I just read a short essay by David Foster Wallace, “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed.” It really made me think how much we are prisoners of our brain chemistry. Because Wallace gets it. He really understands what life is all about. And yet he chose to end his own life to avoid the psychic pain that leads many brilliant and insightful people to do so.
I don’t talk about this a lot, because I think it just disturbs people. Life is a form of anti-art. It is like we are all composers working on a piece of music that no one will ever hear. Eventually, no one will even know that it existed. It won’t even be like those Shakespeare plays that we only have titles for. Our lives come to nothing and I absolutely do not mean that metaphorically. The process is the art. And that is glorious!
Wallace understands this completely. He wrote in the essay:
I understand: it is dark. It is hard. People don’t like to think this kind of thing. But to me, this is freeing. On my best days I feel like a painter whose brush cannot err. And the memory of those days carry me through the days where it seems all I do is brush more grey on top of the grey from the day before. And for me, that is enough. Sadly, it was not enough for a mind as great as David Foster Wallace. And now all that is left of his art are shadows in the form of his writings and others’ memories. That would have happened eventually, of course. But songs that end abruptly as so frustrating.
Das ist nicht komisch.
[1] “This is funny.”