us? "And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock....." Like it or not, "time's always slippin' into the future". Mercilessly. We pass down our genes to our children. We pass down our knowledge, expressions, interests, memories, to anyone we come into contact with. Society is an ever-evolving mass of genes, memories, ideas, works, hobbies, sports... it is always the direct product of what immediately preceded it. All of us, like a rock dropped into a pond, will make ripples that will continue after the rock has fallen beneath the water. But how big a splash will it be? How far will the ripples go? How far into the future will what you did matter? How much of it will you shape?

The inevitable. We do what we can and then we die. We hope in the meantime something we did will have a positive effect on the future, that some idea we had will nest in the minds of those who come after, or that, at the very least, our children will take what we taught them, grow up, and have children themselves, so that at least it all continues. Maybe we won't be remembered. Or have kids. Or do anything important. Maybe it doesn't matter.

We live only in our minds. We view our life and the lives of others through the senses we are born with. There is only the experience that begins with our birth and ends with our death. All else is unknown to us. We must take for granted that the history explained to us has happened and the science explained to us is true.... else we wind up like the paranoid in Robert Heinlein's "They..." who is convinced the whole world has been constructed around him (a la The Truman Show) and that, as he moves from place to place, mysterious creatures are fashioning the places to which he is going right before he gets there (incidentally, in the story, he's right). We must take for granted that our children will exist and go about their lives after we die. We must take for granted that the world will even continue at all after we are gone. Perception is a funny thing. For some poets, it is the only thing, and the belief that our own perception is the only reality, solipsism, as it were, is a powerful expressive force. Sylvia Plath, in particular, has written some wonderful solipsistic poems, my favorite of which is the following villanelle:

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead; <--- simply an amazing line
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

It's a brilliant poem, one of my favorite villanelles (along with "Do not go gentle into that good night..." and "The art of losing isn't hard to master" by Elizabeth Bishop, but that's a subject for another blog). Can you really shut your eyes and condemn the universe? Deny reality, as it were? Become dead to the world? Open your eyes and create the universe anew? Sometimes you may wish to. There is a power to loneliness, a comfort to solitude, that no force can break down.

"Soliloquy of the Solipsist"

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees deminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I
When in good humor
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott color and forbid any flower
To be.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

Sylvia Plath

The poet says "I am God. The power is mine. You exist only in my mind and perception."

If only solipsism were more than just "I am the only one who this is happening to. Nothing exists outside my perception." If only it were more... if only it were complete power over perception, complete control over the universe as seen through your eyes. There would be no reason to lose hope, to despair. You wouldn't suddenly have that heart attack, or be struck by that life-threatening illness. You'd close your eyes and make the bad things go away. We all, deep down, have a subtle belief when we are young that we are invincible... that we can control pain with our minds, fight illness with our spirit, and shape our physical and mental reality as we see fit. Those who have been through any trauma know better. Anyone who has ever begged for pain to go away, who has tried to master it with his mind, tried to push it into a dark corner, to deny that the horror is really happening, anyone who has ever tried to do this knows it simply isn't possible. You go numb, finally, accepting your failure to control the situation and awash in the bleak tides that sweep over you.

For we are powerless motes in a sweeping dark wind, praying for the all-too-brief moments of light amidst the terrible spans of darkness. There is happiness. There is love. There are flashes of beauty and comfort and hope and wonder. But they are all too finite... There is a wonderful image from an Old English poem (I forget the name)... life is like a sparrow that flies into a mead hall (I'm paraphrasing)... the sparrow comes in from the bitter cold into a brightly lit hall, he flies through the hall, above the table, above the people drinking and laughing, flies through the fire-warmed comfort... but the moment is all too brief, and then through, out, back, back into the unforgiving darkness. This is life, a few brief moments, in from the cold. Ponder the inevitability of your own demise. For it is coming, sooner than you think.

Who will remember you?
Whom did you touch?
What did you do that mattered?
What is your life about?
That person that you love, have you told them?
That thing you always wanted to do, have you done it?
That place you always wanted to go, have you gone there?

Time is running out.

Listen. Listen. Can you hear it?

The sound of inevitability...