Page 60 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #1

60 INTERVIEW: FALCON, PART 2

are popular. I am sure you watch TV. Be- intensely that the only way to survive the pain
tween banal comedy and reality TV, is there was to murder my emotions. I knew then that
any depth? Camus was correct.
Francois: One person’s depth . . . Francois: Camus? Please explain.
Falcon: You don’t believe that for a second. Falcon: We all have the plague. The plague
Francois: Whether I do or not isn’t the is death. And death threatens to render ev-
point. erything we do absurd. Without point or pur-
Falcon: Then what is your point? pose. Empty. Camus goes on to say that in an
Francois: You once told me that when you absurd world, only the absurd makes sense
were—what was it, 18? 20?—you came home and nothing is more absurd than loving.
late at nyght and when you entered the bed- Love promises eternity, oneness, totality,
room, you saw a single strand of gray in the the entwining of lives—and yet in the end, all
hair of the woman to whom you were mar- things die. We think that when we love an-
ried. And at that very same instant, you saw other human we take their humanity as our
her grow old and die—and this moment was own. However true that might be, it is truer
so powerful, so painful, that it kept you from still that we take their death as our own. To
feeling anything for more than a decade. love is to die not once but twice.
Falcon: Yes. That nyght long ago, when I looked at the
Francois: Why? woman I loved, I took her death as my own.
Falcon: Isn’t it obvious? Francois: Hence the sense of urgency in
Francois: If it were, would I ask? your work.
Falcon: There is a scene in Nietzsche’s Falcon: Yes. There is only this moment.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra where Zarathus- Unique. Unrepeatable. Fleeting. I learned
tra descends from his mountain retreat into at a very young age how delicate and fragile
the city below. It is nyght and he carries a life is, and every day of my life I keep that
lantern—as did Demosthenes in ancient knowledge nearest my heart. As Heidegger
Greece—and upon finding a group of peo- said, once we are born we are already
ple, Zarathustra says, “I seek God. I seek old enough to die.
God.” The people just look at him, not know- On that nyght back in October of 2002,
ing what to make of what he has just said. as I lay dying from the worst anorexia I had
So, Zarathustra responds, “Do you not yet ever suffered, I just wanted to understand the
smell the stench of divine decomposition?” sadness and grief that had brought me to that
When they continue to look at him blank- place of despair and pain so profound that I
ly, he says simply, “I have come too soon.” couldn’t escape it.
And so I will say to you, “Do you not smell Francois: So, you became Goth that nyght.
the stench of dying flesh?” We all die. It is the Falcon: Yes and no. I had always been
one human, universal truth. Every moment Gothic. But that nyght I realized that I had
of every day, in every way, however much we turned my back on who and what I was.
might try to fool ourselves into thinking oth- This one realization—more poignant than
erwise, we are all dying. Slowly. Inexorably. all the pain I had ever experienced—brought
That nyght when I entered the room and me to nearly take my life. I couldn’t stop
saw my wife lying there, I felt her death so the pain of that nyght, just as I had not

nyghtvision magazine volume 3, number 1, WINTER 2013