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The 2011 Calorie Restriction Society Conference
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Fifth SENS Conference
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What you don’t eat can’t hurt you
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Steve Jobs’ morbid glorification of death
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Cryonics “Castle”
By Mike Darwin
Show: “Castle”
Season: 4
Episode: 3, “Head Case”
Air Date: 10/03/11
Series Creator: Andrew W. Marlowe
Writer: David Grae
Characters: Rick Castle, Kate Beckett
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Photos Credit: ABC/Adam Taylor
“Castle” Stars: Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle, Stana Katic as NYPD Detective Kate Beckett, Susan Sullivan as Martha Rodgers, Molly Quinn as Alexis Castle, Penny Johnson Jerald as NYPD Captain Victoria Gates, Tamala Jones as Medical Examiner Lanie Parish, Jon Huertas as NYPD Detective Javier Esposito, and Seamus Dever as NYPD Detective Kevin Ryan.
Guest Cast: William Atherton as Dr. Ari Weiss, Andy Umberger as Johnny Rosen, Judith Hoag as Cynthia Hamilton, Shaun Toub as Dr. Philip Boyd, Jordan Belfi as Beau Randolph, Jared Hillman as Eddie Peck.
NOTE: You can watch the full episode of “Castle” reviewed here on line at no charge: http://www.hulu.com/watch/282426/castle-head-case
ESSENTIAL BACKGROUND
Figure 1: Stana Katic as NYPD Homicide Detective Kate Beckett enters the Passage cryonics facility with her gun drawn in search of the missing body of a homicide victim.
I’m a regular viewer of “Castle,” so my take may be prejudiced. “Castle” is very light TV fare – it is a fanciful police procedural comedy/drama that centers on the adventures of a crime novelist, Rick Castle, who is on a perpetual “ride along” with an attractive female homicide detective named Kate Beckett. Beckett has served as the inspiration for one of Castle’s most successful characters, Detective Nikki Heat. Superficially, “Castle” is escapist fare that offers some respite from sadistic pornography of “Criminal Minds” or the now predictable, hard-boiled and increasingly preachy cynicism of the “Law and Order” franchises.“
Castle” is a throwback to the humorous, but morality and issue driven “detective” writing of Anthony Boucher, Herbert Brean, and perhaps the most talented master of this genre, John Dickson Carr. As critic S. T. Karnick has aptly said of “Castle”and its predecessors:
“What these and their contemporaries excelled at was creating a sense of wonder, building a fantastic situation that has an inexorable logic of its own. In their way, they conveyed a sense of American life as a realm of astonishing possibilities ultimately grounded in common sense, logic and morality. It’s a form of fiction I enjoy greatly and which I think has much to recommend it.”
As TV fare it has more in common with “Ellergy Queen” or “Murder She Wrote” than CSI or “Blue Bloods.” Often I hear more of “Castle” episodes than I see of them, but it is good, non-traumatic, “wind down” entertainment before bed; nice to watch while reading book and preparing to doze off. However, a “good” episode will cause the book to be put down and will fully command my attention. This was a good episode of “Castle”, in fact I would argue that it was an extraordinary episode. I say this because “Castle” doesn’t usually explore ideas in any nuanced way, other than those surrounding romantic and family life, which are the core values the show seeks to explore, albeit 21st century style.
Castle is a highly successful author, divorced, more than a bit juvenile and a something of rake who finds his way into the beds of the occasional vixen who strays into the plotline. Detective Beckett is the serious, sober and grounded half of the duo, whose job it is to burst the bubble of most of Castle’s outrageous, and usually erroneously wild conspiracy theories of the crimes they encounter together. The emotional subtext is that Castle is madly in love with Beckett, Beckett is arguably is in love with Castle and neither has the confidence in themselves, or their life choices to admit these feelings to each other, or to anyone else, for that matter.
Because “Castle” is, at least superficially not a serious TV drama, the idea of a cryonics-themed episode made me squirm more than a bit. The whole idea screamed “clichéd mockery.” As it turned out, this episode was some of the best cryonics-themed TV programming I’ve ever seen – at least in terms of thoughtfully exploring the multiple significant issues cryonics poses to the culture. Without as doubt this episode’s presentation of the emotional and value-driven reasons for why we cryonicists are doing what we are was the most accurate and moving of any I’ve seen to date.
Figure 2: Nathan Fillion as the crime fiction writer Richard Castle exploring the cryonics facility. Passage Cryonics either has really bad Superinsulation, or they just finished filling every dewar in the facility.
CRYONICS AND HOMICIDE INTERSECT ON TV (AGAIN)
The plot line (warning, spoiler alert) is that a murder has occurred in a New York City street, but there is no body; just so much blood on the scene that the victim would have almost completely exsanguinated. Through various twists and turns, the victim is determined to be an academic who was pursuing promising research on a life extension technology that would add ~ 10 healthy years to a person’s life by causing the body’s dividing cells to produce young, rather old replacements for themselves. The identification of the likely victim leads Beckett, Castle and crew to a “self storage warehouse” where they discover an “under the radar” cryonics facility called “Passage.”
Dr. Weiss: “He conducted cutting-edge research developing life-extension techniques.”
Castle: “Not that it did him any good.”
It was at this point that I started to grin. This set-up precisely describes Alcor and its location from mid-1970s to the mid-1980s in Fullerton, CA. What’s more, the first man ever cryopreserved, James H. Bedford, was stored for a number of years by his family in a San Fernando Valley mini-warehouse that was part of franchise called “Self Storage;” something I found more than a bit of an irony at the time. Could the “Castle” writers have done their homework that well? Surely not; but, it was good for a grin, anyway.
