Time Is Ticking Away
Part 1 in the series: Art And The Trouble With Death
The following is the first of a three-part series of reflections on the possible relationship between our consciousness of impending death and our reliance on popular forms of art for making sense of death. Part I reflects on common forms of art, such as popular music and film, and their resonances with what most concerns human consciousness as it develops, as theorized by the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche.
“Where have all papa’s heroes gone?”
— David Bowie, “Young Americans”
Part I: Time Is Ticking Away
With the advent and growth of mass media, it seems we have so many more deaths to grieve than those in prior centuries. But why do we mourn the passing of someone we don’t personally know — for example, an artist, musician, or actor? Is it because we intuitively understand the implications of art for life? The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed life could only be “justified” aesthetically and that without music “life would be a mistake.” What, then, might one say about the implications of art, or any creative endeavor, for the good life?
To be sure, these are ancient questions but not ones that are easily approached. Techne for the ancient Greeks signified a response to human need, but even more so a means for hope in the face of what might be called life’s “existential” challenges. We see the consequences of human endeavoring and we are inspired, finding hope that our own work is meaningful. We undertake a task and we have hope. Should we, then, dismiss any popular form of art from our discussions — as is so often done — in order to lend them the air of gravitas? I don’t believe so, given that these issues concern everyone.
Let’s even test this hypothesis by considering a popular song from decades ago, from early the 1990’s. The song belongs to no sort of “classic” genre; nor was it produced during the so-called classic time for even its genre, in its own right. Still, I’m thinking about a song that is nearly impossible for someone like me — who came of age at a certain time and in a certain place — to hear without feeling something approaching the rare and the sublime. The song I’m thinking about is called “Tick Tock.” Written and performed by the Vaughan Brothers for their Family Style album, it attains a kind of soulfulness not typically associated with Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughan, two guitar heroes of the Texas blues-rock genre.
In many ways, it’s just another popular song. Yet, its simple refrain resounds with strikingly expressive clarity and precision:
remember that tick tock, tick tock, tick tock people/time is ticking away
What is most uncanny about this song, however, is that it was recorded by the Vaughan Brothers in the fateful weeks prior to Stevie Ray’s untimely death in a helicopter crash one summer night in Wisconsin. And, somehow, Jimmy and the Vaughan family found the resolve to play a recording of “Tick Tock” during the funeral services, to what must have elicited for them an overwhelmingly tragic, emotional effect.
But perhaps this is not so unusual. We typically play our favorite songs at the funerals of loved ones, because they have a power to convey feelings of hope and reassurance in those times of trouble. In addition to standards such as “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” I’ve been comforted by Appalachian folk songs such as Carl Story’s sublime “Family Reunion” and gospel hymns such as Mahalia Jackson’s transcendent “In the Upper Room” on such occasions.
I ask the question about “dismissing” some forms of art from such discussions because I’m not only interested in various genres of popular music, but I’m also trained to comment on certain kinds of academic and philosophical studies. As it happens, I sometimes reflect (as I’m doing now) upon the central arguments of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as they concern the art of living a meaningful life.
Heidegger, who from time to time lectured his readers about being carried away by the popularity of celebrities and popular cultural more broadly, believed that in order to live “authentically” a person must remove herself from everyday ways of discussing and pondering death, because these ways were sullied by the “idle talk” of the common sort of person who was typically lost in “the they” (Das Man) of current discourse.
Heidegger had much to say about the difference between a life well-lived and a lesser kind of existence, and given his analysis about this difference, it would seem to be impossible to talk about popular modes of art within the Heideggerian framework, other than to discharge them as meaningless. Such artistic media is thought to be idle, inauthentic, an abyss of corruption and frivolity. But, I wonder about this particular point: Is Heidegger correct to say that a desire to live the authentic life requires the individual to remove herself from the idle talk of others in order to reflect upon the very real possibility and certainty of her death? Is this “freedom” from others in the face of death even possible?
My thesis is that Heidegger’s arguments in Being and Time expose certain prejudices towards Western philosophical ideas of the meaning of one’s “true and authentic self.” The best life, Heidegger suggests, must be found, reclaimed, or somehow cultivated from out of the morass of confusing and demeaning influences to which one is routinely subjected.
For the sake of comparison, Nietzsche offers greater insight into questions of life’s finitude and of the role of others for coming to terms with our existential concerns. He holds that the human being comes into consciousness through discourse and, in particular, through learning the meaning of phrases regarding the passing of life’s moments, such as the phrase “it was” (es war).
As he wrote in the opening section of the second Untimely Meditation (“On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”), coming-into-consciousness in just this way properly distinguishes human from non-human animals (See Christian J. Emden, Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body). In The Gay Science (aphorism 357), Nietzsche suggests that the development of this consciousness requires one to seek out and communicate with another, principally with one who might help elicit and articulate the anxieties that stimulate the emerging human-consciousness in the face of our transitory nature.
Consciousness, and most precisely self-consciousness, “does not really belong to the human being’s individual existence,” according to Nietzsche; it belongs historically to the individual’s evolutionary “social or herd nature.” The human being’s most important task, according to Nietzsche, is not to retreat into some pre-conscious state of being (as if that were possible), but to overcome one’s own pettiness, inherited from this social history.
How might it happen, then, that the human being transforms bare, factual existence and comes into consciousness in the way that Nietzsche suggests?
