Sine qua non—“without which not.”
It’s a phrase I’ve known since May 27th, 2008 when an episode of Battlestar Galactica was named after it. The episode was fairly banal, predictable, and uninteresting but the dialogue bearing the titular Latin phrase left a lasting impression.
“Sine qua non, as they say. Without which not. Those things we deem essential, without which we cannot bear living, without which life in general loses its specific value…becomes abstract.”
I befriended those three words during the last two years of college. Many believe getting a history degree is easy. It can be if you’re at the wrong school, with the wrong professors, and don’t do the work. I was at the right school, with the right professors, and I did the work. At any history program where all of these conditions are met, endless essay assignments are sure to be found. I enjoyed writing essays, and still can’t understand why so many despise them. Why wouldn’t you want to write about so many diverse and interesting topics and then have an expert critique your opinions? Still, essay writing lacked…a spark. It was fun in an academic way—the same way going to a museum is enjoyable but not necessarily action packed. The Met would be more fun if there were no people and you could ride a bike through it. That’s what my essay writing needed—not a bike but a gimmick to make it more exciting.
Then I recalled something my friend told me. He said talented composers (I can’t remember which famous one it was, maybe Bach? Who knows) would challenge one another to make songs around certain hellish note combinations. Just so, I challenged myself to put a certain amount of movie, TV, and music references—usually around three—in every essay I wrote. “Sine qua non,” being a phrase that was not necessarily widespread but certainly appropriate in academic writing, was a perfect way to sneak one Battlestar Galactica reference into my papers.
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Philip Glass’ album Metamorphosis. The first song on the album, Metamorphosis 1, was featured in an earlier episode of, you guessed it, Battlestar Galactica. As the music is playing, one of the characters, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, reflects on her life:
You know, I never really liked this place anyway. The air conditioning doesn’t work in the summer, the heater doesn’t work in the winter, the rent’s a crime. After the attack, I never…never pined over any of my old crap, never missed it—stupid view of that parking lot, broken toilet in the bathroom. You know, everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had. I’m fighting because I don’t know how to do anything else.
I remember when I first watched this scene. It resonated with me then, too, but for different reasons. I had a crush on this girl throughout the early half of high school. Once I was no longer in classes with her, my feelings dissipated. But once I was in a class with her again they resurfaced…kind of. I didn’t “like like” the girl once I found out more about her. But I still got sad when I saw her, felt bad about myself when I saw her, and all the rest of it—not because I wanted her to like me, but because I didn’t know how to do anything else.
I reacted similarly when I saw this scene again two weeks ago. I had to hold back tears. Internet writing wasn’t so nice to me in 2013, nor was it in the first quarter of 2014. The calamities nearly sent me into ruin. I developed what I call “contentphobia.” I was afraid to read any and all content sites. Not because of dissenting opinions, but for other reasons. I could click the headlines well enough but scrolling down terrified me. My heart raced and I couldn’t breathe. What if I read something and knew I could do just as good if not better? That would mean I was inherently unlucky and unconnected and couldn’t “make it” for those reasons; if that person got hired and I didn’t, that meant I was never getting a writing job at any point—or that’s what I thought. But that didn’t feel half as horrifying as reading something so incredible I could’ve cried. And it wasn’t just because the prose was mental foreplay, it was because I knew that if I tried for an entire year to do what this person did in an afternoon, I still couldn’t come close to replicating it. How could I feel good about myself after reading something like that? I couldn’t.
I stopped reading nearly all content. I almost stopped creating it as well. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know why I made lists, why I wrote non-lists, why I wrote at all. But I continued, not necessarily because I wanted to but because, like Starbuck, I didn’t know how to do anything else. Writing had become part of my life, for better or for worse. I went through the motions of typing and pitching and submitting because that was just something I did and had been doing for years.
But a thorough re-watch of Battlestar Galactica, and several other circumstances, started elucidating things for me.
To use another Battlestar Galactica quote:
It’s the distant chaos of an orchestra tuning up. And then somebody waves a magic wand, and all of these notes start to slide into place. A grotesque, screeching cacophony becomes a single melody.
When you simultaneously free your thoughts while binding them into words so perfect your ears capture that melody—if only for a moment—there’s no greater feeling in the world. You’re a god with a supernova in each fingertip, and each clattering of a keystroke is a big bang igniting a universe of thoughts and emotions and life and death and love and hate and everything else.
I’m writing this with headphones on, Metamorphosis 1 blasting, and the lights off, after midnight—just like how I wrote my essays in college, my first eBook about US diplomatic history, and so many of the essays and articles (and yes, even lists) that I wrote and cherished. I realize now that moments like this one are my own sine qua non. I couldn’t live doing anything else.
Email me when Human Parts publishes stories