I first heard this song in June of 1992, played on a boom box, at my favorite cousin's best friends' funeral for their only son, who died at the same age as Eric Clapton's son Conor (Clapton's only son, too).
Two weeks later, my beloved cousin Jack died suddenly and unexpectedly — massive heart attack at the age of 49, and I was the first notified. I was the one who had to break the news to Jack's daughter and mother. I heard an instrumental version this song once again at Jack's funeral.
The story behind "Tears In Heaven," written as part of a father's grieving process:
"Tears in Heaven" is a ballad written by Eric Clapton and Will Jennings about the pain Clapton felt following the death of his four-year-old son, Conor, who fell from a window of the 53rd-floor New York apartment of his mother's friend, on March 20, 1991. Clapton...arrived at the apartment shortly after the accident....
Irony: Eric Clapton had been sober for several years when his son died.
[video: The whole story of Conor Clapton]
I'm in a sad mood, lately, as I've been thinking of all my personal losses, March 2020-March 2021. Thankfully, it's April now.
ReplyDeleteSlavoj Zizek, "Why does a Letter always arrive at its Destination?"
DeleteWhy, indeed? Why could it not — sometimes, at least — also fail to reach it? Far from attesting a refined theoretical sensitivity, this Derridean reaction to the famous closing statement of Lacan’s “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’ ” rather exhibits what we could call a primordial response of common sense: what if a letter does not reach its destination? Isn't it always possible for a letter to go astray? If, however, the Lacanian theory insists categorically that a letter always arrives at its destination, it is not because of an unshakable belief in teleology, in the power of a message to reach its pre-ordained goal: Lacan’s exposition of the way a letter arrives at its destination lays bare the very mechanism of teleological illusion. In other words, the very reproach that a letter can also miss its destination misses its own destination — specially when we have the limit-case of a letter without addressee, of what is called in German Flaschenpost, a message in a bottle thrown in the sea from an island after a shipwreck. This case displays in its purest and clearest how a letter reaches its true destination the moment it is delivered — its true addressee is not the empirical other who may receive it or not, but the big Other, the Symbolic Order itself, which receives it the moment the letter is put into circulation, i.e., the moment the sender externalizes his message, delivers it to the Other, the moment the Other takes cognizance of the letter, and thus disburdens the sender of responsibility for it. How then, specifically, does a letter arrive at its destination? How should we conceive this thesis of Lacan which usually serves as a crowning piece of evidence for his alleged logocentrism? The proposition a letter always arrives at its destination is far from being univocal: it offers itself to a series of possible readings, which could be ordered by means of a reference to the triad Imaginary — Symbolic — Real.
...or Father - Son - Holy Spirit. Send a letter/ prayer. It's what I do. I'll always get there.
erratum - "It'll" for "I'll" above.
DeleteThe Aaronic Blessing
ReplyDelete22-23 God spoke to Moses: “Tell Aaron and his sons, This is how you are to bless the People of Israel. Say to them,
24 God bless you and keep you,
25 God smile on you and gift you,
26 God look you full in the face
and make you prosper.
God bless you AOW.
Thank you, my friend.
DeleteMusic is what get me through the rough patches.... this too shall pass.... :)
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot to be said for the reveries induced by both music and poetry.... a "creative pause" that lift the wheels of our minds out of their deterministic ruts of logic of the moment, and drop us gently upon fresh ground. :)
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