Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, and the Loneliness of Disordered Desire

Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, and the Loneliness of Disordered Desire

"I left a woman waiting:
I met her sometime later.
She said: 'I see your eyes are dead.
What happened to you, lover?'"

"I'm fucking nothing. I'm not even a person."

The above quotes come from two extraordinarily different works of art, created by two extraordinarily different artists more than thirty years apart. They are, nonetheless, about precisely the same thing.

Let me start over. One of the primary purposes of art is to aid in the extraordinarily important process of reflection and processing of our lives and selves and experiences. We all live out of and based on what we receive of the world; yet before we can act truthfully, we must first understand truthfully what we have received. And this is by no means easy.

One of the greatest problems with the contemporary regime of mass-media in American life is that it renders this process all but impossible. It does so in the first place by simply deafening and overwhelming people with narratives and experiences that are totally foreign to their own lives, which they have no ability even to begin to process, and which thus leave them no space and time to process their own lives and selves and the world itself. It does so in the second place by giving them narratives of the world that falsify their own experiences, causing them to understand their own lives in ways that are false and harmful, and hence, inevitably, to act in ways that are false and harmful.

One of the primary realms where this is true is, of course, the domain of human relationships and desire, insofar as, as I have argued in this space, the primary form of artistic production of our civilization consists of the manipulation of human desires for the purposes of pornography and advertising. For this to be effective, people have to absorb and internalize a sense of their own persons and identities and desires that is maximally manipulable by media. This, while existing in different ways in different areas, is fundamentally a mode that is de-personalized, de-relationalized, momentary, intense, atomized, repeatable, interchangeable, quantifiable, and totally separated from any sense of truth or reality. The ideal subject of this type of desire is someone who responds with maximal intensity to any given stimulus, at whatever time, whoever it involves, whether it is in reality or only via media, does whatever that stimuli tells him or her to do (such as buy a product), and then is ready to respond in the same way a moment later to a totally unrelated stimulus.

A great deal of American mass-media, consequently, is dedicated to portraying this type of desire as supremely positive and affirmed and fulfilling, and the type of person who is defined by such desires as supremely affirmed and fulfilled and happy. 

And yet the reality, which we have all at some point in our lives seen plainly either in others or in ourselves or both, is that this person is definitionally and maximally unfulfilled and lonely and miserable and unhappy. Since most people in America process their own experiences of themselves and others largely or entirely through mass media, though, many people are entirely unable to grasp this obvious reality or acknowledge it or process it or derive any conclusions from it or take any actions based on it. Indeed, even people who are obviously and enormously unhappy for precisely this reason are, in my experience, almost totally incapable of actually seeing themselves as unhappy and hence of taking any steps, large or small, to remedy their situation.

The first step to ceasing to be unhappy is to recognize that one is in fact unhappy. This is trivially true, but in fact, in practical terms, is one of the most common obstacles to personal happiness in many contemporary American's lives. People are frequently driven to go very far into the depths of personal dysfunction and the Internet alike before they can find media that allows them to reflect on themselves to even this very minimal degree--and then frequently the sectarian or conspiracist or victimizing or pseudo-psychologizing Internet narratives they end up consuming about their own unhappiness are just as false and destructive and conducive to further unhappiness. 

Even more cruelly, perhaps, the reality of contemporary American life is that many, many, many people do in fact have the materials of fulfilling, meaningful, even happy lives, but live their entire lives in the shadows, ashamed, and made unhappy precisely because their lives do not measure up to mass-media fantasies of people who are in fact profoundly, deeply miserable themselves.

It is precisely because of that that there is an enormous need for works of art that clearly and effectively and truthfully portray the unhappiness of people who are in fact unhappy, in such a way that people who are not like these people can recognize them as unhappy and not try to emulate them or be ashamed they are not like them, and so people who are in fact like these people can come to see their own unhappiness and act on it.

