Sunday is gloomy
My hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless
Little white flowers
Will never awaken you
Not where the black coach
Of sorrow has taken you
—From “Gloomy Sunday”
Sinead O’Connor has sung it; Bjork wallowed in the sorrow of its lyrics, creating gutturals as if the melody were not depressing enough. But it was Billie Holiday, the jazz great, who popularized the song.
The song was “Gloomy Sunday.” It was also known as “the Hungarian Suicide Song.”
Composed in Resző Seress, a Hungarian pianist in Paris, the song is pure melancholia if one thinks of the music of the 1930s. And yet, the song has been tied to many suicides the year it was released. It was reported that many bodies found in the Danube were clutching the lyrics sheet of “Gloomy Sunday.”
The hysteria about the effect of the song was so great that radio networks banned the playing of the song, with some of these bans lifted only as the new millennium arrived.
The song in its original form is still available via the video-sharing web site of YouTube. The video comes with a warning how the song was the reason behind the death by suicide of many people in the past. As an ominous sound plays in the background, words of strong caution appears on the screen: “The song will play in 10 seconds. Exit now if you choose not to hear.”
There is a case that has gone viral online, and it is about the suicide of a popular musician. The latest suicide is most unusual and thus elicits more curiosities and interest: the man jumped from a building to his death after talking to those who cared to listen to him. He enabled the camera to record his fall.
With the greatest respect to the person who committed suicide, that act he committed could never be ignored. I am not proposing any thought from him because I never knew him. Let me ask this question not for him but for those who are left forever obsessing to find the video: Did he want us to view that last act? Was viewing that the respect he asked us to offer?
Many will offer their responses to my questions. But many, especially those who loved him sincerely and without any condition, will condemn me for asking the questions. How dare this writer exploit the topic of suicide? How cruel is this newspaper to publicize death?
But suicides are as public as any ceremonial. The suicide—for that is what we call the person who commits the act—creates the steps and the processes that would cause the self to fall off a building, burn the body to ashes and to nothingness or wait for the mouth to froth until the paroxysms take over and the soul, as we believe so, leaves the body.
How dare I indeed talk about something that is now the immeasurable loneliness of those left behind. How vicious I am indeed to mock their sadness by my desire to objectify the death of someone I will never understand.
I know what will happen next. TV networks will invite once more that female psychologist with hair rebonded to perfection, with a voice that reeks of textbooks, who will offer advice that could be given by anyone. Then more experts will come in.
The fact is, there are no psychologists, no historians, no social scientists before death. There is no expert when life is dissipated. No philosophies can ever make sense of death. Not Derrida, not Plato. No logic can shelter suicide from those who will obsess how he arrived at the finality to end his own life.
The video has been taken off by Facebook. What is left is an annotated presentation without the dreaded “act.” And yet, I am certain, thousands are searching the ether to catch the vestiges of the artist’s last image as he plunges down. I know, the kin of the artist will hate me, the self-righteous advocate of privacy when such principle can be used for his own causes will curse me to stop. The student of psychology will tell me no psychobabble can work against suicide. Well, no religion, no science ever works with death.
We have created a world where words and actions become viral. Here we are at the threshold of our own progress looking into the dark pit of evil instead of looking up to the heavens of stars as we contemplate the power of the Internet. Perhaps, we should stop using the term “social media,” because “social” has stopped being positive. Besides, the concept of social media has been understood without alacrity and such adeptness by politicians, it is time to move to the next universe where man takes over the machine again.
Man against the machine. Man with the machine. When was it that we have become terrified of social media and the online relationships nurtured by it? The logarithms of the universe should still serve humankind because that is the will of the universe.
But I still have more questions: What happens when one is already falling? Does one forget the world? Does one see the gods of one’s faith?
When a young priest some years ago pulled the trigger to end his life with the Church, many of the faithful rushed forward with their faith. They clutched on to their rationality and explained that, during the moment the young man was about to press the trigger, God was ready about his forgiveness. I do not know about you, but hearing those words scared me as much as the act of killing itself.
The storm in those voices pleading that the suicide video should not be circulated is unnecessary. Think again because the Internet that has served our rants is now the same instrument we are condemning. The social media that helped us to let freedom bloom is now the monster we are asking everyone to murder.
Suicide is about the suicide. It is not about us, but we like the act of suicide to be of us. That is the real selfishness in suicide, not the person who committed it, who willed that he will not live anymore. We cannot understand him. We should not understand him because, if we wanted to, we could have done that when he was still around.
“I will be always here with you” are words we love to say. Look again, we say them because “we are always not there with you.” And that is painful.
No one is in a position to give any advice now. But, to those who loved the man (and there are many), the online messages are not how he conducted his passing but how he lived his life. Those words can make the kin and those who cared about him feel good. That is the irony of death—the living are the ones searching the universe for answers why one has left when they should be listening to the heavens for answers as to how to continue living.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano