I’m fairly pleased with myself for having identified the saxophonist on the radio as Jackie Mclean or a Jackie Mclean inspired artist, when it is actually Booker Ervin or a Booker Ervin inspired artist, I am soon to learn; and, not yet realizing my mistake, I ask myself how could I, who “had so much of what I called knowledge — though it wasn’t much — and wasn’t perhaps, what another would call knowledge — or what another who actually knew things would call knowledge — perish? How can a knowledgeable person die (which was not to say an ignorant person should die)?” And I by wondering this am really perhaps no so much self-impressed as I am impressed by knowledge and by how great, and great-feeling, a thing it is to know or think one knows.
I’m soon to learn I’ve totally mixed up these horn players, I have actually confused them with each other for years now; on realizing which, I then think — “yes my error and confusion can perish, and ought to perish. I ought not necessarily perish along with my confusion; in fact, I ought to remain extant, while my confusion perishes, or that would be desirable from my point of view. And it is in fact a good thing that what I call my knowledge, which is actually confusion, may perish without me, which is what learning is…. Is that what death is? Not the death of knowledge but the death of confusion? If I would be a totally unconfused person might I find immortal life? Might I simply die? Might I find I was not I, when I died, which is what I am when I’m unconfused?”
I know, or think I know, that knowledge, deep or shallow, is a projection of a biological organism, or else somehow encoded on it. And we know what happens to what we call “biological things” — they die and along with them, one supposes, everything that is “encoded” on them, their knowledge. But is it really possible the somewhat ornate things encoded in my mind can die? Is it possible I might become so encoded as to be immortal? Perhaps this is the idea behind people with elaborate tattoos: they imagine the flesh can become so encoded as to ward off death and corruption. Nothing that elaborate can perish, might be their idea. Of course, what I seem to be describing here (though I’m not actually sure I’m clear on it) is what is often called the Vanity of Knowledge. Yes, even elaborately knowledgeable people with well-tattooed brains must face disease and injury and poverty and humiliation and death. Yes, they must. We’ve seen it happen. Knowing can’t save you, or save us, from “the way of all flesh.”
So to recap — first: you don’t know what you think know; and second, what you indeed do know won’t save you (where “being saved” and “understanding” are the same) — unless, perhaps, ‘I am not I’ is a thing that can be known and be made sense of.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 