This is yet another unnecessarily long-winded and philosophical proem to two works of art that I like very much, both of which center on the utter misery and loneliness of famous, attractive, successful, promiscuous men. So here goes.

Column 03/23/2024: The Trouble with Catholic Journalism

The Trouble with Catholic Journalism

"Transparency" is the most important issue in the Catholic Church today. How do we know this? We know this because journalists tell us so. What is transparency? Transparency is when journalists tell us what the most important issues in the Catholic Church are.

A question for all my readers, Catholic and non-Catholic: how many times in the last month have you read or watched or listened to a Magisterial document of any kind in its totality? For Magisterial document, let's start with a maximally broad definition, including Papal speeches and homilies, documents produced by Episcopal conferences, documents put out by your local bishop, speeches and homilies by your local bishop, even homilies by your local pastor. Now let's narrow the field a little bit: how many times in the last month have you read a full document officially promulgated by a Pope, such as an encyclical, Apostolic Exhortation, Apostolic Letter, etc? Now let's narrow it even further: when is the last time you read a full document promulgated by the present Pope?

Now another question: how many times in the last month have you watched or listened to a journalistic report and/or analysis and/or editorial about a Papal document? Let's again start with a maximally broad definition, including not only Catholic journalists but mainstream media journalists, social media figures, heads of lay apostolates, lay pseudo-apostolates, celebrity priests, blogs, podcasts, random Twitter accounts, and so on, and focusing not just on Papal documents but on Papal or episcopal or presbyteral speeches, homilies, actions, activities, and/or sins. And, again, a narrower question: how many times in the last month have you read or watched or listened to a report of any kind of a document officially promulgated by a Pope? By the present Pope?

Now one more question: what is the crisis in the Catholic Church again? And is transparency the answer to that problem? Or is transparency in fact the problem itself?

Column 03/13/2024: Interiority and the Preternatural: Wilkie Collins, Henry James, and The Curse

 Interiority and the Preternatural: Wilkie Collins, Henry James, and The Curse

In art and life alike, it is important not to confuse the supernatural with the preternatural.

The supernatural, what is super naturam, "above nature," refers, properly speaking, to the genuinely transcendent--that is, what it is distinguished from the natural not by a straightforward conflict or addition, but by totally superseding it, nullifying it, prefiguring it in its totality, and/or drawing it up whole into itself. The genuinely supernatural cannot be anticipated by the natural, or portrayed in terms of it: it can only, to a limited extent, be conveyed by its action on and through the natural. Hence the proper mode(s) of the Sacred Scriptures and other theological and mystical writings.

The preternatural, what is praeter naturam, "next to nature" or "outside" it, is not like this: most properly, it refers to those things that do not transcend the natural, but rather exist alongside it, adding something to it or in some way operating outside its normal bounds. It is the preternatural that is the more common purview of human art and literature. 

Even here, one can distinguish two senses of the preternatural, one of which is more proper than the other. In the first place, the term preternatural is often used for entities that, while not properly supernatural, are nonetheless more spiritual or powerful or higher in some sense, and thus have greater power to act on and even against nature: demons and angels and ghosts and human persons. 

In itself, though, there is nothing unnatural about these entities, which are in the most immediate sense simply one group of created natures among others. I have never seen a ghost, but I have had a few encounters with demons--and I can assure my readers that there is nothing particularly exciting or artistic about such experiences. The existence of an entity that is strong or difficult to detect or even very intelligent and who wishes to harm you may be frightening, but there is nothing intrinsically interesting about it, any more than about a cockroach or charging rhinoceros or human murderer. 

Still, while these entities are not beyond nature in a strong sense, the reality is that if we examine the bulk of art about spiritual beings, indeed the bulk of art about even threatening human beings or animals, we find that it is layered with a great deal of strange, eerie "preternatural" effects. The reason for this, though, is found in the relationship between such entities and the preternatural in the proper sense. 