Let’s consider the following scenario: As a mother seeks to console her whimpering child she might ask, “What’s the matter?” The toddler’s answer to this everyday sort of question could take familiar forms such as, “What do you mean?” or “Why do you ask?” or “I don’t know.” If the mother wishes to persist, she might ask: “You don’t know? It must be something?” Perhaps then the child will come to the first true realization, so to speak, of himself as a contingent being in the world: “No. It’s just that I saw a puppy get run over by a big truck, and now he’s dead. And, I’m gonna die and you’re gonna die and we’re all gonna die.” “Oh, that,” a mother sighs. And thusly, for Nietzsche, the metamorphoses into self-awareness begins.
What Heidegger and Nietzsche share, in my reading, is the notion that an awareness of our temporal horizons and existential limits brings forth the human being’s most fundamental orientations — towards oneself and towards others in the world — and that thinking through these orientations in light of those limits is necessary to live the best life.
To return to Heidegger’s claims regarding the mere “idle talk” of Das Man, it is of course correct to say that much of popular media treats life and death as insignificant matters. The “body counts” of the most popular adventure movies would be ghastly and depressing, were we to take them seriously.
Still, many films do indeed reflect upon existential issues with appreciable nuance. Recent works such as Terrance Malik’s Tree of Life, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, and Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse come to mind, as do some mid-20th-century films produced under the muted light of popular existentialism. I would place even John Wayne’s final film, The Shootist, in this category: a terminally ill actor playing the kind of character he has always played, only in this final role, the film’s gunfighter is also aware that he is dying of cancer.
Another obvious and iconic example of the “existentialist” film in mass culture is Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, which features the very embodiment of Death as a central character in the story. For me, the most chilling scene in this work is not the first appearance of Death with Antonius Block on the beach during his homeward journey, nor the gruesome execution of a child believed to be a witch, nor even Death’s ultimate arrival at Block’s castle at the end of the story. Arguably, the most chilling scene is Death’s penultimate appearance, when the film’s renowned artifice, the existential game of chess delaying Block’s passing, has been fatefully decided. His destiny revealed in this scene, Block seeks to console himself with the belief that these final moments will disclose to him all of Death’s secrets. As he expresses this hope, however, Death refutes him coldly: “I have no secrets to reveal.” “You have nothing?” Block asks incredulously. “Nothing,” Death confirms.
It would seem here that Bergman is suggesting not simply that “death is only death,” but also that the “only” in death renders it and life no less uncanny. Nor does it make the time of death’s approach, the time of dying, less enigmatic and worrisome. Surprisingly, when Death finally enters Block’s castle for the grim reaping, no one seems overly troubled; apparently, for Bergman the arrival of Death and the passing of life is a time in which the trouble, too, has passed. Nevertheless, Block unashamedly confirms that the tactical delay which spans the film’s duration had not been in vain and, as a matter of coincidence, a young family whom Block had befriended during the chess match seems to have escaped Death — for the time being. One might here be reminded of Kierkegaard’s observations (speaking as Anti-Climacus) in 1849: Even after Jesus had performed the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus must still have died, at some later date. Yet, it seems enough for Block’s troubles that Death had not taken the young family before their time.
A different sort of film from the mid-20th century pondering the issue of death is Michael Cacoyannis’ 1964 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ existential novel, Zorba the Greek. The film, like the novel, is mostly a light-hearted affirmation of the joys of living a largely unguarded life. However, in a scene following the vicious “honor killing” of a widow blamed by inhabitants of a Greek village for the suicide of the son of a prominent townsman, Zorba interrogates his learned but feckless friend and “boss” on the significance of what had just happened.
[C]an you tell me what all of this means? … And why do we die? … What are those goddamn papers you read? Why do you read them? If they don’t tell you that, what do they tell you?
Zorba’s comrade admits that his books and papers have no answer to such a question: “They tell me of humanity’s distress because it cannot answer the questions you ask, Zorba.” To be sure, neither Bergman’s Block nor Kazantzakis’ Zorba appear heroic in such anguished moments but, like the child reaching out to its mother, both express an innocent, if undeniable, desire to come to terms with life’s meaning in the face of death.
How shall this desire, itself, be understood? What can be said about it? Is it possible to think of it as what is most fundamental to the human experience? Let us not overlook the fact that in thinking about death and about typical responses to it, we are also engaged in what the Greeks called Techne.
For Heidegger, thinking about the human being’s limits establishes the key ethical problem: How does “inauthenticity” regarding the totality of one’s existence reveal possibilities for living a good life? His epic study, Being and Time, develops a case for regarding the human being as essentially unique among other “beings” (Seienden), given the existential concern it shows for its being-in-the-world and for “Being” (Sein). Heidegger famously refers to the human being, in its specific concern for such matters, as “Dasein.” One problem challenging investigations of Dasein’s encounter with inauthenticity stems from the trouble, the sheer “inconvenience,” of talking (and perhaps writing) about Dasein’s being-towards-its-own-death. Not to mention the “social inconvenience” Dasein sometimes experiences when others die.
The passing of life is often difficult to discuss, and neither the philosophers’ books nor death “itself” seem to offer a solution. Block’s death is perhaps only his death and no more. Zorba spits in contempt at the philosophers’ wisdom. Meanwhile, we cannot help sometimes but to remember — to be reminded — that time is ticking away.
