American Vanitas: An Oxymoron (?)

Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return

“Bonfire of the Vanities” (Italian: Falò delle vanità) refers to the burning of objects that are deemed to be occasions of sin. The focus of this destruction was nominally on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, paintings, playing cards, and even musical instruments. See also novel by Tom Wolfe (1987).

No insect hangs it nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity. – Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (this is the epigram found in the book Vanitas by Joseph Olshan (1998).

Believing in life, I believe in death as well, and at seventy-six look forward to my immersion in the other plane of the see-saw also. Without wishing it to hasten it, in other words, I don’t dread the event. – Edward Hoagland from Curtain Calls in Harpers (March 2009).

  This is detailed segment of the larger painting by Scott Greene titled:

Machinations: Death from a Thousand Cuts 2004, oil on canvas, 80″ x 144″,
see: http://www.scottmgreene.com/paintings/2003-05/10d1.html

It is a unique vision and portrayal – astonishing in it’s own right, but with the feel of Hieronymus Bosch- brought forward into our contemporary whirlwind of modernity.

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American -Vanitas. What?

Exactly. And an oxymoron with a question mark (?) … well, maybe.

But before we go there, first this – what do these three things have in common?

1. Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters (book)
2. Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory (1938) by Georgia O’Keefe (painting)
3. Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1942, by Ansel Adams (photograph)

Did you know that Ansel Adams took a photograph of Georgia O’Keefe (w/ Orville Cox) in 1937 at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona?

Okay…So are you also saying that Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keefe were also inspired by the book Spoon River Anthology (by Edgar Lee Masters)? 

Uh, no.  But I don’t know. Maybe.

But check this out – the triangulation could be this – vanitas- in this regard: graveyard, cemetery, the moon, dead citizens, bones, ram’s head, flowers – and this from “Alfonso Churchill”– from the grave (in Spoon River Anthology)

They laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,”
As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst
Of knowing about the stars.
They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,

But the significance of all three is what is what I will examine further into this posting, but I might as well present the hypothesis – the proposal – at the very beginning.

For the large part {is that oxymoronic too?}, our mainstream social/cultural fabric is lacking any significant semblance of vanitas and – {this is where it gets roguish} – and I propose that the lack thereof has added to the struggle and frustration of living in the midst of modernity – and for that matter (and even more amplified) – in our post-modern condition. Finally, I would like to propose a resurgence and renaissance of vanitas into our “living environments” so as to create a healthier (physical and mental) approach to our existence – especially in the aging process.

   Rembrandt (self-portraits ~ over time)

For many, the term – Vanitas – triggers the association with the arts such as type of symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The word is Latin, meaning “emptiness” and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity (as noted in Wikipedia). But I stretch the conceptual meaning even further to embrace a wider range of media and I incorporate an even stronger relationship to Time (passing and finiteness). In fact, my definition, my interpretation goes beyond the usual suspects with “still-life” objects via Vanitas (e.g., the requisite skull, the candle extinguished, dusty violins, silverware, jewelry strewn about, decaying books here and there. And so instead of it being (perhaps) oxymoronic, Vanitas is in need of an upgrade! But I am not suggesting that we simply replace those traditional objects found in paintings and etchings from long ago with the more contemporary  iPods, season tickets, your catamaran, keys to your Bimmer, assorted photos of your spouses/mistresses, and various Bling strewn about -

No, we need something for more innovative and visceral – where the impact should be heartfelt and creates the shudder of finality like the hairs on your neck that stand on end as that shadowy “thing” sweeps or crawls across your back. It is that sense that there has been a “correction” – a return to earth – existential wake-up call, a tweet  from Grim Reaper “c u sooner r l8r” – the close-call where the outlook is different, vows are refreshed, and there is a promise to make each moment count….again and again.

American Vanitas.

I know. I can hear the deafening silence. I can understand your curious apathy. I can even sense your frustration with the intricate simplicity of the title of this posting.

Okay, here is the approach. I am writing to try to capture an understanding (or understand the capturing) of what means do we have at our disposal in our mainstream culture that would remind – reawaken and cause us to reflect on the temporality of life – it’s finitness – and the inevitability of it’s ending – the finality of it all.

