"The Eyes Are Last To Go Out..."

Beginning a new cycle of cards on a somber note may seem like an unnecessary downer, but it almost can't be helped -- midwinter brings such moments upon us with stunning regularity. Besides, more than a handful of people close to me are going through break-ups or grieving lost loved ones right now, and it has been a mighty influence on me. Perhaps beginning with Death will inspire me to move forward in the new work and not look unnecessarily backward.

From the very first note it's clear why Antony and the Johnsons' new album is called "The Crying Light." It requires so little imagination to imagine Antony's singing (an acquired taste for many) as sobbing, especially during his tribute to his mother, Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground, in which he sings, "Her eyes are basking in the sun/ No one knows why she did the things she’s done/ Ocean, swallow me now." The rest of the album is equally elegiac, often soaring back and forth between euphoria and catatonia within the same song; in Epilepsy Is Dancing, Antony seems to be begging as he croons, "Cut me in quadrants/ leave me in the corner."

The title of that first song gave me a jolt the first time I saw it. Not an hour before, I'd been reading a poem by Tennessee Williams called "The Eyes," from his 1964 collection In the Winter of Cities. Here it is:

The eyes are last to go out.
They remain long after the face has disappeared regretfully
..........into the tissue that it is made of.
The tongue says good-by when the eyes have a lingering
..........silence,
for they are the searchers last to abandon the search,
the ones that remain where the drowned have been washed
..........ashore,
after the lanterns staying, not saying good-by...

The eyes have no faith in that too accessible language.
For them no occasion is simple enough for a word to justify it.
Existence in time, not only their own but ancestral,
encloses all moments in four walls of mirrors.

Closed, they are waiting. Open, they're also waiting.
They are acquainted,
but they have forgotten the name of their acquaintence.
Youth is their uneasy bird, and shadows clearer than light
pass through them at all times,
for waters are not more changeable under skies
nor stones under rapids.

The eyes may be steady with that Athenian look
that answers terror with stillness, or they may be quick
with a purely infatuate being. Almost always
the eyes hold onto an image
of someone recently departed or gone a long time ago
or only expected...

The eyes are not lucky.
The seem to be hopelessly inclined to linger.

They make additions that come to no final sum.
It is really hard to say if their dark is worse than their light,
their discoveries better or worse than not knowing.

but they are last to go out,
and their going out is always when they are lifted.


This poem seems to be illustrated beautifully by The Crying Light's cover, a portrait of Kazuo Ohno, a famous Japanese Butoh dancer. While most dancers consider themselves to be washed up once their body begins to show signs of age, Kazuo would say that they are just beginning to discover the human body's potential for expression. Over a hundred years old and now mostly confined to a wheelchair, Kazuo's physical transformation could hardly be called a decline -- it's an evolution, one that puts us face-to-face with how we experience the loss of our selves. This description of his later performances has given me a lot to consider lately, about the extent to which our life is bound up in our death, and vice versa:

"Kazuo Ohno has continued dancing as if he was nourished by his age. When he could not walk by himself, he danced with the supports by others.When he could not stand even with the supports, he danced as he seated himself. When his legs didn't move as he wanted, he danced with his hands. When he lost himself, he crawled on his knees and audience were so moved by watching his back."

Previously on Arcanalogue...