Children are picking through the
garbage with ravaged looks on their faces and she is
singing. One day that voice will be remembered just as those of
Maria Callas and Victoria de los Angeles were remembered. Or, not
to be seen as being sexist or racist, the voices of Paul Robeson or
Pavarotti.
The children will not be, are not, remembered,
though, unless we are prompted by something to make the emotional
effort to look these things in the eye, as they are, not as they
should be.
Noh theatre intrigues me. As do all
efforts to communicate without the use of words.
Just then the holocaust. Just then the
killing fields and the skulls photographed so beautifully that they
become almost religious: these tableaux would not be out of place in
cathedral, basilica, temple or mosque. Too many, far too many,
unacceptably many, have been slaughtered in the name of the divine to
permit the divine any claim to usefulness, except, perhaps,
sometimes, as a comfort for those assaulted by grief or mystified by
failure to understand that some things are forever beyond us.. Even that, though, is
no longer enough justification.
And the Ganges. The dead burning by
the shores. The redemption to be found in water. The lotus candles
floating into the light. These things are so suggestive and so
seductive one is hard pressed not to infer the numinous. One must be
strong. One must keep one’s eyes open and sharply focused. The
redemption can be real, but that is not enough to support the
dangerous, fatal theistic nonsense.
Look it in the eyes. Always look it in
the eyes, even until the eyes tire. And never stop. And if it seems
that there are patterns to things, always suspect them, for we make
patterns where there are none.
It has never been about finding god.
It has always and ever will be about losing oneself.