Okay, stop! Hold on. Woah, you are going to talk about dddd…ddddddeaa… {it’s okay – just say it} – DEATH !? Oh come on. There is enough of “that” on the news as it is…enough already. I want my blogs to be cheerful, happy and saccharine. If I wanted macabre, I’d go watch a Quentin Tarantino movie marathon.

Okay, may I recommend Death Proof then (heh, heh,heh…oops)

Not funny. Look we just don’t want to talk about it. Life is enough to deal with. Now look what you have done…you want to blog about the vanities and death and stuff…I’m getting ready to click outta here…

I understand. But please wait. Give this a chance. Hear me out – and then disagree or better yet  - refute my proposal. Show me (or tell me) that I am missing something here (and making reference to Halloween does NOT count). Furthermore, I challenge the argument that any vanitas is simply antiquated and not needed in our technological hyperreal dream-space we call living in the year 2009 – and beyond. But then, I am not arguing for thanatos over eros; in fact, eros keeps me going as one of the symbolic counterweights to (pure) thanatos, but I am proposing that vanitas is needed just as much – in existence – and living.

And furthermore, I promise that my memento mori will not run over your carpe diem.

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This all begins for me (and perhaps for you) with a class in graduate school and the visitation to cemeteries.

While I was at Oregon State University (a long time ago and in a galaxy far away), I took a class taught by Marcus Borg on Death and Dying and it was (and still is) one of the best and deeply rewarding educational experiences I have ever encountered. The class was an elective course and the readings and the activities were intense and meaningful. Borg has us contemplate our own funeral, visit cemeteries…

Sidenote: One of my reactions to the landscape of Scotland and into the “country” – the cemeteries, the ruins, the graves, the history - 

        

“Death is a debt, To nature due, I’ve paid that debt, and so must you.”
 cemetery in Moulin (near Pitlochry) Scotland.

- and and a funeral home, write our thoughts and perspectives, watch movies that touched upon the topic, and more importantly, offered an array of readings from the literature that played hardball with the topic. Allow me to present a small sample of Borg’s thoughts on death and dying (citation at the end of this post):

“As numerous studies demonstrate, contemporary mainstream American culture is deeply death-denying. To some extent, this attitude of denial has come about because of changes in our society in this century: the marked decrease in the number of deaths at an early age; the development of specialized professions for the care of the dying and the dead; the emergence of geographical mobility, with the consequence that most of us live at some distance from aging and dying relatives, including parents; the growth of separate communities for the aging, not only nursing homes but retirement communities. More and more, the aging and the dying do not live among us. Increasingly, we are insulated from death.”

This excerpt reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon by Roz Chast, ID: 24179, Published in The New Yorker October 25, 1993, click on link to review:

http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=24179, where a man sits in his chair reading the obituaries in newspaper and the headlines for each death refer, relatively, to reader’s age, e.g., ‘Two years younger than you…Twelve years older than you…Your age on the dot.’) which then catches us in a bit of self-reflection as – if perhaps you are old enough to appreciate the subtle humor – we see ourselves in comparison to others who “go before us” – Wow, look at that younger than me…and oh, that person, well, that that is about right I guess, they lived a good long while. Uh oh – what’s this? MY AGE !!!!!! Someone died who was born in the same year I was born! – Instead of the deeper look at WHO they were, there scanning of the page(s) becomes a mathematical contest of subjective angst – and relief.

Borg continues,

“There is considerable evidence that we are not only unfamiliar with death, but deeply uneasy about it. We are uncomfortable around the dying and the grieving, not knowing what to say. Often even the family of a dying person. as well as the attending medical staff, do not openly acknowledge what is happening; an atmosphere of denial and pretense prevails. Our language is filled with euphemisms about death: somebody passed away, or “we lost Uncle Ned”; if a husband and wife discuss life insurance, one typically hears, “If something should happen to me . . . ,” not, “When I die. . .” Graveyards became cemeteries and then memorial gardens, the corpse has become the remains (and a cremated corpse the cremains) , burial has become interment, and the death certificate the “vital statistics form.” Our language betrays much about us; we are as uncomfortable with the words ‘death “‘ and “dying” as an earlier generation was with the language of sexuality.

