Thought du jour - 23 August 2011

"Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it." - Ray Kurzweil

Guillotine

"All through this space of time
there were other echoes menacing,
from a distance
in the corner,
they have an awful sound
uncertain chorus of no consequence,
only a warning
of the true storm forming,
it is a hard day
straight and strong and narrow,
it is a hard way
confident in your conscience,
resolute in your innocent deceit
no thought to you next move -
remember the people you meet
on your way to the guillotine.

A troubled shroud it calls out loud
amidst the music and the singing,
it is ignored
by the guilty ones,
condescend to turn around
deduce the nature of this conversation,
try to remember
what you once were,
it is a hard day
straight and strong and narrow,
it is a hard way
confident in your conscience,
resolute in your innocent deceit
no thought to you next move -
remember the people you meet
on your way to the guillotine,
on your way to the guillotine."

Still one of my favourite songs that I wrote.

Paul Kimball

The Art of Dying

Paul McCartney is my favourite Beatle, but when it comes to my more existential side, it's George Harrison to whom I usually turn. One of my favourite Harrison songs is "The Art of Dying".

I've always had a fascination with death, and what may or may not come afterwards. I think we all do, even if we won't admit it. The central question of human existence, after all, is whether this life is "it", and what that means for us one way or another. For the longest time, the idea that death might really be the end frightened me, but then one day my father said something to me, with his usual blunt common sense, that started me on the path of being free from that fear.

"Paul" he said, "it's nothing to worry about, because if there's nothing after this, then you'll never know, will you?"

Without knowing it, my Dad had gone all zen with me at that moment, and it resonated in a way that no sermon about the certainty of a life eternal ever could. The truth is that we don't know, and we can never know, until we get "there". And then, if there is something else, we'll know, and if there isn't... well, we'll still never know. So why be afraid?

Being freed from the fear of death opened the door to an actual consideration of what might lie beyond. I accept that oblivion is certainly a possible outcome, and that's a sobering thought (particularly when the left arm starts to tingle). But I also think that there might be other outcomes. As there's nothing I can do about the prospect of oblivion other than to try to live my life to the fullest, which I do anyway, it's those other possibilities that interest me, and that I explore, because perhaps there are clues in our lives, and the world around us, that might just indicate that there is indeed, as the pop poet Bryan Ferry famously wrote, "more than this".

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once." - Voltaire

The truth is that we're all dying, each and every day. What lies beyond is unknowable... but it is not unimaginable, and that is a critical difference, because in the imagination lies the true "art of dying"... and the art of living.

Indeed, the two might just be the same thing.

Paul Kimball