Stop All The Clocks

“…knowledge without measure, knowledge that the human mind cannot appropriately use, is mortally dangerous.”
-- Wendell Berry


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight, my talk my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W. H. Auden


“The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait. We have insistently, and with relief, defined ourselves as animals or as ‘higher animals.’ But to define ourselves as animals, given our specifically human powers and desires, is to define ourselves as limitless animals—which of course is a contradiction in terms. Any definition is a limit, which is why the God of Exodus refuses to define himself: ‘I am that I am.’

…That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited. There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of mor technology seems at last to be losing status. We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world.”
-- Wendell Berry, Harpers, May 2008


Why is it that we say (I’m speaking to readers my age now, 8 in dog years), “lordy, lordy, it seems like more and more of my friends are getting cancer.” It’s not that cancer rates are increasing, as much as it is that our demographic cohort is aging. Aging is the primary cause of cancer. Why? As we get older, particularly after the age of 35, the risk of being diagnosed with cancer increases exponentially. We all age, and this inevitable biological process puts us at greater and greater risk of hearing that most dreadful of bad news. I guess hearing you were dead would be worse, but thankfully we’re never here to bear that burden.

Song Suggestions:

Dave Douglas, two CDs, “Freak In,” and “Strange Liberation.” (these two specifically)
Eric Satie, (Classical)
Magic Sam, ‘lookin Good,’ off of “West Side Soul.’
Byrds, David Crosby, ’Everybody’s Been Burned.’
James Taylor, ‘Close Your Eyes,’ off of “Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon.”
Buffalo Springfield, ‘4 Days Gone,’ off of “Last Time Around.”
Joni Mitchell, ‘Blue,’ off of “Blue.”
‘I Am a Child,’ Neil Young, off of “Buffalo Springfield.”