The daily display of violent death on television only confirms the diagnosis. Commentators such as anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer have noted that our preoccupation with video violence is a manifestation of the “pornography of death.” Out of touch with death as a natural and universal phenomenon, we become fascinated with the display of death in unnatural forms.”

And that is the first issues (of many). Some may disagree and argue that it is exactly the other way around – that our culture is “death-obsessed” – I mean look at the attention given to excessive violence and “body counts” (mass murder, serial murder, and crimes of “passion”) in our news, TV programming, and movies – and to some degree in our music. But that is also exactly the point by Borg (and Gorer) – death is approached and perceived as something unreal and virtually created (a la Lacan and Žižek; see also Baudrillard) – as massive, extreme, and horrific – pornography of death. While there maybe harmless characterizations of death – there is also the dance around “it” with our euphemisms and supernatural stories – via werewolves, vampires (see Twilight and True Blood),

and zombies – to where it is easier to talk about the “undead” (the living dead) as it is…THE DEAD (“real dead”).

Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies

 The “real” is much harder to grasp and deal with – than the ideology that can be created as illusion and fantasy. The imaginary and the “the ideal” have dominated (as hegemonic) the landscape and the mindscape – and has served to obscure the confrontation of “it” – death.

And this is what I have in mind with this blog. I hope to examine (along with you – if I may) this glossing over – this obscurantism – and all of the muddy-distractions of death and then consider what we do have (what little there is to draw upon) as examples of American Vanitas that can have us revisit and rethink the need for it – and with us.

But the symbolism of what is real as a reminder and as a memento mori is another issue. If that can help us grasp the significance and meaning of the real (the actual) – and granted, not necessarily as the direct and full embrace of it  - while assisting in minimizing the neuroses that may emerge over (and along with) the increasing amount of fetishes that cocoon us from what Kierkegaard (and thanks to Marcus Borg to bringing this to our attention) referred to as the “earnestness of death.” I will refer back to this later, but for now, another sample from Borg’s comments:

“Earnestness means making the connection between death and me, to know that I will die. It is much more than the intellectual knowledge that we will all die. All of us know that; none of us would get that wrong on a true/false test. To realize that this consciousness will one day cease, to seemyself dead, to see the coffin closed upon me — that is earnestness.”

And that is what I wish to address and then keep discursive – an ongoing dialogue with it – as we live – and as we age. To see if we, in our American fabric, have the available the tools – the symbolism – the art – to address the earnestness of “it” – Is there an American Vanitas? One final note before we press on – in future blogs, I hope to expand upon a notion that I am grappling with that touches upon the vanities (vanitas) and our lived experience and it relates to – but is substantially modified from – Dawkins notion of the “extended phenotype.” Simply stated, I wish to build upon the notion of an Extensible Phenotype – a syntax – a semiotics of humanness into our surrounding environments that reflects who we are –what we are – and what we wish to symbolically portray as ourselves – ands then examine how that intertwines with other extensible phenotypes (from personal to collective) to create the range of static and viral memes that address reality, the fantastical, and the ideology of living in relation to our temporal selves – or better yet – our desire to be long-lived, with contra-aging, and perhaps even – immortal (?) versus extensible phenotypes that has death and life embedded in our education to become fully human.

            With this blog posting, I am not trying to top the work of the great Dante nor am I attempting to impose some covert catechism or quasi fire and brimstone via the blogosphere as a vain attempt to preach about what should be…contra what is; I am not psychoanalyzing our current state of affairs nor do I wish go there >>> into the swamp of punditry with carnival barkers who plant dynamite into their polemics and deliberately mishandle nitroglycerin in their ideologies. But as a human…and then modestly using the Janus-faced perspective and with an interest in our current conditions – our contextualities (and conceptualities) temporally placed as they are (but nonetheless – tentative, passing, and perhaps ephemeral) and our universal common bond as aging individuals (inevitably)…I am thinking – or it is metacognitioning – about our great adventure across the life course and into the era of deeper reflection (with a sense of the later half or the third age or the completion of the life) with an eye, a heart (and soul), and the brain – as we take in and absorb our fate, our destiny, our path, our journey… all the while we are embedded in the culture, the society, the economy, the values, and the ethics of our lot. And what is our lot today?

