Obligations of the Harp. Arthur Saltzman
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cannot properly designate us. Although they are less flattering, subtler characteristics may home in our identity better . . . once we realize the right Latin-activated phrase for them. We humans root for the Raiders, hail taxis, shop for shoes, use the latrine, and alter our wills, any one of which sets us apart from all who, if we buy the Tree of Life concept, are forever mired in the flora they adorn. Maybe we’ve been especially hard-wired for wonder or for worry—both proposals compel and could sustain lobbies. We feel remorseful and ashamed; we pine and we pray. In these ways and countless others, we will not be subsumed.
One zoologist I heard being interviewed on NPR—yes, subscribing to public radio is another candidate for distinguishing people—contended that monogamy is the signature perversity of our species. By comparison, flight is less startling, mutation from a larval stage less sensational, urinating to certify one’s property and committing suicide less peculiar. A sea urchin’s busy cilia, a western banded gecko’s detachable tail, a glass fish’s transparency, an oyster’s variable foot, a mother pelican’s washing down its fledglings’ dinner with her own blood—none of these raises an eyebrow anywhere in the animal kingdom the way our wedding vows do. Even the other members of our genus find the exclusivity of bride and groom peculiar. Research proves that even cannibalism is more typical than allowing the same presence to make the same depression forever in the same bed and, under extreme circumstances, more practical as well.
Or perchance by our neuroses you may know us. Doctor Seuss tells the story of a bear, a rabbit, and a worm competing for bragging rights. The bear could smell the subtlest odor at a remarkable distance; the rabbit could hear a sound just as faint and far away; but the worm defeated the other animals with his amazing vision. In a memorable illustration, he launched his eyesight beyond the horizon, over the curve of the Earth, and all the way around the globe until he was able to see himself from behind. One of the good doctor’s reliable delights was designing beings that embodied obsessions just this side of what even children recognize as our own. The worm’s ambushing himself with self-regard may not be one of Doctor Seuss’s most fantastic inventions, but it is definitely one that profoundly implicates his readers.
As if by reflex, we believe that Nature is as abuzz with us as we are consumed with ourselves. If not Seuss’s conceited annelid, the hero of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols,” who is convinced that he is shadowed and colluded over by everything else in nature, may serve as the mascot of our species. “Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees.” But if this “referential maniac” is paranoid, his disease has reach. To be sure, ever since the self invented “the self” (arguably around the time Renaissance painters made faces to crowd out the landscape and intercept the sky, possibly as early as early man first clutched his own chest in his death throes), we have been installing more mirrors than windows, until today there are more personal websites than persons to warrant them.
And no websites see our penchants better than those continuous visual diaries whose subjects so effectively surround themselves with surveillance equipment that they are under inspection twenty-four hours a day. Evidently, rather than feel orphaned for a single unattended moment, they encourage Big Brother to adopt them. To be is to be perceived, they reason, and it does not appear to matter whether the agent of that perception is an angel touching the shoulder or a stranger casing the shower. “See me,” they say, which is, after all, the aim of every input, as well as every petrified vestige and artifact, every claw print and songline. It would take a model coterminous with the world to guarantee it. If the perpetually Web-cast are correct, an inadvertently tripped switch could snuff out a species; a computer virus could trigger a catastrophe on the order of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. While it is not the exclusive fate of human beings to suffer that or any other fatality, it is their exclusive fate to realize it.
In order to inspire its patrons to increase their endowments, the board of directors for the San Diego Zoo came up with a novel idea: an art sale. Specifically, they decided to sell the works of the zoo creatures themselves, thereby enabling them to help earn their keep. Paws and pelts, muzzles and tails were loaded with paint, and in an orgy of aleatory technique, the animals scored, strafed, swatted, stamped, mauled, or bellied about their canvases. It was all in good fun and for a good cause, and there was no question of alerting the ASPCA. Those creatures that could not be induced to use this medium still contributed: a shark-bitten steel rod, a hornbill’s shed feathers, and the castings of a python, for example, were combined in a glass tray to constitute a collage that went for a thousand dollars. The canvases were cajoled from the cages of the artists, framed, and auctioned off at prices that, while they wouldn’t have impressed Sotheby’s, nevertheless earned a considerable sum for the zoo.
One of the canvases in particular bears noting because it was the only one from the exhibit that was not abstract. A Silver Back gorilla produced a piece of admittedly minimalist but nonetheless representational art. He had taken a brush and painted a series of parallel vertical lines. Critics debated its significance, as critics are wont to do. (It is characteristic of the species.) Some suggested that he had depicted an insistent rain. Others thought that the lines of descent indicated a race history. A few said that he had merely painted the bars of his cell.
“See me,” they said.
Do not despair: all the data and excavations agree that life is a project. Do not presume, either. As Gould explains, “For all practical purposes, we’re not evolving. There’s no reason to think we’re going to get bigger brains or smaller toes or whatever—we are what we are.” As well as all we’ll ever be. We as a species may feel like a rough copy—we still have cancer, a cramped birth canal, and a number of atavisms to work out—but we’re what Nature has submitted as a final draft.
We are stuck in our cells. We paint the bars. See us?
So where did we leave off? Once upon a time, two ape-like contingencies, while trudging toward eternity, parted ways. One made its way into oblivion quickly, as “quickly” is understood against epochs. The other began a fifty-million-year game of evolutionary telephone, with each generation speaking its genetic message to the next, who did not exactly understand it but passed it on, until it ended up in a botch of modern consciousness. And if it happened anything like that, the phenomenon left us wanting, and what’s worse, knowing that we are wanting and what’s worse. And that is that the race will have run its course, to trace that figure as far as it, and we, can go. Then may we be inscribed for a blessing in the Book of Life, as we say in my religion. It is one more abiding model, in whose infinite index all may be ordered, familiar, and found.
2 Get Up and Get Away
It may not be the most often quoted or sighed-over scene in Casablanca, but I propose that the one that has proved the most prescient features an elderly couple who have come to Rick’s Café Americain to celebrate their impending departure for America. They ask Karl, the maitre d’ (played so indelibly by the cream-centered S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall), to join them in a toast to their future. (Anticipating their invitation, Karl has brought out the good brandy.) Having agreed to speak nothing but English so that they will feel at home when they arrive, they proceed to demonstrate their command of American idioms:
“Liebchin, er, sweetness heart, what watch?”
“Ten watch.”
“Such watch!”
Karl buttons the scene with the following verdict: “You will get along beautifully in America.”
Let me suggest that what makes this interchange important, beyond the comic relief, which in the context of the film had become as precious and rare as exit visas under the German occupation, is the unintentional recognition of the American emphasis on time. Karl is right: American prosperity was and continues to be characterized, guaranteed, and rewarded by time management. If they plan to live in this country, they will need to master that priority. American bustle is conducted in the shadow of the clock, whose hands threaten to swipe fatally down upon us like Poe’s pendulum. Or, as Pablo