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Forgetting – that is the essence of Fredrich Nietzsche argument within his work Untimely Meditations. “Forgetting,” he asserts, “is the same thing that makes happiness, happiness” (62). While this a radical idea at first glance, it is not one that is uncommon in today’s society. These feelings of wanting to live in the moment have exceeded far beyond Nietzsche’s reach. However, his feelings are much deeper than common societal simplification, asserting, “forgetting is essential to action of any kind, just as, not only light, but darkness, too, is essential for the life of everything organic” (62). Not only is forgetting something you need to find happiness, or to thrive, but it is also needed to survive. He talks of death due to historical thought once more, “there is an idea of… rumination… which is…ultimately fatal to the human thing, whether this living thing be man or people or culture” (62). He asserts that this rumination, or deep thought, is what will ultimately kill us. Thinking on the past will lead to sleeplessness and lack of ability to function to the point that one would become frozen in time, unable to move (62). However, even though Nietzsche talks of ignoring the past, this use of the word “ruminate” brings that idea into question. Being a word with a double meaning, he forces us to think about the true meaning of the word, and thus brings us to a historical moment. This thinking is reinforced all the more, due to Nietzsche’s extended metaphor of happiness and cattle grazing earlier in the work (60). In this context, seeing the word ruminate, which can also refer to chewing cud, or rather, regurgitations, brings us to a relatable historical and vivid moment. Through very clever and almost hidden metaphor, one is able to come to a greater understanding of the dangers of thought. These regurgitations become analogous for intrusive thoughts, or historical moments, which would lead to sleeplessness and the lack of ability to move forward in life and, ultimately, death.
This is the true nature of the work. Untimely Meditations is a written work, and what’s more, a written work that forces one to ruminate and to think deeper than they have before. With its rich and descriptive language, the work becomes more of a narrative instead of a mere philosophical piece. In this relatable style of writing, Nietzsche forces one to remember one’s own life. He forces his reader to become historical, and, in doing so, he more vividly makes his points.
Nietzsche is well aware of this seeming paradox within his work, and moving further within the piece, we see that even though he feels one is capable of living without memory, the health of an individual is determinant upon one’s ability to live in the “unhistorical and historical in equal value” (63). Nietzsche knows the importance history and experience plays on decision-making, learning, intelligence, and even, in the human experience. He didn’t write this work to condemn those things, instead he wrote the work to condemn this seeming circle of thinking that philosophers and all humans find themselves in — this return to intrusive thoughts that give us nothing, just like how the cow’s cud would give us nothing — this is the thought he condemns.
John Darnielle would likely agree with that thought. In his album, The Sunset Tree, Darnielle laments the loss of his father, as well as, his childhood, as a result of that father’s abusive acts within his home. He speaks on multiple occasions throughout the album of how memory forces us to be at a standstill within our own life. This is the most evident in the opening of the “You or Your Memory.” Within the song Darnielle repeats the titular chorus, leading to an internal questioning of historical memory. When one ruminates too long, it asserts, it leads to a blurring image of the past and present, or a “fuzzy reception,” which he also refers to in the song “Dilaudid,” a song that focuses on that same lamentation of intrusive memory.
However, Darnielle doesn’t only lament the flaws of the historical, he also praises the unhistorical. This is seen in the song “Broom People.” In the song, Darnielle refocuses his mind and reiterates Nietzsche’s ideas of happiness singing, “I write down good reasons to freeze to death in my spiral ring notebook, but in the long tresses of your hair I am a babbling brook.” In this, the historical clashes with the unhistorical, leaving us with the conclusion, that the physical present time is more important and vital to happiness than the historical and mental writing of the past. He asserts in this lyric, that the way to continue, to flow or babble like the brook he metaphorically compares himself to, is to live unhistorically. To give yourself over to the mundanity of smelling your significant other’s hair, to be, simply, is how to achieve happiness.
Although, Darnielle is very aware of the true benefits of the unhistorical, which is seen in the previous example, he doesn’t believe the way to achieve that unhistorical living is through complete throwing away of those intrusive thoughts when they appear, or the other Nietzschean alternative of spinning the intrusive memory into something helpful or worthwhile. No, instead, he believes that the true way to remove intrusive thoughts is to delve deeper in them, to find meaning within them, so they can be engrained into a narrative memory, and then forgotten. This is most evident within the song, “Pale Green Things,” which acts as a recollection of the moment he learned of his father’s death, as well as, the last time he saw him. He sings, “that morning…was one thing I remembered. I turned it over in my mind like a living Chinese finger trap.” In this lyric, Darnielle shows how memory can leave you at a standstill, comparing it to a Chinese finger trap, a toy that binds you in place. However, this toy metaphor is where Darnielle and Nietzsche differ. Instead of ignoring the intrusive memory, of spitting out the cud one is ruminating on, Darnielle suggests the best way to deal with intrusive memory is to delve deeper within it, to swallow the cud whole. While it can seem illogical, just as the getting out of a Chinese finger trap does, pushing further into the memory is the only way to begin to forget it. And while Darnielle offers no happy ending, being that the album ends with that final song, Darnielle’s ideas of historical and unhistorical thinking offer a deep and true understanding of Nietzsche’s work.
wayves: Critical Theoretical Inquiry 