Franz Schubert: Der Tod und das Mädchen
(Death and the Maiden, 1817)

On this chilly evening in Michigan, I listened to this stunning recording of this song about a conversation between a young girl and death, who has come to claim her.  The bitterly cold voice of death at the end seemed to sink right into the marrow of my bones.  Here is a translation of the lyrics.

The Maiden:

Pass me by! Oh, pass me by!
Go, fierce man of bones!
I am still young! Go, rather,
And do not touch me.
And do not touch me.

Death:

Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!
I am a friend, and come not to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,
Softly shall you sleep in my arms!

This remarkable old recording is by Marian Anderson, the gloriously talented African-American signer who became one of the great figures of the civil rights movement.  After capturing the imagination of Europe, where she was universally recognized as a great performer, she was planning a concert in Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. in 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her access to the hall on the basis of her race.  This propelled her into the public spotlight and put her at the center of the national debate on race relations.  Eventually, she performed an outdoor concert, supported by Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, who loved her voice.  This concert was attended by 75,000 people and broadcast over the radio, giving her a far greater audience than ever before.  This story gives me goose bumps—a story of justice prevailing over ignorance. 

Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial

Death grinning as he holds his hourglass
Cathedral in Mainz, Germany

One of the most memorable parts of the cathedrals of western Europe are these statues of death designed to remind one of the impermanence of life.  This life-size image of death on a nobleman’s tomb in Mainz was especially dramatic.

Gaspard Noé: Enter the Void (2009)

This evening, I watched Argentinian-born, French director Gaspard Noé’s film Enter the Void, which was set in the dark underworld of Tokyo.  The story is about a brother and sister from New York—two people broken by their traumatic past—who find themselves in the drug-filled underworld of Tokyo, where they are swept along in dark currents that flow too fast for any of them. 

Visually, it is utterly stunning film that grabs the viewer, right from the ultra-aggressive, almost assaulting, high-speed credits that shout at the viewer from the screen.  The main character dies early in the film, but this is only the beginning of the story.  Much of the film has us wandering through his patchwork of memories, interlaced with ultra-psychadelic visions of Tokyo—both real and imagined—as he floats through Bardo, the “intermediate state” described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The story is given an unusual architecture as the patched-together, overlapping memories bring together a portrait of a traumatized young man, obsessed with the mother he had lost during his youth, and the complicated ways that this plays out in the relationships with his sister and friends in Tokyo. 

Certain scenes in this film, especially the many abstract scenes, are so stunningly beautiful that I found myself hoping that they would never end.  The US trailer quotes a New York Times review that states that the director was an artist trying to show us something we have never seen before.  With Noé, we are breaking new cinematic territory. 

From Aila (2004)
KAWAUCHI Rinko　川内倫子
(Click photo above for source webpage)

From an essay I was writing but probably will not use…

川内倫子の作品集『Aira』に、小魚がフックからぶら下がっている写真がある。鰭と尻尾が薄くて無力に見えて、魚が自分の差し迫った死に驚いたように目が広く開いている。死の媒介物であるフックが写真の真中に配置され、フックに繋がっている透明の紐が白い空のバックグラウンドに消えているから、フックを持っているのは人間ではなく、不可視の死の天使である錯覚を起こす。後ろに海と山が見えるが、フォーカスが暈していて、静かに死にかける小魚と無関係らしい。バックグラウンドにあるもの、つまり世界全体が遠く感じるから、写真を見る我々は小魚の心細い死のドラマについ吸い込まれ、同一視する。とても簡単だが、生命の最大のドラマを描写するインパクトが強い写真である。見終わっても、哲学的、あるいはもしかしたら宗教的な余韻が残る。

This poem, which appeared in the book Soul Dance: Poems of Takako Arai (Mi’Te Press, 2008), was Arai’s response to Iraq and Afghani Wars, as well as the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which turned the morning newspapers into a roster of casualties.  The original first appeared in the collection Soul Dance 『タマシイ・ダンス』 (Michitani, 2007), which won the 41st Oguma Hideo Prize. 

Morning is the time we count the dead
In the newspapers, in the hospitals, on the roads, on the seashores
In the rubble that was once our homes
Possess us all the more, Amenouzume-san
The morning is still not enough
We still cannot count them all
We still cannot carry them all
Dance more for us, Amenouzume-san
Put a green twig in your hair
And call out to them
Give the dead
To morning
Possess them, call out to them

     It’s me, the girl floating here this whole time
     It’s me, Mama’s boy crouched down
     It’s me, the boy with the right arm wrenched off
     I want to see you again, I want to see you again
     A bullet to the temple
     I scratch my throat, it hurts
     Now I’m sinking as far as I can go
     Why?  Why was I the boy
     Blown aside by the bomb blast?
     The fingers of flame came in no time
     I struggle but there’s only sand, I struggle but there’s only sand
     One lung was crushed by the ceiling
     Left alone like this, where will I float?
     I wait for an extended hand
     Here I am, here I am
     I want to escape this blood-bathed school
     With my girlish eyes still open wide
     I know this is my last breath
     I am fed up with the roar of the bombs
     The sea has raised its clenched fist

Morning is the time we count the dead
On the TV news, in the embassies, in the community centers
In the rubble that was once our buildings and our mosques
Possess us all the more, Amenouzume-san
The morning is still not enough
The morning is still not enough
The morning is still not enough
Dance for us all the more, Amenouzume-san
Claw the milk from your breast, shake your hair wildly
Pound your feet on the ground
And dance
Spin your arms round, shake off your sweat
Bend back your neck
And dance, dance
More
More
Sway your spine, lift your legs
Shake your hips
More
More
Set your womanly shadow on fire
Open your womanly shadow
And call for them
And dance for them
And possess them
And gather
The dead
To the shadow

Give them to morning
Give us morning
The time we count the corpses

          Translation by Jeffrey Angles

Translator’s Note: Amenouzume is a mythical Japanese goddess associated with dance and performance.  Through her dance, she is said to have lured the Sun Goddess Amaterasu out of a rock cave where she had secluded herself, thus plunging the world into darkness.  The words “womanly shadow” that appear toward the end of the poem is a euphemism for the vagina.