October 3, 2005--James Dean and The Anxiety of Meaninglessness
It was 1994 and I was in Memphis on business. We had just completed breakfast at the Four Way Grill. Eggs and Sausage and Biscuits about as good as it gets, when someone mentioned that this was one of Elvis’ favorite all-night places, not that far from Graceland. Not that far geographically that is, but as far as imaginable in other ways. Memphis was and is a segregated town and the fact that Elvis would come downtown to the Four Way at 2:00 a.m. said a whole lot about both his roots and popularity.
So we drove over to Graceland. There is a great deal there to be struck by, but above all for me was what was happening at the wall that surrounded his house. Hundreds of Elvis fans were standing there in the drizzle touching that wall as if they were touching him. And inserting little rolled up notes into the spaces between the stones. I couldn’t resist reading a few, all seeking something from The King—luck in love, good fortune, and healing—physical and spiritual healing. I had not witnessed anything quite like that since visiting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. It felt as if this was already a holy shrine, just 17 years after Elvis’ death.
Reading in the NY Times about the 50th anniversary of James Dean’s death, I was reminded of that rainy day at Graceland.
At precisely the same time and day (5:45 p.m. on September 30th), a few hundred gathered at the exact spot in Cholame, California where James Dean was killed in a car wreck in 1955. There were to be sure some from Dean’s generation, now in their sixties. But a surprising number were much younger, whose post-Sixties opportunities to be transgressively rebellious would make Dean’s 1950’s version of moody sulking and mumbling seem tame. But there they were, exchanging stories about how Dean’s ghost haunts the hills and sharing legends about how the remains of his car disappeared under mysterious circumstances from a police convention where it was on display in 1960. On display??
In pondering the scene of pilgrimage at Graceland and the spiritual powers palpable in Cholame, I was reminded of Eric Fromm’s writing about what he called “the anxiety of meaningless.” Something experienced by all peoples throughout all of history, and still very pervasive today, in spite of, or perhaps because of, all our advances. It is then perhaps in the apparent meaninglessness of deaths such as James Dean's that so many struggle to find the opposite—meaning.
As someone at the site said the other day, “Such a life is not suddenly wiped out in the wreckage of a car.” No matter where that actually wreckage is (perhaps we can find it on eBay), it, the wreckage, and his death are full of meaning. Even if we have to make it so.
So we drove over to Graceland. There is a great deal there to be struck by, but above all for me was what was happening at the wall that surrounded his house. Hundreds of Elvis fans were standing there in the drizzle touching that wall as if they were touching him. And inserting little rolled up notes into the spaces between the stones. I couldn’t resist reading a few, all seeking something from The King—luck in love, good fortune, and healing—physical and spiritual healing. I had not witnessed anything quite like that since visiting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. It felt as if this was already a holy shrine, just 17 years after Elvis’ death.
Reading in the NY Times about the 50th anniversary of James Dean’s death, I was reminded of that rainy day at Graceland.
At precisely the same time and day (5:45 p.m. on September 30th), a few hundred gathered at the exact spot in Cholame, California where James Dean was killed in a car wreck in 1955. There were to be sure some from Dean’s generation, now in their sixties. But a surprising number were much younger, whose post-Sixties opportunities to be transgressively rebellious would make Dean’s 1950’s version of moody sulking and mumbling seem tame. But there they were, exchanging stories about how Dean’s ghost haunts the hills and sharing legends about how the remains of his car disappeared under mysterious circumstances from a police convention where it was on display in 1960. On display??
In pondering the scene of pilgrimage at Graceland and the spiritual powers palpable in Cholame, I was reminded of Eric Fromm’s writing about what he called “the anxiety of meaningless.” Something experienced by all peoples throughout all of history, and still very pervasive today, in spite of, or perhaps because of, all our advances. It is then perhaps in the apparent meaninglessness of deaths such as James Dean's that so many struggle to find the opposite—meaning.
As someone at the site said the other day, “Such a life is not suddenly wiped out in the wreckage of a car.” No matter where that actually wreckage is (perhaps we can find it on eBay), it, the wreckage, and his death are full of meaning. Even if we have to make it so.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:21 AM
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