Paris Letters #25

Something that has been forgotten — neglected in modernity — is our conversation with the dead. We idolize what is novel, what is bright and shiny, our projectiles of technical prowess — and yet underneath it all, the dead still rule our world. Our ancestors, biological and blood spirits, are still speaking to us, whether we are conscious of that fact or not.

We need to talk to the dead, to ward off deathliness in life. But talking with the dead is not just about exorcism, but a passage to creative renewal. Life is a continuity, it doesn’t start when we are born or end when we die. In order to touch depth in life, we must touch the spirits that rule us, the benevolent ones and the destructive ones and everyone in between. We must find them, negotiate and converse with them. Why? Simply, because our ancestors still live in us — they go as far back as atoms and stars.

We are not talking about occult rituals here — like talking Evis or ones dead mother though a ouija board — but something more basic and homely. All healing and creative processes are involved in this conversation, including psychotherapy and art. The dead are spirits that live inside of us: they need to be acknowledged, reformed, or discovered — their burdens relieved, their gifts uncovered.

During my first visit to Paris as a teenager, what interested me more than monuments, was Pierre Lachaise graveyard. A graveyard is the quietest outdoor space in a city, and of course a place to talk with, to curse, to thank, to negotiate, with the dead. People tend to avoid graveyards, because they are too busy living; and that living often involves cheating death, ignoring and running from death, frenetic activities of achievement and failure. And yet all of that adds up to a ‘kingdom of dirt’ in the end, if one has spent one’s life avoiding the most important contemplation: one’s eventual extinction. It is in keeping death close, that we find, paradoxically, what is vital in life.

Going to cemeteries and talking to Jim Morrison, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan and those illustrious ancestors, might seem like an eccentric activity. But these ‘immortals’ are still living with us — often in more intense ways than those who are walking around in bodies. Actually, the unknown people still live with us too. The people shot down at the Bataclan, for instance, some of whom are buried in Pere Lachaise graveyard. They might be need of our company, our assistance, our poems and prayers, in their passage.

The dead have made their statement, have given us their essence. In that sense they are more alive than we are are, because they are, paradoxically, free of death. It is the living that have to confront their own non-existence, their own nullity, their own hesitation to be fully alive.

It’s not that we should return to some kind of ‘primitive’ ancestor worship — that is not necessary. But even writing these essays is a conversation with the dead — they are so much more congenial than many our so-called living friend — and they don’t usually have ulterior motives. Often we need to thank them, because when we need inspiration they are always available, in books or in our thoughts. But not just in books, also in our bodies. In order to talk to our mother and father, and our entire lineage, we have only to pinch ourselves: we are their quintessence in flesh and spirit.

Paris is a place where the dead are very present, and that is why there is so much of eternity here.