It is simply in our power to do this: The Lion's Mouth Opens
It is simply in our power to do this: The Lion's Mouth Opens
November 23, 2017
Earlier today I finished a personal statement for a fellowship application with aspirations about what I'll do as a professor and just over the weekend was the anniversary of my grandmother's death. I don't bring it up because it was the most important thing to ever happen to me. Maybe it's just that it almost happened in slow motion as the scales tipped closer and closer to the inevitability of death until I was already getting ready to buy Amtrak tickets to get home so I could see her one last time and, well, I missed it. Something about this really twists things around for me and I don't quite know why, but watching Lucy Parker and Marianna Palka's film, The Lion's Mouth Opens [x] made me reflect again on it.
The documentary, in a brisk 28 minutes, follows a brief glimpse into Palka's life: a dinner among her closest friends and a trip to the doctor's office to get her test results, interspersed with home video footage of her father and childhood. Her father, her sisters, and many of her relatives have all been diagnosed with Huntington's Disease and, suffice to say, to have it, is most certainly to die from it, sooner rather than later.
The film is named after a line from a poem that Bob Dylan wrote as a eulogy for Woody Guthrie after he died from Huntington's Disease in 1967,
And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking
In this air I'm inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin'
In the words that I'm thinkin'
In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they're around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
"Cause sometimes you hear'em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin'
And you can't remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming [x]
Perhaps the irony of having depression for so long is there was a much darker time in my life when I couldn't imagine living past 30 or 35 and here I am now at 22 imagining how sad it would be to have only 13 more years to live. Come to think of it, I haven't made a single plan recently that doesn't assume I'll be alive for another 20 or 30, that I won't be able to graduate with a Ph.D., get married, live somewhere pleasant, foster a dog or cat, re-learn Bass and join a band at my mid-life crisis, maybe even have a kid or two. Maybe the crisis is it forces me to think about what I would do if I'm supposed to be having a mid life crisis right now, what I would do if I was supposed to have started it before I even graduated from college?
I don't have an answer to any of this, and I think I'll be thinking on it into the foreseeable future, but I just wanted to put this out there, symbolic ink to electro-magnetic paper. Maybe all it means is that I've come a long way in my journey and still have much farther to go. Maybe it means I should hold tighter to the people that matter to me, as there's no telling when our last meeting will be our final one. And maybe it means there's something about hope that even death can't kill.
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown [x]