Deathsweat

Bearing in mind this is taken out of context, here’s what Michael Marissen
had to say on the subject in his discussion with John Kleinig and Robin Leaver
– I think you’ll get the gist:
I mean there are two kinds of texts that people are uncomfortable with these
days, no matter what their background. I think some of them have to do with
some of the mystical love poetry that creeps in where you have Jesus and the
soul – Jesus saying to the soul ‘I love you’ and the soul says,
‘Oh, I don’t think that you do’. And he says ‘Oh, I
actually do, actually. Let’s kiss and hug’, that sort of thing.
Or the believer will say, ‘I kiss your wounds and hug your cross. Your
lap is like a pillow to me’ and so on; it even comes up in the St Matthew
Passion. It’s very embarrassing poetry for a lot of people because it
seems a little bit silly. But on the other side, and this is not so well known,
it’s sort of what you might call, like, ‘gross’ poetry. And
I believe it’s Cantata 113, it closes with the sentiment, ‘Wasch
mich mit deinem Todesschweiss’, which usually gets translated in nice
19th C Anglican English as ‘Cleanse me with thy goodness’. But what
it actually is saying is, ‘Wash me with your death-sweat’, which
is a fairly disgusting image. Or another cantata, 47, I think it is. It says
‘Der Mensch ist Kot, Stank, Asch und Erde;’ (Mankind – or humankind
– is ‘stench, shit, ash and earth’). And there are others. Cantata
94 talks about ‘leben Kot’, the ‘yellow shit’ that human
beings are. And people find this, and rightly so, strange, at best: But that’s
very much part of the culture in those days. People didn’t see that as
a big deal in those days. And Bach makes actually very good use of it in the
cantatas.
As I say, I’d just been discharged from hospital where I’d had some
cause to meaningfully contemplate Life and Death issues. I suppose everybody
does the reckoning eventually; a discrete calculation of how much time one should
reasonably expect to continue to live. Almost to my surprise I found myself
quite sanguine about the prospect of dying, whereas I know I was quite fearful
of death up to my thirties at least. That’s not to say I wasn’t
annoyed with myself for not being more prepared, given the certainty that I’ve
well and truly passed the half way mark in my unremarkable existence. Now that
I feel almost back to normal health the urgency to get my affairs in order has
subsided and I’ve resumed my usual procrastinating. That’s not to
say that I don’t have a revised sense of priorities, so the experience
wasn’t entirely wasted on me, but bad habits die hard.
I suppose because it’s not the usual subject of idle chat it’s easy
to imagine that you’re alone in thinking about these sorts of issues,
but I was quite stunned last week to find the ‘bourgeoisie’ are
way ahead of me in their collective thinking. I was a guest at a dinner with
Dick and Mary – one of our hosts played my wife in the potentially prophetic
short film (It Comes As No Surprise) directed by bro’ Dick, and
which can be viewed on the Videos
page.
(Prophetic because it’s still possible I may have to be electrically ‘defibrillated’
to get my heart back into ‘sinus’ or the correct rhythm as in the
film – except in the film you assume it’s a last ditch attempt to
revive me after a heart attack. I do plan to utter the irrelevant ‘disestablishmentarianism’
if I do have my heart brought back into rhythm in this way).
Anyway, it was a lovely evening replete with fine food and wine – and
chat. I had temporarily drifted out of the conversation, but when I tuned back
in I was quite shocked to find the discussion had turned to voluntary euthanasia
and how a ‘mule’ could be procured to smuggle Nembutal into the
country from Mexico.
I know I’m rather careless with my planning for the future and tend to
live from day to day, but this kind of thinking is quite novel and, I suspect,
particular to the current baby boomer generation.
This is not the Sartre quote I was looking for, I think Colin Wilson discovered
the absolutely apropos quote, but the essence of the argument is contained therein:
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness,
and dies by chance.
It’s worth considering that, no matter how meaningless and dreary one’s
life might inevitably become as one approaches death, when it comes to the point,
you might choose to live one more day. Endless unremitting pain might be a different
matter, but even then, life, as opposed to non-existence, (although I like this
Sartre quote too: Death is a continuation of my life without me), seems
to be worth hanging onto for that one more day for the majority of terminals,
which we all are. Advances in medical science mean that we’re confronted
with a growing list of ethical dilemmas in this regard, both as patients and
carers. And governments. And, bugger it, it’s all too much for my brain
and temperament right now, so I’ll leave the irresolvable unresolved and
flick it on to you to put on your personal moral back-burner..

In the meantime, another thought has occurred to me, probably because of the
odd flight or two I’ve been indulging in lately. I think it’s fair to say that
we’re all technophobes to a certain degree. We tend to learn as much as will
get us by and rely on somebody who specialises in whatever field to get us out
of a jam. Mobile phones are prevalent enough without various authorities trying
to kid us they know better, however. For instance, if your mobile phone actually
had the capacity to interfere with an aeroplane’s vital electronics, do you
honestly imagine we’d be let on a plane with one? They won’t let us on with
a bottle of water for Christ’s sake, so why would you let a potential
terrorist on with a mobile phone?
The same goes for petrol stations. There is absolutely no chance your phone
will ignite anything, let alone petrol fumes as you fill your tank. There was
a clip on YouTube showing a conflagration that resulted from a spark from a
static charge, but it was established that it wasn’t from a mobile phone. And
they wonder why we don’t trust them..