Hence the central thesis of this essay, namely that the "preternatural" in human and artistic terms refers precisely to the interiority of human experience and action, and in particular to two troubling features of this interiority: (1) its frequent opacity, and (2) its susceptibility to being acted upon and affected.

A human person does not merely exist as an entity in the world, one object among other objects acting and being acted upon: they exist, rather, by receiving and interiorizing the world, and then communicating what they have received.

Hence the essential paradox of human life and personhood as such: every human being lives in the same objective world, yet every human being exists in a sense in their own world, which is not merely a "subjective" as opposed to "objective" world, or a false as opposed to a true world, but which is precisely the world as received and related to by themselves. As both Trinitarian theology and Christology in their several ways show, the person in its actual, particular existence and relationality is precisely what cannot be comprehended within nature, but exists "outside of" it, "alongside" it. As an intellectual entity, an entity that fundamentally is intellect--that is to say, a pure receptivity that is actualized and exists only in its receiving and relating to and even becoming what is other as other--every human being simply is the whole world received according to a particular relation. 

In theory, there is nothing dangerous, nothing even false or non-objective, about this state of affairs. Each person receives the world according to their particular, truthful relation to it, characterizes that world comprehensively according to that relation, and then gives that world back as their own to other persons. In this giving and receiving of the content of the world and all things according to real and true relation, this essentially Trinitarian dynamic, is the whole glory and beauty of intellect and personhood and, in its most perfect and transcendent form, the very life of God himself. 

Yet in the world as we find it, this reality of personhood can go very badly wrong. Each person lives in, lives as, a world: but these worlds are frequently constituted as much by falsehood, disconnection, privation, and malicious intention as by true and objective relation. When we encounter people, when we start to understand them, we get not so much a sense of their psychology or their identity in a straightforward sense: we get, rather, a glimpse of the world in which they exist, the world as which they exist. Without a doubt we have all had the experience of encountering someone (perhaps even ourselves) and getting a glimpse of the world in which they lived--and finding it a hellish, illusive wasteland.

At the same time, the worlds we construct or exist in are never merely our own creations, based merely on our own relations. As persons, starting from the time we are infants, we all form our senses of the world and our personalities through receiving from and relating to others. Without this, no true relationships among people are possible, and indeed we cannot really function as rational beings, cannot really live in the world or form our own sense of it. We are beings that by our very nature and inmost operation are aimed at receiving other peoples' worlds, other peoples' interiorities, and reconciling and uniting them to our own. 

At its best, this process of communication is a constant ongoing process, a constant reception and correction and expansion and integration of our sense of the world that brings us deeper and deeper into relation with each other and the depths of being. At worst, though, this process of receiving our worlds from without can become the most brutal type of violence, a violence that threatens to efface our inmost selves. We have all almost certainly had the experience of being overwhelmed, deafened, deadened, perhaps even totally annihilated by someone else's hellish interiority, someone else's false sense of the world and their and our place in it. 

It is here that the less proper sense of the preternatural relates directly to, and is only comprehensible in terms of, the proper sense of the term.  In principle, everything in the world has some power over our interiority, some place in the worlds we form. The more something--a time, a place, an object, a melody, a work of art, a relationship--directly impacts our interiority, shapes and characterizes and constitutes it, the more we perceive that thing as somehow "beyond nature," strange, wonderful, luminous, eerie. 

"Spirits" and human persons alike are not preternatural in any sense that transcends this--they are simply entities in the world with the capacity to impact our interior lives. Yet as intellectual beings with interior lives, thoughts and intentions and designs and worlds of their own, they are entities who have a great deal more power to shape and even dominate our interiorities than any other. In the final sense, indeed, only other persons, other intellectual entities, are or can be preternatural. Only they can give us our senses of the world, alter them, or destroy them. 

