🙊 "If you don't live your life as if you're going to die, you'll live your death as if you're going to live » – Stephen Jenkinson (interview with Catherine Ingram, June 2021)
🙉 Queen, “The Show Must Go On” (Innuendo, 1991)
🙈 Andy Goldsworthy, Unknown piece
To Chris, Jérémy, Karen, Tim, William, Laurent
Dying. Although our end is inescapable, like everyone knows, it does not necessarily condition life, and it does not lead either to the full understanding that it is existence’s unique precondition. Worse, it seems as if our era was denying the rich meaning of this paradox while exclusively accomplishing the morbid aspect that it points to: we study life from death; health from analysis of cadavers; we impede life to “prevent” death (momentarily at least).
September 24th 2009, around 7pm, a boat capsized in the middle of Hạ Long bay, North of Viêt Nam.
Death does not explain life, which mystery would probably better be kept secret. Death is life’s sole condition –if we don’t die, we don’t live either. Archaeologists know it for a fact: all that has existed before us is still here, under our feet. Ancient plants, animals, minerals make up the compost from which we rise. Our ancestors and the infinite series of “random” events that brought them together and pull them apart, are the cause of what we seek to become. Accordingly, one’s lifework might be to learn how to become an ancestor just so others can exist, can be.
Under my feet, water, above my head the shower’s spring. Suddenly, the view of water going straight to the edge of the stray, towards the wall’s side. My body follows the motion. I rush outside, try to open the bathroom’s door. Can’t make it –I had, stupid reflex, locked the door. I scream to my friend Jérémy who is on the other side of the wall that I can’t open it, he answers “I’m coming !”. It will become his last words.
We may imagine that the word “anc-estor” is made of prefix anc-, as in “anchor” (although officially, an- is a contraction of ante-, which means before), followed by the verb “to be” –as if ancient people or elders where those who moor what is to come. Consequently, one’s whole life will barely be enough to remember what has come before us. This is what the notion of reincarnation, whether understood literally or not, points towards: death is life’s provider. According to ancient Greek mythology, souls drunk the water of Lethe’s river, the “river of forgetfulness”, before being born again. Although we drink to forget these days, life is nevertheless the consecrated moment for remembering.
I don’t know where Jérémy eventually arrived but I know he’s gone. He took the road with our two other friends who were in the bedroom right under ours. And with two other persons who I didn’t know.
In French, “remember” (se souvenir) is literally “support what’s to come” –knowledge of the past as a building block for the future. The English word “remember” also involves the notion of re-member, putting back together what has been separated. Thus, providing that orgasm is the sensual climax to which can lead the union of two bodies, it is possible to understand why the French also call it “little death” (“petite mort”). It is in plain gift, full offering of one’s self, total letting go and dissolution that symbiosis within separatedness can be felt –this is the feeling of being fully alive. In other words, we need learning how to die to be able to live. It is the same kind of experiences that bring the sense of belonging to the rest of the universe. If the way is reMembering, being whole may be life’s purpose.
The French State sent me a letter to let me know that I had become a “victim” and invite me to my neighbourhood help center. I went, let them know I did not identify as a “victim” –thank you– and ask for a lawyer. All I wanted was “justice” so it would never happen again. With this aim in mind, I answered questions and told the story to journalists, the police, and embassies. And nothing ever happened. “Nothing” might be another word for “diplomacy”. Two years later, same ship-owner, same accident, 11 died this time.
Annihilation leads to creation –this is the experience lived by women who give birth and, besides, this is what the Big Bang theory claims. Only death provides life –primarily the death of everything that we feed on. In Mesoamerica, this notion has largely been depicted –it is notably found in pictural representations of beheaded sacrificed individuals from whose necks emerge flowers. These depictions are linked to the ancient ball games often described as allegories of the fight, or rather dance, between the celestial world and the underworld, day and night, inner strengths and hidden weaknesses. They are cycles giving way to each other, achieving into one another.
I was 18, I was studying philosophy and I had just signed three death certificates soon after having identified friends who passed away. I thought that the goal of my life had become giving back disappeared people bodies to their families.
If sacrifice may be viewed as a way to die like a hero, or even as a deity, grief thus can be viewed as a sacred wound. Being heart-broken is what gives heart. Who has never been profoundly sad and felt at the same time an irrepressible desire to help others? Humbles are often those who have been humiliated and have learn how to respect the humiliated part of themselves. Gift what you don’t have in order to have it.
Ten years of studies later (and a few more years on top), lots of doors knocked and the feeling of having an absolute legitimacy to practice what I aimed to, I think I understood that we never deserve anything. Merit does not exist and, coincidentally, there is nothing to pay to be alive. Acknowledgment and respect. I am grateful to Jérémy, Karen, Tim and others after them everyday for having made me a little bit more human(e) and to still do so. Learning dying does not make anyone perfect, very far from it actually, it creates lots of defects and cracks but hopefully they will be those from which light will pass.
The appearance of what we call human is actually more defined by the emergence of mortuary practices (at least those that are still visible today) in the archaeological record than to the appearance of a set of specific physical traits. It does not mean that other animals do not understand what death is and not identify the sudden absence of the thing which animated the body until a moment ago. They do. It only means that humans have developed material ways of encapsulating memory, witnessing dead ancestors, gathering elements to give death meaning and perhaps questioning our belonging to a bigger frame. May we remember it.
Some of this post’s sources:
Stephen Jenkison, Die Wise (2015)
Roberto Martínez González & Luis Nuñez, “Muerte al filo de la humanidad”, Arqueología 51 (2016)
Joseph Campbell, "Sacrifice and Bliss", The Power of Myth 4 (1988)