“Life and Death is the Same Thing”

Year 1928. An all-girl band called “The Ingenues” plays “Shakin’ the Blues Away”.

Christ, when I watch this video, listen to this music, I want to jump up and dance! I want to sing! I want to smile and laugh. I feel like I just woke up… and feel so happy that I’m awake!

Then, when I watch the closer camera shots on these smiling faces, I can’t help but wonder what happened to each of these ladies. How their lives went. Who they married, who they bore (if at all). What came after that. How they left this world. If they often thought of this moment that we’re watching now.

Most of them are gone now. I don’t know why I’m surprised that they don’t seem aware of the fact — that they’d be gone one day, looked at from afar like zoo animals by later generations.

Some of them look directly at the camera, singing and smiling to us. Of course they weren’t thinking of the moment when they’d no longer be here. No one who’s living really does. Just as we, the temporarily living, don’t either.

So that raises the question: in this day of internet, where images can last forever, who is alive and who is dead? Do any of us really die?

They might not hear us, but we hear them. They’re speaking directly to us, right in our faces! They’re smiling at us! (Gulp) They’re pulling us toward them!

It’s comforting somehow to remember the words of my Indian teacher: “Life and death is the same thing.” And there’s nothing like the internet to demonstrate this concept so clearly to the occidental minds.

“What is the purpose your birth?” I don’t know that.

“Where do we go when we die?” Well, that I can answer.

YouTube.

(Hat tip to Beau Bahan.)