So I've become a little bit obsessed with the new series of Doctor Who. I won't go into why it is amazing, I'll just say that you should watch it and point you in that direction. (It's also airing on BBC America and available on iTunes, but note that though the British-run website has the entire season, the last few episodes haven't aired over here yet.)
The menace that persists over the arc of this season's narrative is a series of cracks in the fabric of the universe. The cracks are present in every era and locale, and anyone who goes through a crack (you can get sucked in if you go too close and yes I am going to ignore the Freudian implications, thank you) ceases to exist anymore in their rightful universe. To those remaining, it's as if that person had never been born. No memory of them remains, though the more sensitive characters experience an inexplicable grief.
Don't you think it would be fantastic if we could attribute all the losses in our lives to something as simple as cracks in the fabric of space and time?!
I mean, okay. One of the reasons this show resonates for me is that I identify with the character who walks around with significant people missing from her life, trying to get on with whatever task or adventure is at hand, and intermittently finding that she's crying and doesn't know why.
After loss, after time passes, that's what it's like, right? When you think you're over it. When you've found a way to conceive of your universe without the one you've lost? And then one morning you wake from a dream you can't quite remember and find yourself adrift on a wave of grief?
When those waves come for me, I don't feel what I feel because of the loss alone. I also rail against the reasons for the loss:
Heroin addiction and depression fueled by childhood abuse and terrors, which led to suicide.
Complex and dishonest circumstances that made secrecy the condition of friendship, which inevitably destroyed it.
Ancient insecurities and missing skills from dysfunctional upbringings that eroded trust, without which even an unconditional love could not function.
Distance and misunderstandings exacerbated by jealous, insecure or controlling partners.
Unwillingness or inability to meet the demands of an exceptionally rare kindredness.
Alcoholism.
See? Wouldn't cracks in the universe be awesome? Wouldn't it be tremendous if being human were so easy, so simple, that the worst thing that could happen to us came from something utterly beyond ourselves? Something wholly beyond our individual or collective control? (With the exception of the Doctor, of course.)
We are so frail. So twisted up in fear. Missing from my universe are extraordinary relationships with extraordinary human beings. These are among the best people I have known and I feel that's saying something because I have always sought friends and lovers with humongous hearts, ravenous curiosity, boundless capacity to experience beauty and joy, true compassion, creative fire, and more than a light dusting of magic.
The best of humanity. And look at us.
So how? How can I walk through my universe with all these magnificent, significant people missing, sucked through cracks of our own tragic terrible design, and still claim "this blue heaven?" How can I in good faith put on bright colors and sing about light in the darkness?
The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things; but vice-versa the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.*
We have to work to add to the pile of good things. That's it. We have to work to see them, to let them have our full attention even for a moment. We have to fight for that because our frailty is so great and our power to destroy so very compelling. I don't deny the darkness. It is because I am aware of it, because I know how easily and inevitably the pile of bad things grows, that I insist on writing and singing about light.
Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world... that is -- until we evolve to the point that the worst threat we face is a bunch of pesky cracks in the universe -- the very best we can do.* So we must. I must. That's it.
*Quotations from Vincent and the Doctor
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