Now Playing: Janita
Topic: Mysteries of Life
Sitting here listening to a bit of Tannahill Weavers from the Cullen Bay album, some lovely Jane Monheit, some similar jazzy female vocals by the Finnish singer Janita and flipping through some old Archies from the first vinyl record I have some memory of listening to while living in Maine and while under the age of five. It's remarkable the things you remember and a true blessing of many of the things you forget. Funny, I remember being alone in my room, five years old, listening to Hot Dog and Sugar, Sugar and looking at the cartoon Archies on the cover. The creeping realization that the world was not quite right, that cartoon characters weren't real and couldn't sing in an album and also wondering which female voice was Betty and which one was Veronica.
Having watched the recent new episode of House I'm reminded just how great that show is. You're not left with comfortable unremarkable characters and quaint answers to the questions of life. Oh no, you are pulled out of your comfort zone and have to look at yourself and see your own faults reflected back at you through the thoughts and actions of those on screen. No perfect human beings, all flawed and often uncomfortable to watch them in their destructive behaviors. This episode didn't have a happy ending for the patient of the week or the House proxy patient who reflects a part of House's character and ideas taken to the extreme. Both patients died, the long suffering young man with the degenerative disease whose life was reduced to suffering and pain who was willing to see an end to the pain and it's left open as to whether he tossed his own medicine or not. The other patient had been in a car accident and had 'died' for a minute and a half and found in that period of time the total 'bliss' he had always sought through an Abby Hoffman like search through recreational drugs. Both patients, proxies for House and by extension proxies for the rest of us, were left looking at the big questions of life. Pain and bliss, one seeking the absence of pain and one seeking that bliss of the other side. Death was the answer in both cases but House wasn't interested as much in the answer that the man seeking death sought in death. He couldn't and doesn't understand the giving up the fight despite the pain. His own life is about pain, loneliness and putting one foot in front of the other, being needed by everyone but scorning their praise and company and preferring the certainty of his pain as his grasp on reality while at the same time obliterating it through medication. The other guy was as convinced of the answer he found and put a knife in a light socket to reach that ecstatic place he found at the moment of death. The second guy intrigued House with his certainty enough that the seeker and questioner in House finally put a knife in a wall socket looking for that Bliss. House didn't find that magical place and didn't expect to but for him the infinitesimal chance needed to be refuted so the rest of his life could continue based on the logical assumptions he had reasoned through already. House told the corpse of the wall socket guy that he was wrong. As House has said many a time, there's no Bliss in the end, no 70 odd virgins, there is nothing there, there is only here. I agree with House but I also agree with the Wilson character who said that if some folks feel some comfort wrapping themselves in other believes then it's not right to rip that comfort from them. Wilson being the Greek Chorus who often times expresses the arguments of the audience to House.
We all bring our own filters to the game and like the car accident guy in the show, I've been clinically dead. I've been down that path a few times instead of the one time as the character experienced. I can't say that I experienced any visions of Valhalla or Heaven or any unforgettable bliss although one time I did think I heard the voice of an angel calling me back. But then, we bring our own hopes and desires to any experiences like that. From seeing the masked faces of doctors all around and above me fading from my sight to waking up alone, strapped down and able to see my own chest bloody, red and disfigured with black glossy stitches all along the wounds looking and feeling like legs and antenna of angry carnivorous beetles fighting to get out. The clear feelings of mindless terror followed not by soothing comforting words but by the circuit breaker of my mind simply shutting any further memories down. Hearing the Bliss seeking character relating his car accident as a slow motion nightmare and remembering the two times I've spun a car while going down dark and snowy mountain roads alone on the road. One time fighting to catch the car on a railing and succeeding with a few feet to spare, getting out of the car and looking down the side of a mountain I had almost plunged down. The other time completely loosing control and spinning like a top as time also slowed time and my calm resignation wondering how much it was going to hurt before amazingly hitting a snow filled snow bank sideways. Moments, which like the Slaughterhouse Five novel by Kurt Vonnegut, seem to come back to me in random order and just as vivid as they are happening all over again. Interesting.