            Take your pick of diagnoses:

American Mania. Culture of Narcissism. Irrational exuberance. Greed (see Gordon Gekko, Bernie Madoff, and host of others in scams and fraud that takes advantage of affinity). Avarice. Pursuit of happiness. Materialism. Commodity fetishes. Spiritual void. Attention-deficit disordered. Eternal adolescence. Pessimism porn…and on and on. 

But to me all of it sounds a lot like the old school diagnoses (and warnings) for humanity in terms of excess and extremism in a lot of categories: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. And I think that these concepts – these “sins” or (transgressions) are not just the concerns and the jurisdiction of the sacred world or the sole currency of organized religions – it is very much (and should be) a secular concern and focus as well. That is, both religion and science – for the atheist and core monotheistic believer – backslider and zealot, for the fundamentalist and the humanist, for the pagan and the deist – all have an interest in our Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde, our interior angels and demons, our constant tension with conscious and consciousness that grapples with pathos, logos, and ethos.

  Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. – Gordon Gekko – from the movie Wall Street

And I am intrigued by the fabric of our ethos, collectively and individually (our civilization and its discontents) that to many seems to be unraveling rapidly – such that beyond the head-scratching and the uncertainty and to some degree – a state of denial – something seems to be amiss, out of joint, and dissonant – even in the midst of greatness defined by our military might, the vast opportunities of the educational system(s), the bountiful spread of agriculture, and even despite the current financial woes of a flawed banking system (managed by humans) – there is the greatness (some would say the very freedom to engage the) perpetual allure of shopping and the acquisition for and of things made available (legal and illegal) as though there were well-stocked buffet lines on every corner and in every neighborhood across this nation- full of things to buy and to get and hang onto for dear life (Ahh, therein lies the rub – for dear life and perhaps for fear of death – and finality – and as our Rx for RIP).

Even though some, both in the secular and the sacred worlds, have pinned IT (the “it” – that to which we address in the imaginary, the symbolic, and the “real”) down as to what is amiss and out of joint – their fall back to the recycled diagnosis of “loss of values and morals” is then usually couched in a frame of reference as to the “way that it used to be” which implicitly tries to conjure up a “golden age” and/or a “golden isle” where and when all was right and good (perhaps both narrowly defined) BEFORE (ah, there is the key term/word BEFORE) the “fall” or the turning away or the slide into the sink of iniquity. The disconnect (and the dissonance) feels like the déjà vu in William Butler Yeats in the verse of reckoning:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
       The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        Are full of passionate intensity.

The very people who deliver the message of the high and mighty – will many times contradict the meaning in their message because of their tone or style that is self-righteous and arrogant and condescending OR because they simply cannot practice what they preach and fall hard and fast right onto the front pages of our newspapers or front and center on our computer screens. The rest of us watch as their hubris sets the stage for comeuppance and to some degree – it leads to our other guilty pleasure – schadenfreude – and though their message then lacks credibility and we may vicariously use their actions and consequences as the message about what to avoid or how to be careful…the wheel turns and the behaviors repeat and we marvel at the cycle and patterns that re-appear in our lifetime and in our textbooks as history – which we seem to forget – and are only smitten with the erasable now – and the promise of the tomorrow.

            So do we have an American Vanitas? I have stated previously that I do not think we have much going in that department, but we have some (I will offer and present three) examples that may either come close – or that you may consider serving as great examples of vanitas – right here in our backyard (so to speak).

But one more thing – let us review some classics from the past before I present my three for nomination.

