ideaExchange Transcript 1.22.05
Our Guitars are Tuned to Despair:
Elliot Smith, Kurt Cobain, and the Book of Ecclesiastes
- Rev. Jamie Howison, st. benedict's table 1.22.05
A word or two of introduction. In considering the Book of
Ecclesiastes, it is important to acknowledge that there are many, many
critical questions to which biblical scholars respond with a range of
possible answers. The least of these is certainly not the question of
authorship, with many conservative scholars defending the book's
traditional attribution as being from the pen of King Solomon, and
others positing a variety of alternative answers. Rather than bogging
down on this question, I have simply taken the route of dealing with
the book on its own terms, and in designating the writer as "the
Teacher," after the manner of the Hebrew original. I have also made
a fairly negative and bleak reading of the text, and must acknowledge
that there is an array of alternate interpretations (as was made
abundantly clear during the question/discussion time when I first
delivered this material at IdeaExchange!). For an interesting and
readable introduction to these issues, you can consult the chapter
"Ecclesiastes: The End of Wisdom" from Philip Yancy's The Bible
Jesus Read.
I am fascinated by the relevance of Koheleth (otherwise known as the
Book of Ecclesiastes). Unlike any other book of the Bible we can read
him without intermediaries and think that we understand him. Key
sentences and insights can be directly translated into our everyday
phraseology of resignation, although admittedly they lose something in
the process. His summation, "all is vanity" or emptiness, a
stirring of the air (hebel; 1:2; 12:8), is really not so different from
our modern "everything is shit."
That from the German Old Testament scholar Frank Crusemann, in an
article entitled, "The Unchangeable World: the 'Crisis of Wisdom in
Koheleth." "Everything is shit," or perhaps more gently, "Life
is hard, then you die." That one is from a bumper sticker that had
some popularity about a decade back; a bumper sticker designed to make
us laugh, partly because on at least some days we recognize it as true.
My starting point in this paper is to suggest that if the writer of
the Book of Ecclesiastes had decided to put a bumper sticker on his
chariot, he would not have been drawn to one of those more religious
ones you often see - "God is my co-pilot" or "honk if you love
Jesus" - but he may well have opted for "Life is hard..." In
fact, he might have been a little tempted to choose one of the more
cynical and mischievous stickers I've seen riding the back of a car;
one which proclaimed in large letters "I found Jesus," and then
added in a much smaller font, "he was behind the couch the whole
time."
You see, the writer - "the Teacher," as the Hebrew word Koheleth
is best translated - might have at least smiled darkly at the thought
of such a phrase, for deep in his heart lay a fearful sense that God is
unknowable, ineffable, un-findable. The Teacher does not for a minute
doubt the existence of God. He just despairs, and that is a very
different thing from doubt. As the Twentieth Century theologian Paul
Tillich emphasized, far from being the opposite of faith, doubt is
encompassed within faith. To care enough to seriously struggle with
doubt is to be in the grip of faith. As Frederick Buechner so
elegantly phrased it, "If there is no room for doubt, there is no
room for me."
No, despair cuts deeper, because the one who has reached a place of
despair has begun to fear, to recall the phrase from Sartre, that there
is "no exit." This all means nothing, it is carrying me nowhere,
and there is nothing I can meaningfully do to change that. The Teacher
is struggling with such despair, because he cannot entirely believe
that God's existence makes any real difference in his very particular
life. For all that he tries to insert something more affirming or
hopeful into this strange book, on balance you cannot help but be
washed over by his despair.
1:10 - Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new'?
It has already been, in the ages before us.
1:18 - For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase
knowledge increase sorrow.
2:17 - So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was
grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
8:17 - Then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what
is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking,
they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to
know, they cannot find it out.
11:8 - Even those who live for many years should rejoice in them all;
yet let them remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that
comes is vanity.
This is in the Bible? What sort of a religious faith carries such
texts in the heart of its scriptures?
In his suicide note, rock music icon Kurt Cobain wrote, "Since the
age of seven I've become hateful of all human beings in general."
The age of seven, the age when his parents divorced. Say what you will
about divorce and broken families, for that seven year old it marked
the birth of a hateful despair. The world as he had known it changed,
and there was not a thing he could do about it. Angry despair surfaces
in the music of Cobain's band, the ironically named Nirvana. It is
evident in the rage of the big "grunge" sound, but also in the
bleakness of a song like "Something in the Way," from 1991's
Nevermind. It is written all over his face in photographs, and it is
pushed right in the listener's face in a song like "I Hate Myself
and Want to Die," which had actually been intended to serve as the
title track for 1993's In Utero. It is hauntingly evident in the
anguished vocals on the posthumously released and raggedly beautiful
Unplugged in New York.
For all that Kurt Cobain seemed to have an aversion to success and
celebrity, one of his biographers suggests that the musician's entire
career was a prolonged scream for attention. The agony, of course, is
that fame did not deliver on its promise to fulfill. Fame could not
fulfill, nor could his marriage to Courtney Love, his deep dependence
on heroin and various other drugs, or even fatherhood. He remained in
pain, angry, and empty. It is the Teacher again:
2:1 - I said to myself, 'Let me experiment with pleasure and have a
good time; but this also turned out to be a vapour. (Anchor Bible
translation )
Endless entertainment, sexual excess, fame, wine, stuff... nothing
fulfilled, and so eventually Cobain put a rifle in his mouth and blew
his brains out. The Teacher hung on by his fingernails, maybe just a
bit too proud or maybe just a bit to humbled by his belief in an
unknowable God, to slit his wrists.