Hence, it is quite true and even quite literal to say that for the saint the world is heaven, and that for the evil man one and the same world is hell. Indeed, the saint in a real sense is heaven; his whole existence and personality is found in the communication of the world as given and received and lived in beatitude; and as evil men grow more evil, they in a real sense become Hell, their existence consisting in little more than the communication of their own misery and damnation to others. It is this interplay and drama of personality, of the communication of whole cosmoses, that constitutes most of the actual substance of our lives in this world.

To illustrate the point, I will now turn to examining a few works of art that bear on this question, and show how they all reflect, to varying degrees, this fundamental reality of human life: and how their use of "preternatural" elements in the exterior sense is ultimately a mask and means for examining the ways in which people's interior lives are impacted, illuminated, deformed, or destroyed by the world and other persons. In these stories, ghosts and demons and other people alike are ghostly, not because they threaten us without, but because they threaten us within.

The Arrest

[This short story recently came to me in a dream, complete and pretty much as you read it below.]

The Arrest

“It’s good to be back.”

Harry Monroe looked with satisfaction around his little office at the back of the precinct, solemnly surveying the pictures of the wife and kids, the corkboard adorned with newspaper clippings, the soiled mugs and the broken coffee machine. He ran his hands up his own front, savoring the feel of the uniform, the hard edges of the badge. The tightness of his belt around his stomach, the weight of the handgun at his hip…all were familiar and comforting. He let out an involuntary sigh of pleasure.

Without further ceremony, he sat down at his desk, driving a cloud of dust from the ancient upholstery, pushing aside a cold, scummed cup of coffee, and grabbing the first sheet from the stack of paperwork to the left of the green desk lamp. The heavy, bronze pen was where it should be; grabbing it, he pounded it on the desk to release the point, then turned his attention to the paper in front of him. His eyes found the top column: 

CERTIFICATE FX-8792B: ARREST NOTICE.

The following document is an internal POLICE DOCUMENT. The content is CONFIDENTIAL and not to be shared with others except following submission of an approved, notarized GR-89C document. The BOOKING OFFICER must fill in the following information accurately, double-checking with RECORDS if necessary. The man who is about to–

There was a knock on the glass of his door, muffled by the heavy blinds hanging across from them. Not glancing up, he shouted, as he always did, “ENTER!” and was pleased that his voice had emerged as gruff as ever–the voice that had served him so well on the beat, that still could make interns and trainees flinch and run for cover just like the street punks. Its effects were again evident in the slight, hesitating silence that preceded the opening of the door, gingerly, by Officer Reynolds. Harry smiled with satisfaction. Still scared of me after all these years… 

As Reynolds stepped carefully in the room, his eyes found the desk and moved from it to the figure sitting behind it. His eyes widened in shock as they met Harry’s face and the mouth in his round face gaped open foolishly, revealing mismatched teeth. 

Harry felt a mix of amusement and anger stirring in his chest. Did he not know I was coming back? Reynolds was looking around in confusion, his eyes running nervously around the corkboard, the pictures, the coffee cups…

“Anything wrong, officer?”

Reynolds all but jumped. 

“Um, sir, we have a booking today and–”

“Bring ‘im in.” Harry said curtly, looking back down at the form for effect. When he glanced back up after a moment, Reynolds had visibly steeled himself and was gesturing to the officer behind him. Harry’s face split into a broad grin: coming into the room flanked by two officers, shuffling a little on his lanky legs and with the pinched eyes in his thin, unshaven face downcast, was Harold Jackson. 

Harry put down his pen and sat back, putting a booted foot theatrically on his desk.

“Well, Harold. If this isn’t nostalgic. Back again, are we?”

Harold did not look up. His mouth was hanging open, a small bit of drool escaping, and his sad, dark eyes seemed to be tracing the tiles on the floor. 

Harry smiled even wider. “Well, I’m sure you got nostalgic for your home away from home. What was it this time? Another drug charge? Unregistered handgun? Or something better this time, something that will let me get you off the streets for good?”

Silently, Reynolds handed him a pink sheet of paper. Harry glanced down at it briefly:

GUILTY. FOREVER.