         

                                     

Another resources you may find useful: http://www.fernandovicente.es/ –  paitings by Fernando Vincente

 http://community.livejournal.com/humandress/112013.html

American Vanitas:

So here are my three nominations for American Vanitas (perhaps there are hundreds more?):

Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters,

is a collection of unusual, short, free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters’ home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses. Each poem is an epitaph of a dead citizen, delivered by the dead themselves. They speak about the sorts of things one might expect: some recite their histories and turning points, others make observations of life from the outside, and petty ones complain of the treatment of their graves, while few tell how they really died. Speaking without reason to lie or fear the consequences, they construct a picture of life in their town that is shorn of all façades (from Wikipedia). My favorite is the “verse” from Elijah Browning. Why? It is entirely transformative for me – not to mention, I could spend the rest of my life analyzing and digesting its meaning. But for now, I will use it as vanitas. And I hope to read them over and over again – as life lessons.

Rams’s Head, Blue Morning Glory (1938) by Georgia O’ Keefe.  

There are numerous paitings by O’Keefe with bones and skulls, but this one provides the contrast and visual impact of an organic presence in two forms. There is the wheel-like radiance of the morning glory that is like a celestial umbrella – like the sky – and then symmetry of the earthy horns of the ram which spiral – perhaps helix fashion – upward casting a shadow upon the backdrop – of a shroud – or a cloud – to which I gaze back to the bone-white skull. Blue, brown, white. Sparse, contained, and magical. The sun rises, the flower shines and has its moment, the bones last a little longer. Such is life in the desert. Such is life after all. 

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1942) by Ansel Adams.

Haunting, visceral, lonely, and a stunning beauty in black and white starkness – the crushing weight of the dark sky (the infinite universe) giving way to unearthly clouds that cushion the fall of gravity against the snow-capped mountain peaks. The moon is the pearl – stained with lava flows and cratered – lifeless, but yet moves – ebb and flow – the tides far away and the blood below. The white crosses glow – in God’s country – the desert sky (see U2); the graves, in the earth – which is cultivated only there – with a few trees, but then surrounded by geologic time pressed downward – in layers of rock, like the layers of the clouds, and we – are added as another layer – downward, pressed like leaves between the pages of the book. Take this photograph and learn. Observe and feel the silent embrace – your heart is welcome here – and so are your bones. This photograph drills into my psyche. It is the undiscovered country – our country – our vanitas. I do not know why, but I want to be there – for all time – an eternity. But not yet…

So, take all three and what do we have? A beginning. An American Vanitas. And why is this necessary? I leave you with more from Marcus Borg:

“Earnestness about death can also liberate us from the weight of culture. The equality of death exposes the ephemeral character of the cultural standards by which we judge ourselves, whether we are puffing ourselves up by virtue of our achievements or being crushed by our failure to measure up. It can free us from an identity based on distinctions and comparisons. For the same reason, the equality of death arouses compassion in us, for it teaches us about our essential equality before God and about the artificiality of the comparisons by which we typically assess people.

Finally, earnestness about death can teach us about the wise use of time, about the difference between what Kierkegaard calls “accidental” and ‘essential” activities. In the context of his aforementioned essay, “accidental activities” are not intrinsically meaningful; “goal-oriented,” their meaning depends entirely on their being completed. “Essential” activities are those which are valued in themselves, in which the process is meaningful in itself and does not ultimately depend on completion for its meaningfulness or enjoyment. One who is earnest about death will minimize the former and maximize the latter: “And so earnestness comes to consist in living each day as if it were the last, and at the same time the first in a long life.”

The notion is capable of being misunderstood. Earnest thought about one’s own death does not make one fearfully or morbidly preoccupied with death, for earnestness makes one realize that time is too precious to be spent being morbid. It does not lead to a giving up of plans or projects, though it does change the mental frame of reference within which they are chosen and worked on. It does not mean that one lives every day simply as if it were one’s last — a kind of crazy living “for the moment” rather than living “in the moment,” to use a distinction made by the dying poet Ted Rosenthal in his book and movie bearing the same title, How Could I Not Be Among You? To live “in the moment” means to be gracefully present to the simplest and most complex joys and tasks. It means to value the “dailiness of life,” as one of my students put it. Thus death emerges as the teacher of wisdom — indeed, as the liberator of the psyche. For the earnest thought of death can liberate us not only from procrastination, but also from our typical pursuit of an identity based on cultural distinctions. (see – http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1001)”

I hope we can see a resurgence – a flourishing of American Vanitas – in all of its creative expressions. I think it will be help to provide a corrective and balance to the dangers of self-absorption –  and more toward  actualizing the self – with earnestness.