And there are other voices, other instances of this sense of emptiness
in our privileged cultural milieu. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
writing existential novels, plays and essays of despair... ironically
from the beauty, security and relative affluence of post-war Paris.
Did you realize that San Francisco, one of the most beautiful and
certainly most affluent cities in the United States has that nation's
highest suicide rate? It rings so true, this insight of the Teacher,
that getting everything you want ultimately will not do it; will not
satisfy or create meaning. The hungry emptiness remains.
Elliott Smith is yet another case in point. A member of a legendary
grunge band turned intense solo artist turned surprising celebrity,
thanks to his song Misery being included in the soundtrack to the film,
Good Will Hunting. A surprising/surprised and reluctant celebrity,
who, after performing at the Academy awards, was much perplexed to find
that he quite liked Celine Dion. There was a serious drug habit
already in place by the time of this success, but it only deepened in
the chaos and confusion of making the big time. And now, Smith is
dead, probably due to a suicide, though there is renewed speculation
that it might have been a murder. If Cobain's agony and despair was
given voice in the sonic force of Nirvana's music, with Smith it is
the lyrics that tell the story. In fact, his music is oddly pretty,
Beatlesque, almost unsettling in the words that it bears.
one hit wouldn't hurt a bit at all
slow down sleep
what's
if it's good shit you won't know
and I won't know the fact that I'm dying
If I seem to be reckless with myself
it's the fault of no one
all things have a place
under the moon as well as the sun
one more
little one I love you
from "A Little One"
>From a Basement on the Hill
It is all but impossible to miss the reference to the Teacher's
"there is nothing new under the sun."
he said really I just wanna dance
good and evil perfect it's a great romance
I can deal with some psychic pain
if it'll slow down my higher brain
veins full of disappearing ink
vomiting in the kitchen sink
disconnecting from the missing link
this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
it's not what I'm like
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
who couldn't get things right
from "A Fond Farewell"
>From a Basement on the Hill
These from his album From a Basement on the Hill, released after his
death, but more notably recorded before he ostensibly kicked his
addiction.
everything is gone but the echo of the burst of a shell
and I'm stuck here waiting for a passing feeling
in the city I built up and blew to hell
I'm stuck here waiting fro a passing feeling
still I sinned all the time
my request for relief
down the dead power lines
though I'm beyond belief
in the help I require
just to exist at all
took a long time to stand
took an hour to fall
"A Passing Feeling"
>From a Basement on the Hill
It would be a luxury at such a point in one's life to care about
something enough to have doubts. This is despair.
And that, you see, is the dread of the Teacher. Though he believes
that there is a God, God's will is hidden, God's purposes
unknowable, God's presence unthinkable. Some prosper and some
suffer, and it seems to have little to do with goodness or
righteousness. You can get it all, but still feel empty. You can get
it all, but still you die. It is but a grasping at the air. He
squeezes out just a little more, but it seems almost born of
stubbornness. Youthfulness, he says, has some joy; yet we age. Food
and wine and love can bring satisfaction, but they can easily become
empty strivings as we invest them with too much weight. Wisdom is
better than folly, yet do not think it will solve anything.
"Remember God in the days of your youth" (12:1) he says. Reverence
God and obey torah, and it might offer some balancing of the dread.
The parallels between the Teacher and these musicians and writers are
not incidental. The Teacher writes out of a context of affluence and
relative stability, out of a time when people had the luxury to
consider such things. It does not come from the struggle of the Sinai
desert or from the experience of slavery or from the hellish nightmare
of the Babylonian exile. The Teacher writes from a place not unlike a
Paris café or a Seattle mansion, or even a relatively affluent Prairie
city in which most of can take food and shelter for granted. His world
had also forgotten the struggle for justice for the broken and
impoverished of the world.
It should come as no surprise that he felt and expressed such things,
but it should strike us as odd that it has landed in scripture. In
Judaism, part of the Feast of Booths is to read the book aloud in its
entirety to the assembled family. Christians do no such thing; in fact
we rarely read it at all, and almost never in public worship. Yet
maybe we should. J.I. Packer calls this, "the one book in Scripture
that is expressly designed to turn us into realists," and in a
world of alluring affluence one thing we might just be most in need of
is a hit of reality.
What kind of a religious faith includes such a text in its scriptures?
One that at its best understands that we will feel and fear such dread
and despair at some point in life, and that we must not be left to do
that alone. We need to know that my despair has been given voice
before, right in the heart of scripture.
Yet it is also a faith that knows that this is but one voice, one
piece of the story, one of the seasons of life and faith. And just as
you can't proof-text your way to happiness, you can't proof-text
yourself to despair. It is one voice. It should unnerve, unsettle,
and even shock us from our easy answers. Yet it is but one voice, and
beside it and across the seasons of faith we must hear those other
voices as well, such that the monotone of the Teacher can find harmony
with the joy of the praise psalms, the liberating texts of Exodus, the
grace of the Gospel.
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