Footnote on “Footnote to Jaspers*”

Footnote to Jaspers

don’t just float,

dance with death,

listen to the music

of the silence,

let your life

be a grace note

not a space note

(taking up…)

no, dance with death,

it’s anyone’s guess

what’s behind the veil,

decide to dance,

it’s a matter of balance,

let that prevail,

laugh at the light,

black or white,

take a chance,

love in a major scale

*Karl Jaspers, existential philosopher and psychiatrist

Jaspers “floated” or “glided” between different philosophical points of view, never saying one or the other was determinate. He did not believe in established positions as final. Some criticized him for that, saying that he did not take a position. He saw nothing as fixed, stable wanting to stay with possibilities without making a final decision. Thus he did not adhere to an absolutist or essentialist point of view, but rather was doubtful of dogmatic answers concerning existence. He offered no solutions, but rather raised questions.

Yet at the personal level he did recognize that in limit situations we are forced to make an authentic choices for ourselves and our destiny.

His philosophy is considered by some as one of detachment.[1] He floated in relation to any determined philosophy  of existence. He saw the space between one position and the other, that abyss, the negative space as a place for freedom.

But what is the difference between avoiding the abyss of nothingness by floating, negating any finite presentation and dancing? Dancing in this case is acknowledging the other in a graceful way, the other being the possibility and the reality of non-being. It involves body movement in balance. It means making decisions for ourselves and with our partner. It has an aesthetic dimension.

But what if our partner is death?

Facing death is facing non-being, the ultimate non-being. We face non-being every time we create, every time we face the blank page, the white canvas, or step on the dance floor. The creative adventure is moving from the known, the fixed, the current understanding, through the unknown to a new creation. Non-being allows for becoming. One goes through non-being to something new.

Being requires non-being to allow for becoming.  What the artist or creative scientist feels confronting non-being  is not fear or anxiety; it is joy.  It is possible to dance with non-being, to be joyful.  Joy here is defined as the emotion that goes with heightened consciousness, the mood that accompanies the experience of actualizing one’s own potentialities.  You actualize your potentialities by confronting non-being.  You take a chance.  You accept the possibility of criticism. You acknowledge death rather than deny it.

Too much “being” gets in the way of creativity. I can remember when I was freely improvising on the piano, one musical idea coming right after the other, and my wife said, “You need to put some pauses in so the listener can have time to assimilate the music.”  I needed to focus on the musical phrasing. She said, “You need pauses to give the music a chance to breathe.”  Silence, or non-being, is quite important to the music.  The audience listens to the “sounds of silence.” He may listen for 4 minutes and 33 seconds if he goes to a John Cage concert.

The dance is between sound and silence. The dance is between the positive space and the negative space. The body moves through space. In jazz, researchers have found that a jazz musician must balance between the familiar and the original. If the playing is all familiar, it becomes boring. If it is all original, the listener becomes lost.  The positive space needs the negative space for a new wholeness.

“Destruction is the beginning of creation,” says Picasso. What would life be without death? 

The creative adventure, which requires courage, means taking on the current state of being and making changes. Death to the old way.

At the existential level courage is the strength to continue to live on in a meaningful way in spite of the fact that our existence appears to have no purpose.  It means to dance with death.  Rollo May saw courage as moving ahead despite doubts, whether it’s through writing a book or a song, or simply speaking up in a way that will make a difference.  Love is caring,  not because of the other’s virtues but despite the faults, despite the differences, still caring.  Tillich says that “Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.” It is dancing with death. It is living life with love and laughter despite death.  It is loving in and on a major  scale.

 1. Heinemann, F.H. Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, Harper & Row: Publishers, New York,  1953

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