Thanks, Scott D. Wright

Of Grave Concern: On Our Dying – As We Live More Fully

Grave Concerns: Revisiting Some Material on Our Dying – As We Live More Fully

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools – The way to dusty death.
- Shakespeare’s Macbeth

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
- Woody Allen

Oh great…death. WTF? – Just what we need. A buzz-kill blog posting on death (and how ironic to use the word “kill” as a way of saying: I was chilling along, enjoying some Tweets on my iPhone, and checking out Boing Boing via my RSS reader– and then this guy wants to talk about death).

   Yes, that is my point. It is just what we need. But not the kind of presentation and examination of “it” you might be thinking.

For example, I came across this informative news item with the DallasNews.com.

Remembrances: Deaths that shocked and saddened us in ‘08 12/08 By TOM MAURSTAD 

On one hand it was good to see an respectful overview of the “passing” of a selected few in the past year (2008), but on the other hand, it was sad news of those in the “spotlight”, those who were deemed important enough to notice (or that we should care). But at least the reporter had the minimal skill to ponder the bigger picture. Here are some excerpts to make my case (from Maurstad, 2008):

“We wish everyone a happy this, a merry that. Yet beneath, behind and in the midst of all that fizzy, frothy fun, there is a steady, patient presence. Death. We know it, we’ve always known it and always will know it. Death comes for us all: rich and famous, poor and unsung, Republican and Democrat. It’s the ultimate bipartisan movement, building a bridge, we hope, to somewhere.

Every year, there are the big-name deaths, and they tend to come in two varieties. There are those like Heath Ledger’s. They are sharp shocks that make you reflect on what a tightrope this thread of life can be. You wince at the loss of promise. Then there are those like Paul Newman’s. They are more of a slow, steady ache as you mark the chapters in your life by the parts played and realize that the world has, in a small but important and irrevocable way, changed. It is no longer a world in which Paul Newman, Bo Diddley or George Carlin live. But in a way, the big deaths are easy. Think about the deaths of Tim Russert and Charlton Heston. They received so much attention, so much coverage, it was as if you could out-source the experience. The media grieves so you don’t have to.

Celebrities have many roles in life, but in death they serve a single purpose. They are time markers. You see the name and somewhere inside your memory, a button is pushed and a reel of images and feelings unspool. In what’s impossible not to recognize as a gathering trend, 2008 was a year full of such time markers for Boomers.

Big or small, world-famous or personally important, we take a moment as we leave the old and step into the new, to say goodbye and thank you.”

Ok, that was refreshingly different in a news story (usually devoid of thinking and reflection) to pay tribute to not only highlighted names, but to wax poetic (somewhat) on Death. But still – the catalyst and the focus was on the recognizable few. And indeed, you can learn more of the dead people in 2008 by going to the “Dead People Server” at http://dpsinfo.com/dps/2008.html. But what about the rest of us? I mean, not yet, but what if…you know….me or you, were to move on….you know…die? Would we get a mention at the end of the year? Probably not. Yes, there are the obituaries, but more on that later (read on).

Or instead of not making “the list” we could simply get lost in the shuffle and aggregate anonymity of the statistical tables (Nostalgia alert!: I always knew the TV show The Prisoner {from the 60’s} would come back to haunt me- “You are Number Six” {and then Patrick McGoohan says, “I am not a number — I am a free man!”)

that we can count on (pardon the pun) from the CDC and other Kafka-like bean counters. For example, here is some recent information (released on June 11, 2008, but notice that data has some lag effect and is presented in the usual mechanical soulless manner, But hey! that is what they do) for you on Death,

U.S. Mortality Drops Sharply in 2006, Latest Data Show.

Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2006. NVSR Volume 56, Number 16. 52 pp.
Age-adjusted death rates in the United States declined significantly between 2005 and 2006 and life expectancy hit another record high, according to preliminary death statistics released today by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.The 2006 age-adjusted death rate fell to 776.4 deaths per 100,000 population from 799 deaths per 100,000 in 2005. In addition, death rates for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States all dropped significantly in 2006, including a very sharp drop in mortality from influenza and pneumonia.

 Other findings in the report (just a few: I don’t want to bore you to “death”)

Between 2005 and 2006, the largest decline in age-adjusted death rates occurred for influenza and pneumonia, with a 12.8 percent decline. Other declines were observed for chronic lower respiratory diseases (6.5 percent), stroke (6.4 percent), heart disease (5.5 percent), diabetes (5.3 percent), hypertension (5 percent), chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (3.3 percent), suicide (2.8 percent), septicemia or blood poisoning (2.7 percent), cancer (1.6 percent) and accidents (1.5 percent).

 Alzheimer’s disease passed diabetes to become the sixth leading cause of death in the United States in 2006. An estimated 72,914 Americans died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2006. However, the preliminary age-adjusted death rate from Alzheimer’s did not change significantly between 2005 and 2006.

 Well, between the celebrities passing on and the mind-numbing numbers, what else is there to think about? In fact, I don’t want to think about it. Life is too short to worry about d…., you know, why bring it up? That thing… I’m too busy. Besides I can get my quota with watching Dexter on Showtime

or playing Left 4 Dead on my PC…wait, what are you doing?….

            Boom!

            This is the moment where we bring in the equivalent of the wake-up notice, only more loudly, and with more attention getting…like Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction,

“I’m sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn’t mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What’s the matter? Oh, you were finished. Well then, allow me to retort….”

            And in the spirit of rogue scholarship on aging, I shall.

From Jules to Jaques…as in lines from the famous ‘all the world’s a stage’ speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and the beginning of my retort that would should break our concentration on just drifting along (comfortably numb) – and then it is there – and here, and now. And are we ready? Not for death, but for the complete realization, the sheer terror or knowing –“This is this, there is no more in this life. It is over. And only now do I really know that…wow, why didn’t someone tell me?”

      JAQUES:

                All the world’s a stage,
                And all the men and women merely players:
                They have their exits and their entrances;
                And one man in his time plays many parts,
               ….But at the end – not much but, “mere oblivion,
               Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Really? Mere oblivion? And all of it gone? But I didn’t get that text message. Maybe the server was down that day and my inbox was frozen. Maybe I didn’t like Willy boy’s stuff anyway.  Okay, fair enough. But let us take a look at a few cultural venues (and a few representative examples) where there have been attempts to send the message of your (and mine) finitude with varying degrees of success.

Movies:
Death Takes a Holiday (1934)- or later as - 
Meet Joe Black (1998) {Brad Pitt as “death”; and then as a reverse-aging being in “Benjamin Button” – gotta give credit to Hollywood for making both topics more interesting with the star power; but what’s next? Angelina Jolie as a hip Geriatrician? (hmmm, that could work; you heard it here first!}

The Sixth Sense (1999) (“I see dead people”) by M. Night Shyamalan with the trademark twist ending.

Now you may want to me bring up Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino and render some philosophical nuance to that movie (segment); but I say there is none. Except some good lines by Stuntman Mike (“Ahhh, yeah, I know. Sorry. It’s my mom’s car”) and Earl McGraw (“Shit. Two tons of metal, 200 miles an hour, flesh and bone and plain old Newton… they all princess died”).

Death Proof

But for me – it was in the movie Baraka (now on Blue Ray DVD) with the haunting voice of Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) and the haunting images of burnt bodies of died near the Ganges (India) that has seared into me the reality of life – served with a bucket of cold water – ah finitude – now I see.

