“Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all.” -Igor Stravinsky
Is this video powerless to express anything all? Can you tell from this video how much I loved her, and how much she loved me? Can you tell that, as Julian Barnes wrote, “I loved her; we were happy; I miss her…we were unhappy; I [still] miss her?”
When I start to write about Sofia, I cannot stop: the thread of my thoughts and feelings about her is unending, and it tangles around every idea I have about love, about ethics, about life’s meaning, about suffering, and about the self.
And I cannot write anything decent about her because what I feel is unrefined; Kundera once said that art takes suffering and redeems it into existential wisdom, but I have no desire to make use of the painful detritus of our love. I don’t want to be wiser. I want to hold onto every painful scrap; they substantiate me.
So my first draft of this post was about Jesus: what is so remarkable, I once asked my father, about his willingness to die, given that he knew his death would bring eternal life to humanity (and note: it is not necessary to believe anything at all about religion to ponder this question; as an atheist, I am fascinated by it).
Do you have a lover, family, friends, children? Would you not die to spare them hell, to give them heaven? Don’t soldiers and martyrs of all kinds sacrifice themselves for the ends they think are noble? Isn’t the willingness to die to save our loved ones a trait of which we humans can be proud?
His answer -again speaking within the imaginative framework of the story- was that we must assume Jesus was “fully human,” and unsure if his death would mean anything at all.
I am unsure if love means anything at all. I don’t know how the world sustains it: to endure the anguish of your children, the enfeeblement of your spouses, the deaths of your friends, and steady your hearts for another day is as courageous as anything I can imagine.
Sofia told me this weekend of something awful that happened to her, and I can say that I lack such courage; I despise the universe for striking out at the gentle, the meek, the good, and I feel sick with weakness that I cannot protect those I care for.
So, hello Sofia, and I’m sorry.
