Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

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Song 7 | Aug 09 2003

So a friend made a compilation CD for me and I’ve been listening to exactly one song a day and more or less writing about that experience but not really. (Yes, one song a day: I have tons of self-control; and by the way, today’s song, Je Ne Respire Plus, Milos by Domnique A, was intense and excellent.) Probably you already knew. But what you didn’t know is that this same friend recently received a rather weird and scary email.

My friend doesn’t know Stanley Dougler of Boise, ID. When she forwarded the email to me, I wrote back that if there is a nuclear war this month, which fuck knows could happen, the first thing she and I will think of will be Stanley Dougler of Boise, ID. Now you will too.

It was meant as a joke (or something resembling a joke), but then today I wondered what I’d do if I believed what Stanley Dougler believes. It seemed a good question, a revealing question, but as it turns out I couldn’t imagine believing such a thing. No vision, however vivid and apocalyptic, is going to convince me to send emails to strangers, or whatever I’d do as a result of such a belief. So I gave up on that and instead considered a related question, one others have pondered, and still others have faced in real life, a question I could at least project myself into believing, that is, believing I might one day be forced to answer: What would I do if given a month to live?

My response was immediate and certain, but before I say what it was, I’d like to mention what my friend Eva said. She said she’d spend the first two weeks writing her life story, a book called Things I Noticed On My Way Through. We were in Starbucks when she said this, and she was drinking a double tall mocha.

“Why not write it now?” I asked.

“Lack of discipline.”

“A death sentence would give you discipline?”

“I already have a death sentence and I’m not writing anything.”

“So why would a more specific death sentence change anything?

“The illusion of immortality. All day long we live with the expectation to live. We know on some level we’re going to die, but we don’t expect it to be today or tomorrow. If I knew I had a month, I’d write.”

The sad thing is that this is probably true: Eva would write if given a month to live. One reason this is sad is that Eva can really write. The other reason is that in lieu of a such a sentence, it’s doubtful Eva will ever write. So Eva needs a tragedy (albeit an unlikely tragedy) to do the one thing (this is what she said) she really wants to do.

My lot is similar, I suppose, not that I would ever dream of writing at such a time. I’ve written too much already, and anyway the thought of spending that month alone in front of a computer seems insane. Instead I’d post a thank you on this site, either mention my illness or not, and close up shop. Then I’d be with the people I love. That was my first and only thought. I’d visit friends around the country, exclaim my love for them all, get drunk a lot, cry buckets, possibly sleep with a certain ex-girlfriend, and consume a lot more coffee than I do now, no longer needing to fear developing a more serious habit.

Also, silly but true, if I listened to my friend’s CD again—I mean the compilation containing Je Ne Respire Plus, Milos by Domnique A (which by the way translates, according to Google’s hokey translation service, as I Do Not Breathe Anymore, Milos)—I would listen to all nineteen songs in one go and forget this exactly-one-song-per-day bullshit. Life is too short.