The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a film that always reminds me of my own losses and pain and the need to keep going, keep creating, and not let up despite the pain, distractions, and whatever else comes along to try to mess up my universe.

I'm drawn toward those kinds of themes. Stay sharp, lose sleep, keep burning. Time is short and distractions eat away at me — even the distractions I choose.

My friend Cole read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in an undergraduate English course at Ball State. He and I worked at the campus newspaper approximately 24/7, and one day he came in with this book, raving about how the author managed to complete the project:

"He wrote a book — with his EYE!"

I actually read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a year or two later in a creative nonfiction workshop, which was the perfect class for in-depth analysis of Jean-Dominique Bauby's story.

This may shock you, but I keep everything, so I dug up my reaction paper on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tonight, and thought I'd share some excerpts.

Here's what I wrote in 2003, with minor edits for clarity:

"Regarding Bauby’s title, I’d guess his choice depended on the two poles of consciousness he encountered after suffering his stroke. He spoke in the prologue of the great diving bell which confines him, but he spoke later about 'listening to the butterflies that flutter inside my head.' Depending on his feelings, he could be confined one day, but released to wander the wind on another via his imagination and memories, which in addition to abundant time to think are all that he has left.

Nothing particularly deep there, but at least I understood the story. Some more:

"The chapter I found the most revealing is 'Our Very Own Madonna,' when Bauby takes the reader on a trip with his wife, Josephine. Bauby and his wife are having problems, and throughout the trip, Bauby engrosses himself in a book instead of paying attention to Josephine. By the end, the tension culminates in Bauby telling Josephine that he’d like to split up, and later finding a creative love note from Josephine written on the inside of the book that so enraptured [him]. This chapter more than any denotes a kind of loving relationship and a kind of attitude that Bauby may not have been able to carry on his own. With Josephine, hoping is easier.

Reading over this again, I'm realizing just how different the movie seemed tonight. Wasn't the Madonna bit with an old flame, not his wife? Wait, was Bauby married twice? This is what I get for playing with my iPhone during the movie.

Finally:

"I was astounded at how little self-pity [Bauby] seemed to put to paper. Whether he felt it or not, this text does not show it. I was compelled to pity him anyway, and though this is probably not what an author of this ambition would want, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him as he told about the noisy halls and the sun that shone into his eyes when he forgot to signal to have the curtains drawn."

This resonates with me even today, especially when I consider that I wrote this paper during the darkest period of my life, when I'd lost three grandparents, the family dog, and a friend from high school in the space of 9 months. Every time the phone rang, I didn't want to answer. I still hate answering the phone.

When my wife and I rented this film originally, I thought director Julian Schnabel had overdone the white-flashy editing and point-of-view/shaky camera/hand-cranky/video layering conventions, which worked more to distract me and make me aware of the film rather than allowing full immersion into Bauby's story. I got frustrated then, not because of the limited point of view, but because in my anger, I felt as if Schnabel were trying to induce a seizure rather than tell a story.

I still feel that way somewhat — these conventions are more interesting on repeat viewings, but I'm still distracted and constantly aware that I'm watching a film, and as such, I'm unable to fully let go and allow this film to work. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is visceral and rather hard to watch (I'll allow that locked-in syndrome is worse), but in the end, the film is a gratifying experience, equally sad and hopeful, in no small part because of the excellent soundtrack, which I probably focused on because the visuals were so difficult for me.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly holds an interesting distinction: This is the only film that I will watch just for the closing credits, which consist of a simple montage set to a song called "Ramshackle Day Parade" by the late Joe Strummer, from his posthumous album Streetcore.

Strummer died in 2002, about 6 weeks before I wrote the excerpts above. Streetcore followed in October 2003, shortly after I lost my grandmother and during a period when my grandfather was on his deathbed with liver cancer. I was also in my late twenties at the time, contemplating my own mortality as people of a certain disposition tend to do.

Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon also died around this same time, and their music, as well as Strummer's (especially "Ramshackle Day Parade"), inadvertently provided a soundtrack for the worst period of my life, and still take me back to that place when I want to go (and surprisingly, I often do). Somehow, revisiting old pain helps me make sense of all the loss, and why so much sadness was concentrated on me between August 2003 and May 2004. I was surrounded by death.

This was my last year of graduate school, when I was attempting to finish two master's degrees at the same time. I suppose I could've crumbled, dropped out, flunked out, turned to drinking, whatever, but I just kept thinking about how proud my grandma was of me and how I wanted to make her happy, wherever she was. I now see that as an obvious coping mechanism to help me overcome the guilt of not talking to her much for the last few years of her life. (Don't judge — that's a whole other story.)

I buckled down, put all the death aside (read: attempted to repress), sobbed hard at times (read: failed to repress), and lost a lot of sleep that year, staying up until 4 a.m. every night, listening to sad music, and spending student loan money on iTunes, downloading Willie Nelson songs that reminded me of Granny. I had bought tickets to see Willie Nelson in concert, and took my mom and her then-boyfriend. He got Granny's ticket.

I scoured the Web for cheap Warren Zevon CDs and ended up falling in love with his live album, Learning to Flinch. Zevon's "The Indifference of Heaven" stood out for me at the time, often played on repeat while my then-girlfriend slept in the next room and the walls talked to me. I woke her the night grandma died and had one of those horrible, convulsive cries on her bed until my chest and throat hurt and felt swollen shut. I kept hearing Granny's voice in my head. I still do.

But I only woke her that one time. The rest of those nights, I just sat by myself, trying to write about all this shit and listening to music, and really only succeeding at the latter.

I kept a journal at the time. My thoughts about death are surprisingly limited, maybe because I wasn't quite comfortable updating the journal with those personal matters. Then again, maybe I didn't touch that stuff because...I didn't know how. I spent most of my entries re-printing emo song lyrics, talking about stuff I'd blown money on, and making these bravado-laden statements about partying. I never really partied. I adopted another identity.

I did find this entry from Nov. 26, 2003, the only entry from that period that provides any indication that I was dealing with so much loss:

"I want everything around me to stop dying for a while, so I can give each loss the mourning I need to. Otherwise, I'm just going to go numb and then another loved one will die and I'll be like, 'Meh.'"

That's pretty much what I did when my other grandfather died that January, or February, or whenever the hell the drunk died. He's the reason I'm not an alcoholic. They say alcoholism is genetic. I say hating an alcoholic will encourage moderation, genetics be damned. Whatever the case, I felt nothing when he died. I did not go to the funeral. I do not know where he's buried. The last time I saw him, January 1999, he stumbled drunk into my uncle's funeral and called my brother "John" while I watched from across the room.

Anyway, years later, I'm still processing all the loss. I remember kind of losing it when we rented this film, and tonight wasn't much different. Those closing credits rolled and I heard Joe Strummer's voice and saw those glaciers jumping out of the water and re-assembling and I couldn't help but sit mesmerized, feeling some kind of solace I don't fully understand but still accept.

Even though I'm still frustrated with the technique of the film, Schnabel ends the picture so elegantly that I find myself letting go and drifting, feeling like a part of all things myself, and through that, I feel centered again.