Subject: The selfishness of Seymour
From: Malcolm Lawrence (Malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Date: Wed Feb 26 1997 - 21:21:12 GMT
"Ya, that was pretty selfish of good ol' Seymour. But what do you think folks.......is Seymour selfish in general, or no? At the very least, does Seymour seem like the selfish type in "Hapworth"? He sorta does to me at times and then at other times, he doesn't. Do you think he's more selfish than not in "Hapworth", or what?"
Good idea for a topic. I'll bite.
I love Seymour's mind, as much as I love his dedication to overarching compassion, yet there is such a thing as the Messianic complex which I believe Seymour came too close to and ultimately drove himself crazy which led to his suicide. Hapworth illustrates how precocious Seymour was at the age of seven, and quite frankly, I can't read the story in bursts much longer than six or seven pages at a time because...he's too smart for his own good. He bugs the hell out of me because he's not old enough to have any of his smarts tempered by experience. He's at that level of maturity where every crisis or perspective of a fellow human being can be reduced and settled with a quip, ostensibly because he has no real contact with the real world. He has a tendency to believe he understands human nature, but his careful aloofness betrays whatever theoretical displays of compassion he believes he harbors. If he weren't only seven years old I'd say "He really needs to get laid." Yet at the same time, his wanting to see Ms. Whosit in "the raw" isn't really his voice talking, he wouldn't use a word or a phrase like that, I believe he feels so estranged from the adult world that his understanding of sexuality makes him realize that a thought expressed such as this would ally himself more with the adult world, and the fact that he expresses this thought to his parents (no matter how tolerable and progressive they are) indicates that he hasn't the slightest idea what sexuality (his or in general) is all about. He tries too hard, the poor little chap. Ostensibly because he's so very lonely, and when you're that lonely, solipsism is the easiest way out, and from there it's just a slippery slope to the teenage years of angst and estrangement from one's peers and society in general and believing that death is quite romantic and the whole existential nihilism that has always been fashionable for all the right reasons, because it is through this process (and it IS a process, not an end in itself) of elimination of what the soul does NOT need that the identity discovers what it DOES need. But if the mind and the soul comes upon the threshold that logically waits for it, first the Messianic complex and then self-extermination, and one says "Fuck it, I'm doing it" then that is where hell lies. For one who would commit suicide would also commit murder, and THAT is why a suicide should be feared. Understood and empathized with, yes, yet also feared, because it is a sociopathic act.
As far as the end of his life is concerned (which, ironically enough, he foretells in Hapworth for some reason, indicating to Bessie that he and Buddy will live to "at least 30") and how it happened...I've had to deal with two very close friends in my life (friends who were very close friends for YEARS) and talked each of them out of suicide and/or comforted them in their time of need on separate occasions, and when I was in a particularly insolvent time, they both conspired to betray me. I've never been worried about my own level of compassion, I believe I'm an "empath" because I frequently would much rather look after others than myself, but after being treated so callously by two friends I helped nurture through suicide, I've come to think that, yes, it is incredibly selfish.
I live in Seattle and was living just a couple of blocks away from the Seattle Center when the vigil for Kurt Cobain happened in 94 and a couple of hours after I returned from the vigil I had a telephone call from a woman I love whose birthday was coming up in a few days. She was calling from Bellingham that Sunday and had just returned home from bicycling around La Conner and the spirit of exhilaration in her voice was the happiest I'd ever heard her, perhaps the happiest I'd ever heard anyone. Listening to her voice was so spiritually refreshing it buoyed me as all around me were people devastated by the suicide of Cobain. I remember trying to illustrate to her the depth of empathy I was acquiescing to at the time, while simultaneously trying to explain that emotional duress is what drives one to such depths of despair and cursing Cobain's widow for not being there to nurture him, until finally I just blurted out "Suicide is NOT a choice." Sensing I had assented with the morals of despair she immediately became defensive and wanted to argue for a split second until she heard what the actual words were that I had said and agreed. What I was trying to say was "Suicide is NOT a choice one makes, one is driven to it," which in retrospect I realize underlines the passive victimization of the situation, yet she heard "Suicide is NOT an option," which is aggressively pro-life. My words betrayed my thoughts, and in hindsight I realize how much I was really trying to tell myself. She knew that no matter how much of a spiritual and psychological railing I believed I had, I was reaching too far into the depths of another's despair to be able to pull myself out when I had made sure they were safe. And she was right. I thought I was strong enough to save someone whose emotional security had been destroyed the exact same month Cobain pulled the trigger. I sat with him for a series of nights that bled into mornings for days that turned into weeks, bottle of Scotch after bottle of Scotch. Nothing I could say or do could prevent his insistence of the irrelevancy of love and faith until finally his resolve seeped into my mind and spread like a cancer throughout my own thoughts. I comforted him as he lay crying at my feet and suddenly I felt an otherworldly presence in the room. Angels were watching over me saying: Are you sure you can handle this? He slept it off, sought counseling and eventually rose again, like a phoenix from the ashes, but I had no intimate at the time whom I could turn to who would rejuvenate me, and eventually I found myself harboring the exact same poisonous thoughts of his that I had tried valiantly to nurse. Left with the twisted solipsistic logic of a suicide is enough to carve great chunks out of your soul. In retrospect, I wish I had simply gone bicycling in La Conner. I should have sought the love I needed then to give me the mortal perspective of the situation, because once someone you care for makes that mental leap of doubt there's no way you can ever fully reclaim the soul you're trying to save. The gunshot or the overdose may come weeks, months or years down the road, with or without you there to help, but you really can't explain faith to a mind that desperate and resolute.
I was surfing the net a couple of days ago trying to find a picture of Cobain to put with my essay of his death on the website I'm building for my own writings when I inadvertently came upon the page where someone had put up the actual police photograph of what he looked like when he was found. Something I did not EVER want to see and suddenly I was looking at it. And if anyone has any illusions about the romance of suicide, yeah, take a look at that picture and realize what those closest to you will have to deal with if you do it, not to mention having to tie up all the loose ends of your life that you didn't have the patience or the wherewithal to deal with yourself.
I'm sorry this took so long, but basically: Buddy, not Seymour, is the real "hero" of the Glass family.
Malcolm
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