A Cubist Perspective on Life

Les Demoiselles d''Avignon

They say that possession is nine tenths of the law. But isn’t it really perspective that really matters? Cubist painters had no monopoly on the notion that the canvas of life could be seen from unforeseen angles. Your ANS (autonomic nervous system) is affected by stimulae that then go on to trigger a host of reactions and it can be like dark storm clouds moving in on a sunny day. Also there's the serotonin which is flowing in the synaptic cleft between neurons of  of the brain. We take SSRI’s (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) to facilitate the flow of a chemical which has such an enormous effect on mood. The fact is, and it’s hard to truthfully take ownership of something which is likely to make you feel that your feet are firmly planted in the clouds, that you're often a sleepwalker who has little idea of what forces outside the realm of consciousness are creating your immediate conception of the world. The problem is that you're likely to make life changing decisions at moments of great emotional intensity (either of a loving or hateful variety), without having any knowledge that your cup literally runneth over, i.e. you're so filled with one untenable notion or another that there's no way to go but forward or in the case of ending something, backward. You've undoubtedly heard people who're disenchanted with a relationship express disbelief that they could ever have been interested in such an ogre or ogress. Indeed! In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard famously has his character Johannes Climacus iterate, “Subjectivity is Truth.” But what is the truth in all this excess? Is it simply providing the idealizations that allow instinct to avoid the shoals of consciousness? Is it Darwinian natural selection? Or are we all prone to bouts of temporary insanity--a condition that's euphemistically termed, "living life to the fullest."

A Sickness Unto Death

Soren Kierkegaard (drawing by Neils Christian Kierkegaard)

Are the proliferation of recovery programs, a sign that addiction is growing? And is that growth caused by an increased need to achieve states of euphoria, which will cover the spiritual void left by the death of God? Or has awareness and a certain openness merely brought these matters out of the closet? Has the shame factor lessened, now that alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual compulsiveness and overeating are considered diseases? The fact that we live in a time when people wear their problems on their sleeves  would give credence to the notion that there's more openness in dealing with things that formerly were hidden from public view. But let’s consider the possibility that hedonism has replaced a vanishing spirituality and that this accounts for the holes in many souls (and sometimes literal soles, when there's protracted soul searching going on). Jung said the "craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness."The problem with using so called pleasure to fill the gap is that it only makes matters worse. What happens to teeth are a perfect example. If you eat too many sweets you get cavities. With respect to the psyche, the spiritual cavity or crevice or chasm only widens. Relying on the senses is a Sisyphean task since the ante is always raised and gratification is by definition elusive. If material pleasure is the lingua franca, satiation will be compromised. You always want more. Look at JFK. He had a seemingly endless chain of liaisons with some of the most beautiful women in the world. Yet if you read the recent obituary of the famed Madame Claude, you will find that he was one of her most prominent customers ("Fernande Gaudet, 92, Dies; Ran High-Society, Call-Girl Ring as 'Madame Claude," NYT, 12/23/15). Perhaps there're no coincidences as the recovery people like to say. Could it be that all the programs are a response to an increase in the problem. Kierkegaard referred to The Sickness Unto Death. Perhaps this particular plague is reaching epidemic proportions.

Karl Ove Knausgaard's Kierkegaardian Leap

sketch of Soren Kierkegaard (Niels Christian Kierkegaard)

In a rumination on the Communist era, in a recent piece in The New York Times Magazine, Karl Ove Knausgaard, the author of the infamous Min Kamp novels makes the following comment. (“The TerribleBeauty of Brain Surgery,” NYT, 1/3/16): “If there is one thing I have a weakness for, it is the Communist Era, especially the secretive culture behind the Iron Curtain, with its working class heroism, its celebration of industry, it’s massive architecture, its Tarkovsky films, its cosmonauts and its supernatural ice-hockey teams. I don’t know why it appeals to me, because in actual fact I opposed everything it represents: the veneration of the collective, the industrialization of everyday life, the monumental aesthetics. I believe in blundering man and in the provisional moment. But something about the aura of the Soviet Age attracts me, sometimes with an almost savage force.” The article is really about Knausgaard’s following a prominent British brain surgery Henry Marsh to a gig in Tirana, Albania. But this is why we read Knausgaard. Who else is going to come up with a stunning sentence like “I believe in blundering man and the provisional moment?” Who else can employ parallelism to such poetic effect? “An Open Mind,” the heading under which the piece appears in the print edition, is also a great metaphor for a piece which describes the process by which a skull is sawed open. But this is why we read Knausgaard. Almost every sentence finesses a Kierkegaardian leap which in turn requires an act of faith. The Times piece is about brains. It's a great subject for Knausgaard and it's the thing we admire him for, his brain.

Irrational Man

Is existential despair the reason for Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), the title character of Woody Allen’s Irrational Man’s impotence, or is impotence the cause for his despair? Remember Allen’s famous standup quip in Annie Hall, “I was thrown out of N.Y.U my freshman year for cheating on a metaphysics exam, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” In Irrational Man Allen goes a little further and the précis of modern philosophy he offers through the voice of the flask guzzling philosophy professor that Phoenix portrays is a little like one of those audio guides to masterpieces at the Louvre.  In discussing Kant Abe says “in a totally moral world there is no room for lying,” about Kierkegaard, “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Though he argues that “much of philosophy is verbal masturbation,” and that philosophy and life occupy two separate worlds, he seems to confuse these realms in the conduct of his own life. Even a dose of Cialis and the loving ministrations of the lubricious and unhappy wife of a colleague (Parker Posey) fail to solve either his physical or existential crisis. At one point he declaims, “I couldn’t remember the reason for living and when I did it wasn’t convincing.” Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Perhaps not. What precedes is not necessarily the cause. But Abe is spared by the notion of the perfect crime, the murder of a disreputable judge. And the murder works better than any drug to restore his zest for life and in particular his ability to fuck. “I feel I’ve accomplished something wonderful and that my life has meaning,” he says. The philosophical loophole, of course, lies in the fact that the perfect crime has little to do with making the world a better place, and a lot into shoring up Abe’s waning life force. Emma Stone playing, Jill, the student who is smitten with Abe, begins to get an idea of what is happening when she discovers a copy of Crime and Punishment and realizes soon after (when an innocent man is charged with the crime) that the existential act “opens the door to murder.” The philosophy however pithy is inexorable and drives the movie to its perhaps overly neatly packaged conclusion. One thing seems to be certain, from the director’s point of view murder is more effective than Cialis. The poster shot which shows a silhouette of Gabe standing on a rock over looking water and bathed in a wedge of blinding sunlight brilliantly captures the helplessness and solitude of the human creature.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

The title of Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence refers to a poem that is being read on stage by a little girl at a school event. When quizzed by her teacher about what the pigeon is thinking the little girl says that it’s thinking it doesn’t have enough money. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is a philosophical comedy, Monty Python meets Kierkegaard, with the title of Damien Hirst’s famous sharkwork, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," thrown in for good keeping. It starts off with three vignettes all lumped together under the rubric “Meeting With Death.” In the first a man dies of a heart attack, as his wife, oblivious to what is going on, cooks. In the second, the son of a dying old woman tries to wrest a bag full of valuables from his mother, whose intent is plainly to take her wealth with her to the grave; in the third another man dies in a cafeteria. The problem is what to do with the food which has already been paid for? The stars of the show are a pair of Vladimir and Estragons, Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom). They’re salesmen whose trove of novelties includes “vampire teeth with extra long fangs,” and an item they keep saying they "have faith in," “ a mask called “uncle one tooth.” Their business plan is to “help people have fun,” only they can’t escape the fear of death, with one tormented by a song (he can’t get out of his head), about going to heaven to see his parents. Among the other characters are a uniformed worker who’s constantly being stood up at a restaurant, a flamenco teacher whose leering sexuality recalls the surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou and the historical character of King Charles XII who shows up in a present day bar in search of a bathroom. A character sitting in a rathskeller cries out “I’ve been greedy all my life. That’s why I’m so unhappy.” Around him the staff begin to close up the place as if nothing untoward were happening. “I’m happy to hear you are doing fine,” functions as a kind of Greek chorus as varying grotesqueries are perpetrated, amongst them the torturing of a primate. Towards the end, the movie tips its hat to colonialism, as slaves are whipped and then forced into a rotating oven where they’re cooked to death. The scene is being witnessed by a group of tuxedoed aristocrats holding flutes of champagne. The locution of  A Pigeon Sat on A Branch Reflecting on Existence also recalls the famed philosophic conundrum about “a leaf falling in forest with no one watching,” but the intention of A Pigeon is far less benign. As imaginative sequences give way to adolescent outrage at the meaninglessness of existence, the film becomes its own best parody. Andersson’s pigeon needs to shit or get off the pot. Right now it occupies a no man’s land between philosophy 101 and watered down Lars von Trier. Are the questions A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence raises difficult or is the disquisition merely oppressive?