On the Ephemerality of Life and the Immortal Nature of Transcendence

Elizabeth Taylor died today, and I can’t shake the feeling that she’s not really dead. After watching several minutes of Giant there is no question that she is as luminous as she ever was, even moreso. When I read Henry Miller it’s as if he’s speaking to me. The Carter Family still sings for me. It seems like they’ve bridged some gap. Those in the arts invest themselves in their craft. After they are gone and their work remains, are they somehow still with us?

Look at this picture.



No, she’s not dead. She’s very alive.

Joseph Campbell said that in all cultures a god is “a symbol of transcendence and mystery.” Is Elizabeth Taylor a goddess? Look at that picture again. She is certainly a symbol of transcendence and mystery, and beauty. Aphrodite incarnate. Is that the reason they call actors and actresses “stars”- because like gods, they reside in the heavens? Should we rename the constellations? Instead of Leo the Lion, perhaps Maggie the Cat?

(The Gemini Twins could become The Shining Twins, but I somehow don’t see that catching on.)

No, let’s take a step back- Elizabeth Taylor is not a goddess. That’s ridiculous. She was flesh-and-blood, “one of us.” That’s a fact, but are facts important?

After watching several minutes of my first Herzog film, Even Dwarfs Started Small, I had to take a break. The world was magic. I took a bike ride and couldn’t get the phrase “a strange ecstasy” out of my mind. It repeated over and over. Later I read that Herzog’s goal with every film was to reveal “an ecstatic truth.” He often succeeds, but how? How can a fictional story reveal some great truth about our experience in the real world?

Jane Goodall once told Campbell about a band of chimpanzees “going bananas” after hearing a huge thunder clap. They all started charging in mock displays of aggression. He recognized their behavior as a basic form of religion- realization of transcendence and mystery (in the form of thunder) as a genesis for ritual behavior. Campbell believes this recognition is the dawn of humanity. (Remember the obelisk in 2001?) The chimps’ god was fictional, but would it lessen their experience to learn that the thunder can be explained scientifically?

Herzog does not believe in the difference between fact and fiction in film. He’s made many documentaries and many fiction films and says he can not tell the difference between them. For documentaries he has staged shots and written dialogue. For fiction films he has cast non-actors as leads and actually drug a boat up over a mountain. These strategies have only added to the power of his films.

In Even Dwarfs Started Small his cast was made up of what would have in times past been called sideshow freaks. They each have their own distinct look. Their bodies are deviations from the norm, but they each possess a strange beauty. I’m not sure that any are presented with a single redeeming quality, and some are monsters- but still each scene possesses transcendence and mystery.

Campbell spoke of some monsters that, although evil, were still sublime. Bukowski comes to mind. Maybe Bukowski was a monster- his poetry, although perfectly capturing all of the foul horridness of the human condition, is still somehow sublime. Like Herzog with film, many of Bukowski’s poems capture some ecstatic truth. Were his poems real, were they factual? Does it matter?

Bukowski was ugly and Elizabeth Taylor was beautiful. They might be facts, but he thought she was the ugliest woman he’d ever seen- the 25-year-old Elizabeth Taylor! An aberration to an aberration I suppose. (History doesn’t record how Elizabeth Taylor felt about Bukowski’s attractiveness… I suppose we can only speculate.) Want to hear Bukowski rant about how ugly Elizabeth Taylor is? Watch this:



Maybe she was a monster. Or maybe Bukowski had a bit too much to drink. Or maybe we’re all monsters. And maybe we’re all sublime. We’re all facts and symbols- our true selves versus the way people see us.

Kachina dancers of the Hopi Indians are both real and not real- the members of the tribe know that the dancer is their buddy in a costume, but the fact doesn’t matter, the symbol matters. The kachina dancer is treated as the god he symbolizes. During the dance they are that god.

I’ve heard Christians say that it doesn’t matter whether Jesus ever existed, what matters is that they follow his example. Exactly, the symbol is important, the fact is meaningless.

Religions fail when they see themselves as fact. They succeed when they acknowledge themselves as symbol. Black Elk, when speaking of a vision he had concerning the Sioux’s defeat of Custer saw himself on the “sacred, central mountain of the world,” referring to Harney Peak in South Dakota, and he added, “but the central mountain is everywhere.” Campbell saw this as a recognition of the symbolic nature of their own myths. They were true to the Sioux, but the myths of other cultures could also be true.

Recognizing their symbolic nature does not make religions false, as many adherents believe. All religions can become true by recognizing the true nature of their essence. Through symbol they satisfy not Christian, Native American or Ancient Greek psychological needs, but rather human psychological needs- answers to the universal questions- “What happened to my friend after he died?,” “What will happen when I die?,” and “How should I live my life?”

Recognizing their symbolic nature also answers the question “Would have I still been a Christian if I was born before Jesus's time on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean?” In fact, no. In symbol, yes- because what Jesus symbolizes pre-dates Christianity, and transcends culture.

Many religions’ fear of becoming extinct causes them to cling to facts. Ironically, their facts prohibit them from adapting- and that which doesn’t adapt, dies. A Christianity that recognizes the Bible as a symbol is the only one that can survive. (This leaves room for debate on whether it should survive.)

Of course, in the past I’ve completely underestimated humanity’s power for accepting cognitive dissonance. We can’t avert our eyes when looking at the similar archetypes that run through all cultures, can we?

Herzog has said “the poet can not avert his eyes” when one has the urge to turn away from current pop culture. He continued “This is why I watch the Anna Nicole Smith Show.” I used this quote recently as a challenge for a friend to watch Rebecca Black’s video “Friday.” The challenge was denied. The reason offered was- “No man can live up to the words of Herzog, so I'll accept no challenge. You speak of a demigod.”



A demigod? I agreed. Then someone said- “For a man with no religion, Ben sure has a lot of gods.” I suppose I do. There are many who I see as symbols of transcendence and mystery. Are they gods? Yes, if that’s your definition. Are they people? Yes, in fact.

Am I an atheist? If the question is whether God is a fact, then yes, I’m an atheist. If the question is whether God is a symbol, then nobody is. Watch this:



“Wow,” is right. Was I just hit by Zeus’s lightning bolt?

What symbolizes me? I’m somewhat renowned among my friends for my list of 600 favorite films. I recently whittled it back down to 100, and I know that when I die someone could watch those films and have a pretty good idea of who I was. The life that art reflects is the same life I see in myself, and the same life all of us have in ourselves.

Herzog is the reality, his films are the symbol of him, and they will live on after he’s gone- the way the films lived on for Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and the rest. Those men are still here with us- not their consciousness, but their essence. By sharing their essense they helped us recognize those same qualities in ourselves.

What does it mean to be human? To recognize transcendence. What does it mean to be a god? To transcend. An Onion headline today read “Gorgeous 25-Year-Old Dead at 79.” That says it all.