  

And speaking of Music:

Knockin on Heaven’s Door, Bob Dylan  {sort of Kubler-Ross stage theory set to music)

And When I Die, Blood, Sweat, and Tears {a ditty with some great lines}

Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult {little did I know in the 70s – I thought it was a song to impress the babes – Love of two is one}

Don't Fear the Reaper

Dust in the Wind – Kansas {my all time favorite existential song – oh, the nullity of it all}

And then the uber-group in relation to our topic: Dead Can Dance
(think: “I am Stretched on Your Grave” from Toward the Within – and I challenge you to listen to the voice of Lisa Gerrard on the same album with the song Cantara and not know the spine-tingling sensation of something other-worldly – ethereality).

And speaking of other-worldy-ness and
“can I break your concentration” – Books:

Kubler-Ross is the original on this matter as least on a mass readership scale and I can still remember writing DABDA on my hand with a ball-point pen as a “cheat” to help me with the exam question…What are the stages of dying? And Nuland’s book was a spectacular example of the cold scalpel opening up the clinical/medical process of what is going on when I am dying -

On Death and Dying By Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Published by Sagebrush Education Resources, 196

Tibetan Book of the Dead - The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Or, The After-death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering By Karma-gliṅ-pa, W. T. Evans-Wentz Compiled by W. T. Evans-Wentz Contributor Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Published by Oxford University Press US, 2000

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker Published by Simon and Schuster, 1997

 The American Way of Death Revisited By Jessica Mitford Contributor Jessica Mitford Published by Vintage Books, 1998

 Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death - By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen - Published by HarperCollins, 2007

How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter By Sherwin B. Nuland Published by Vintage Books, 1995

And remember when I mentioned about paying attention to the NOTICE of people who are now dead (at least for most of us – you know regular folk – in the OBITS –here is a book for you:

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries By Marilyn Johnson Published by HarperCollins, 2006

 You still can’t remember the messages of why it is good to pay attention to death?

What about some Paintings?

The Triumph of Death Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1562 Museo del Prado, Madrid

A little too gruesome and horrific?

Okay try my favorite – Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin. Böcklin painted five versions of Isle of the Dead from 1880 to 1886. Pick anyone you like – and then sit and take it in – and then you may feel, taste, smell, hear, and see the movement toward the end point – alone.

What about some Cultural perspectives?

Try to learn more about – The Día de los Muertos Season – or read Death and the Idea of Mexico by Claudio Lomnitz The MIT press (2005) and compare to the US (general) culture:

 

 

Death and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican-American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz’s innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexico’s rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexico’s national identity.

Finally, I have two recommendations for you. Although, both of these books deal with our topic – the approach and the spark for contemplation are quite different.

Japanese Death Poems (compiled by Yoel Hoffman. Tuttle Publishing (1986). My copy has many pages dog-eared and the haiku verse is better than having you break your concentration with the temper of Jules (while eating a Big Kahuna Burger).

May I share one that I like?

Gesshu Soko (died at age of 79) -

Inhale, exhale
Forward, back
Living, dying:
     Arrows, let flown each to each
      Meet midway and slice
      The void in aimless flight –
      Thus I return to the source.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

All I can say is that you should a copy of this have this nearby – read and learn – and live from it. It is our American version of Death as a teacher – and a far more poetic way to convey meaning beyond the grave – than our standard obituaries. Now, I would like to share one with you. But it you can try to make this a multi-media experience. Perhaps some synthesesia.

Bring forward for your visual review a copy of Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead.
            Play Sergei Rachmaninov’s – The Isle of the Dead (EMI Classics)
           And read this:

            Widow McFarlane

I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
If you reach the date of hate, of terrible truth.
For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden under the loom –
A pattern you never see!
And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,
You guard the threads of love and friendship
For noble figures in gold and purple.
And long after other eyes can see
You have woven a moon-strip of cloth,
You laugh in your strength, for Hope o’erlays it
With shapes of love and beauty.
The loom stops short! The patterns out!
You’re alone in the room! You have woven a shroud!
And hate of it lays you in it!

———————————————–

            And here is the kicker -

            Weaving – loom – threads – shroud – pattern. I appreciate what Schopenhauer meant (now – more than ever) about the second half of life (see my previous blog posting on A quantum of tranquility…) - 

We try to make a pattern from the cloth of our life with Death as the master teacher nearby –
Have you begun to weave yet?

                Thanks, Scott D. Wright