He all but laughed. “You’ll be staying with us for a while, I see. So we’ll just let these nice officers take you away, and I’ll get to the paperwork.”

With a sudden motion that sent the coffee mug rattling away towards the window, he brought his foot back down onto the floor, and sat up straighter than before. He looked directly into Harold’s pinched eyes; then, overcome with emotion, back down at his desk again.

“You know, Harold, this job can be a real bitch sometimes.” His eyes were closed, and he fingered the gun in his holster for comfort. “Having to put up with the fucking little street punks and rats, dealing with the DA, the paperwork, the hours, training, liability…all that bullshit. But the satisfying part, the part that makes it all worthwhile, that does some real good for the world, is getting to take people like you out of society for good, locking up subhuman scum and throwing away the key. Welcome back.”

He opened his eyes to see the look on the punk’s face one more time…

The office was empty, and the door shut.

For a moment, he gaped just like Reynolds, and like Reynolds glanced stupidly around the office. How could…? 

But with a shudder the thought came to him how foolish he must look, how powerless, gaping around the room like a trainee, all but drooling…he pulled himself together and smiled sourly. 

“Kids these days…don’t even have the time to listen to my speeches. Damn Harold. Well, let’s make sure he has a nice long stay…”

He looked around the desk for the document Reynolds had given him; it was gone. He started to bend over to check the floor, but stopped himself again. Can’t be seen climbing over the floor like a janitor. I can fill in the document from memory, and blame it on Reynolds if it isn’t right.

But the arrest notice was gone, too, and after a moment of confusion, he realized it was back at the top of the stack. Must have put it there without thinking while I was gabbing with Harold. He grabbed it with one hand, and the pen with the other, and continued filling in the document. After a moment, he realized that the pen was not writing; the point had retracted (he must have done it absentmindedly while talking). He punched it on the desk angrily and resumed writing on the line that said “ABSENCE OF RESIDENCE.” But the whole document was blank; nothing had been filled in yet. He glanced back up at the heading:

The following document is an internal POLICE DOCUMENT. The contents are CONFIDENTIAL and not to be shared with anyone. The BOOKING OFFICER must fill in the correct information, and only the correct information, as specified in Form DX-12 with RECORDS if necessary. In one moment you will hear–

There was a sharp rap on the door. He looked up suddenly, and after a lengthy silence quietly, and a bit hoarsely, grunted out “ENTER!” 

This time, the door was pushed open more confidently, and Officer Reynolds’ round ruddy face preceded him into the room. 

“Back to bring me that paper, eh? I–” But he was stopped short by the look of astonishment on Reynold’s face. Did the fool already forget…? In his anger, he failed to say anything at all, and after an awkward moment, Reynolds waved an unsteady hand towards him, looking backward nervously as he did so.

“I…uh…sir, we booked…” 

Traipsing in slowly between two officers was Harold Jackson, dragging his feet and all but drooling on the floor. He did not raise his eyes. Harry looked at Reynolds in confusion, but the man was still looking away from him. He turned his eyes toward Harold.

“Found your cell uncomfortable, eh, Harold? Something else I can do for you before we lock you up forever?”

Harold did not respond, and Reynolds was now gaping at him uncomfortably. There was a strange prickle at the back of his neck, he looked down at the document at his desk to buy time. 

“You’ll be staying with us for a while, I see. So we’ll just let these nice officers take you away, and I’ll get to the paperwork.”

There was another awkward silence. Ignoring it, he began writing, talking as he did so from between clenched teeth.

“You know, Harold, this job can be a real bitch sometimes. Having to put up with the fucking little street punks and rats, dealing with the DA, the paperwork, the hours, training, liability…all that bullshit. But the satisfying part, the part that makes it all worthwhile, that does some real good for the world, is getting to take people like you out of society for good, locking up subhuman–”

But something was wrong; he could no longer hear the shuffling of Harold’s feet, or Reynold’s heavy breathing. He looked up sharply. 

