Didion, Zevon, and Pryor
In one day, I listened to Warren Zevon's The Wind, watched Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, and finished reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.
All three were reckoning with sickness and death--Didion with the sudden death of her husband and the near-fatal illness of her daughter (who would die not much later), Zevon with his own impending death (partly his own doing), and Pryor with the near-death experience of catching on fire while freebasing (definitely his own doing).
Didion lets us feel the grief put the ache in her bones, but she still comes off as guarded. At the end, she writes, "As I write this I realize that I do not want to finish this account." Zevon is cryptic, never directly addressing death, but singing in constant metaphor and moaning "open up" under his own voice on "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Pryor's approach to death is kind of like cow-tipping--he strikes it square, but runs away and lets us see him shake.
All three seem cowed, like they recognize some chink in the armor of their will that won't let them fight. Didion cites statistics on the discouraging mortality rate among widows. Zevon, if you listen to his other albums after 2000, saw it coming all along. You could just look at Pryor and know he wasn't going to see his seventies.
Sometimes I think about what it's going to be like to lose someone close, whether family or friends, expected or unexpected. And I think that the experience will drive it home for me that I won't be around forever, that I need to shake the last bit of teenage immortality that I've kept around like a relic.
But after Zevon, Didion, and Pryor, I realize that it is not the recently departed who make me feel more mortal than I'd like. It is those who are still here, who see it coming, and who put your hand to backs of their necks to feel the cold, rising condensation of death's icy breath.
It's tough enough to let down your guard when you're young and healthy. I can't imagine being in their situation and inviting the world in to see.
All three were reckoning with sickness and death--Didion with the sudden death of her husband and the near-fatal illness of her daughter (who would die not much later), Zevon with his own impending death (partly his own doing), and Pryor with the near-death experience of catching on fire while freebasing (definitely his own doing).
Didion lets us feel the grief put the ache in her bones, but she still comes off as guarded. At the end, she writes, "As I write this I realize that I do not want to finish this account." Zevon is cryptic, never directly addressing death, but singing in constant metaphor and moaning "open up" under his own voice on "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Pryor's approach to death is kind of like cow-tipping--he strikes it square, but runs away and lets us see him shake.
All three seem cowed, like they recognize some chink in the armor of their will that won't let them fight. Didion cites statistics on the discouraging mortality rate among widows. Zevon, if you listen to his other albums after 2000, saw it coming all along. You could just look at Pryor and know he wasn't going to see his seventies.
Sometimes I think about what it's going to be like to lose someone close, whether family or friends, expected or unexpected. And I think that the experience will drive it home for me that I won't be around forever, that I need to shake the last bit of teenage immortality that I've kept around like a relic.
But after Zevon, Didion, and Pryor, I realize that it is not the recently departed who make me feel more mortal than I'd like. It is those who are still here, who see it coming, and who put your hand to backs of their necks to feel the cold, rising condensation of death's icy breath.
It's tough enough to let down your guard when you're young and healthy. I can't imagine being in their situation and inviting the world in to see.
posted by disappearingink at 4:55 PM
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