Tip-Off #147 - Making Sense
"Growth: to be the deeply defeated/ by ever greater forces." - Rilke. [1]
In Sweden, death cleaning, called döstädning, is popular. It involves clearing out unnecessary belongings, so others are not left with the task, simplifying life while you can.
Nietzsche devoted his life to another kind of death cleaning: clearing out unnecessary beliefs that clutter our lives, a task our predecessors left us to do. He declared that "God is dead"—not to proclaim his atheism but ours, that of society as a whole. Knowing that telling the truth can sound crazy—a reality mirrored in his own life—Nietzsche delivered this proclamation through a "madman" who ran around shouting the news. (The Gay Science)
With crazy magic, the "Magician of Magicians," Derek Delgaudio, engages rapt audiences in another kind of death cleaning. In his acclaimed off-Broadway performance "In and Of Itself," he clears out errors of perception and shows how illusion is what counts. This isn't pop Buddhism but more like a cold shower or what Nietzsche called "severe self-love." Delgaudio calls the tricks of his magic tricks of the truth that can turn questions into the best answers. He inverts the tropes of identity and illusion, transforming sentimentality into self-reflection and eye-rolls into insights.
Whether you've seen the performance, the questions raised have independent value. The show inspires two examples, which do not appear in the script.
First is Joni Mitchell, the icon of artistic integrity, telling the truth in one of her most popular songs. At 80, she sang "Both Sides Now" at the Newport Folk Festival. The hit's lyrics conclude: "I've looked at life from both sides now, from win and lose, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all."
Mitchell is celebrated as a profound lyricist known for her wisdom. Now that she is older, she could have sung, "It's life's elusions, I recall, I really do know life after all." In the ancient fable of the blind monks and the elephant, the elephant's existence was not in doubt. It was no illusion. The truth, however, was elusive and difficult to grasp. It was hard to hold onto.
Each monk mistook the part they touched for the whole, like thinking the trunk was the truth. Similarly, we are deceived when, for example, thinking we know better, we act as though being right means others are wrong, conflict means we can't get along, or good faith means not doubting it. Or, more broadly, when we think the best way to tell the truth is to be honest, as though we can't be honestly wrong, tricked by the best intentions. How much trouble, from hurt feelings to global conflict, could be reduced if we remembered how easily we can become the biggest fool?
Secondly, individually, we wear many masks: parents, partners, friends, colleagues, believers, doubters, at once liberal and conservative, happy and sad. We are individually plural—a committee of selves, often at odds with ourselves. "One must be a saint to have infernal relations." [3] Who chairs the meeting? And if we all wear masks, how much is true about anyone, including ourselves? We often look for what is hidden by what we see.
"Certitude is an illusion." Even the plainest sense of ourselves has to be imagined. A poet describes trees by a pond: "The plain sense of trees, without reflections, leaves, mud, water like dirty glass, expresses silence." A world devoid of illusion would otherwise remain hidden, overlooked, and silent. Claude Monet was grateful for his blurred vision. He refused an operation. "Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms."
Rilke describes feeling "deeply defeated by ever greater forces." The issue is not getting rid of illusions but making room for greater illusions, loosening the grip of forces that have kept us down. Death cleaning is also a figure for life cleaning—reclaiming parts of ourselves lost in the clutter of everything else.
This might mean simply pursuing a long-standing passion or hobby. It could involve re-establishing contact with an estranged family member, taking a chance on a career that better aligns with personal values, or finding a more suitable place to live. It may mean giving up to-do lists and recognizing the difference between urgency and importance. Perhaps it means reading Ulysses or Thomas Pynchon after all—or giving up on that sort of thing.
Döstädning could also mean something else entirely: clearing out the fear of failure—learning the magic of wrong notes, as one jazz great put it. Without them, there’s nothing to play.
[1] Growth: “to be the deeply defeated/ by ever greater forces." - Rainer Maria Rilke, last line in "The Man Watching (II).” Note: Not “to be deeply defeated” but “to be the deeply defeated”: given identity. Rilke alludes to Genesis 32:22-32, where Jacob wrestles with an angel, awakening with a limp yet stronger, with a more profound sense of purpose and a new name (“Israel”).
“Monet Refuses The Operation” - Lisel Mueller, Pulitzer-Winning poet. Her themes included language, nature, and history, including her flight from Nazi Germany.
Derek Delgaudio - "In and Of Itself" - Funded in part by Stephen Colbert and promoted by Bill Gates. Trailer YouTube/Hulu 2:13. - Full performance Reddit 1:30:23 - free. DelGaudio gave this to Reddit to feature at no cost: he got upset with Disney Plus for removing it from its international platform without consultation.
Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now (Live at the Newport Folk Festival 2022) [Official Video]
Notes and reading
[2] The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning - Margareta Magnusson (2020). Magnusson is an artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries from Hong Kong to Singapore. She lives in Stockholm—has five children, and has a sense of humor.
[3] “One must be a saint to have infernal relations.” - Carl Jung, quoted by Sue Mehrtens, Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences, in her article “The Bi-Polarity of Human Nature.” - “When Jung wrote that one quality of human nature is bipolarity, he was not referring to a form of mental illness.”
"The Magician Who Wants to Break Magic: Derek DelGaudio takes illusionism to new conceptual heights." - The New York Times Magazine.
Mark Twain - "You can't depend on your eyes..." - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (2017), "The Battle of the Sand Belt" - Chapter XLIII.
Wallace Stevens - "The Plain Sense of Things" - a poem by Wallace Stevens, first published posthumously in his 1954 collection The Collected Poems.
"There are no wrong notes" is widely attributed to Thelonious Monk, American jazz pianist and composer and associated with Monk's approach to improvisation and music theory.
Our experience of consciousness can atrophy through habit, limiting our sense of possibility. "When the investigations of the magician and the artist render the universe enchanting, they seem to me to be guided by a feeling of new-found freedom." - Rene Magritte, prominent Surrealist artist who developed a unique style that emphasized the mystery of ordinary objects. Selected Writings (2016), 175.
About 2 + 2 = 5: https://williamgreen.substack.com/about - revised