The office was empty, the door shut. 

This time, he stared for only a moment. He grabbed for his pen, realized the point had retracted, opened it, and started writing; but the document was gone from the top of his desk. Snatching it from the top of the pile, he started in at the top of the document:

The following document is an internal POLICE DOCUMENT. The contents are CONFIDENTIAL and bring with them a terrible judgment. The BOOKING OFFICER must always remember that the day will come when–

There was a rap at the door. This time, he did not hesitate, but stood up abruptly, sending the coffee mug flying and shouting “ENTER!” in a magnificently booming voice. There was a very long pause before Reynolds entered, gingerly, not looking up until he got to the desk. When he did, there was again an expression of surprise and shock on his face; but Harry had already waved to the officer behind him. “Bring ‘im in!”

In shuffled Harold Jackson between two officers. Racing around the desk, Harry stepped right up to the man, pushing up against his chest, right into his face. Harold flinched away, his eyes widening. Harry could smell the alcohol on his breath, the fear…

Turning around, he snatched the pink document from Reynolds and sat back down. He grabbed his pen and poised it over the paper.

“You’ll be staying with us for a while, I see. So we’ll just let these nice officers take you away, and I’ll get to the paperwork.”

He dropped the pen and laughed.

“You know, Harold, this job can be a real bitch sometimes. Having to put up with the fucking little street punks and rats, dealing with the DA, the paperwork, the hours, training, liability…all that bullshit. But the satisfying part, the part that makes it all worthwhile, that does some real good for the world–”

The room was empty, the door shut. 

He laughed out loud again, more manically this time, grabbed the pen, brought out the point, snatched the document from the top of the pile, and started writing. 

There was a sharp rap at the blinds, and he all but ran to the door, wrenching it open and dragging Reynolds into the room. He barely saw the man’s eyes widen in shock before the tall, lanky form of Harold Jackson filled the doorway, surrounded by two officers. Harry ran to him and drove a sharp fist into his gut, feeling the satisfying rush of air from his lungs, the blood spurting from his mouth, savoring the taste of adrenaline in his own…

He turned around and sat back down at his desk, grabbing the pen once again.

“You’ll be staying with us for a while, I see. So we’ll just let these nice officers take you away, and I’ll get to the paperwork.”

He threw the pen at Harold, who flinched, spitting more blood. Harry laughed loud and long, spinning in his chair, and finally coming to a stop with his face resting on the desk.

“You know, Harold, this job can be a real bitch sometimes. Having–”

The door was shut, the room empty. Before he had time to do anything, the door had opened, and Officer Reynolds had come in, Harold Jackson following close behind him. 

Harry stood up from the desk.

“You know–”

Officer Reynolds was gripping his charge tightly by the forearm, and the two officers behind him crowded in close. The blinds on the office door were drawn, and he could see nothing through them. After hesitating for a second, Reynolds rapped gently on the door; a gruff “ENTER” sounded from within.

Gingerly, almost fearfully, Reynolds entered the room. The officer behind him pushed hard on his shoulder, and Harry followed suit, dragging his feet.

Harold Jackson looked up from the desk, the eyes in his narrow face scanning Reynolds, the officers, and finally coming to rest on Harry Monroe’s face. Harry’s eyes widened in shock, and he started to open his mouth to speak, but Harold cut him off.

“You know, Harold, this job can be a real bitch sometimes.” Harold laughed. “Having to put up with the fucking little street punks and rats, dealing with the DA, the paperwork, the hours, training, liability…all that bullshit. But the satisfying part, the part that makes it all worthwhile, that does some real good for the world, is getting to take people like you out of society for good, locking up subhuman scum and throwing away the key. Welcome back.”

Harry screamed. The officers surrounding him gripped both forearms, pinioning him and marching him out of the office. 

They were in a narrow, dark corridor now, with gray walls that seemed to go on endlessly. A voice–his own–spoke:

“It’s good to be back.”