Figure 3: Seamus Dever as NYPD Detective Kevin Ryan (left) Kate Beckett (center) and Jon Huertas as NYPD Detective Javier Esposito draw a bead on the two cryonics technicians who are in the process of placing the missing homicide victim into long-term cryogenic storage.
Almost immediately after entering the cryonics facility, the homicide investigative crew encounters the Passage personnel sliding the missing murder victim into a dewar. Beckett informs them that the police are going to take custody and that the Medical Examiner (ME) will need to autopsy the body. Enter the smarmy, self-righteous and utterly self-assured President of Passage Cryonics, accompanied by his even more self assured, viperous and lawsuit threatening caricature of a lawyer. Remove the patient from cryopreservation (yeah, they actually use that word; we’re making progress) and Passage will sue the NYPD and the ME’s Office into financial oblivion! the attorney informs them.
Castle: “You got any celebrities in here? Ted Williams? Jack Frost”
Beckett and crew phone the District Attorney for a warrant to seize the body, only to be told that, “the case law is murky on the issue of whether or not a coroner can autopsy a cryonics patient.” Incredible! now the writers really have my attention, because the Dora Kent case was not a “recorded” case that definitively established precedent; the California Appellate Court let the lower (Superior) court’s ruling stand, but declined to grant the case “precedent setting status.”[1] Maybe these guys really did do their homework after all!
ART IMITATES LIFE
The researcher/patient’s wife is questioned by Detective Beckett (and Castle) and she comes across as a sympathetic person who wants, above all else, to defend her husband’s cryopreservation and ensure that he has another chance at an indefinitely extended life. In fact, she reminisces during her interview that, when she and her husband first met, he told her that he was so in love wit her that “one lifetime would never be enough” – he wanted to spend eternity with her – and life extension and cryonics were the tools to achieve that end.
Figure 4: At left, fictional pornographer Beau Randolph as portrayed by actor Jordan Belfi and at right, real pornographer Larry Flynt who did indeed at one time have a serious interest in cryonics. [2)
However, as it turns out, the ME may not need to do an autopsy after all. One of the victim’s associates, a famous pornographer who created the “College Girls Gone Wild” franchise has been bankrolling the life extension researchers academic’s work. And tellingly, they’ve just argued repeatedly over the “dead” man’s desire to make his life extending discovery “open source” for the entire world to further advance and benefit from. By now, I’m chuckling. Is this a reference to Hustler’s Larry Flynt? I’m beginning to think that I’m starting to see my life played out on a very B-list (but nevertheless amusing) TV show. [2]
Figure 5: At left actor William Atherton as Dr. Ari Weiss, CEO of Passage Cryonics (shades of Avi Ben Abraham, center?) and at right, Dr. Max More, CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. [3]
Alas, the pornographer owns a gun, fired the very morning of the murder, that could possibly be the murder weapon. The cops need the slug, and the slug is in the cryopreserved body of the victim. Cut to a testy conference between the ME, the cops, the CEO of Passage Cryonics and their oily lawyer. The ME insists on an autopsy of the body and it’s clear that she now has probable cause and will likely get the necessary court order. Suddenly, the Passage CEO stands up and announces that he has the answer; all cryonics requires is the brain, so why not give the ME the body for autopsy and allow the cryonics organization to keep the head? Now, I know the writers have done their homework. [3,4] One, two, or three coincidences? Maybe. But this many? Not a chance!
Figure 6: At right, Tamala Jones as Medical Examiner Lanie Parish discloses the results of her autopsy on the headless body of the murder victim. A plot lifted right from the Dora Kent case. [4,5]
A TANGLED STORYLINE
The head is removed, the body is autopsied, the slug is recovered, and, just like in real life (Larry Flynt), the wily pornographer is off the hook; they can’t pin the crime on him because he didn’t do it. He was, as he told the police, otherwise occupied murdering a noisy pigeon on his roof that morning. A compliant of animal cruelty is sworn out against him and he vanishes from the proceedings.
The once cooperative ME now demands the patient’s head, because, as it turns out, he appears to have been serving as his own guinea pig by having the implants that cause tissue rejuvenation placed in his brain. The 0nly problem is that when the investigators go to retrieve the head (patient), surprise, he’s missing from the cryonics organization’s facilities!
Beckett: Are you saying you lost his head?
So, who took him and why? It is soon discovered that the patient’s researcher friend has removed him from Passage in order to prevent his destruction by cranial autopsy. What was really going on was that the patient was dying of an inoperable malignant brain tumor (glioblastma multiforme) and this colleague was undertaking to try and save him with a highly experimental, and unfortunately, ineffective nanoparticle cancer treatment. Our cryonics patient was thus doomed to die of a brain tumor – a brain tumor that would, before it killed him, utterly destroy his brain, thus making any hope of recovery from cryopreservation impossible. So now, in addition to the Dora Kent case, the writers have folded in the Donaldson v. the Attorney General of the State of California case. [6]
The nano-cancer researcher colleague explains to the homicide investigators that even though the tumor was growing rapidly, the patient had decided to continue pursuing his life extension research and forgo being cryopreserved. He turns over the MRIs and other documentary evidence explaining why trace evidence of brain matter from the patient had been found in a secret lab, ending the need for further postmortem dissection.
Revelation of these facts also explained the seemingly anomalous download of a “cryopreservation cancellation document” for Passage Cryonics, recovered from the patient’s laptop. Finally, it dawns on Castle and Beckett that the shooting that ended this life cycle for the patient was the very thing that might be responsible for saving his life. They correctly reason that if he wasn’t cryopreserved while his brain was reasonably intact, then he would be lost forever.
THE 21ST CENTURY ROMEO & JULIET
Figure 7: 21st Century Romeos and Juliets use cryonics as a way to overcome the tragic circumstances of disease and death which threaten to separate them forever.
Bingo (!); the missing motive in the case in now apparent. If his wife was aware he was not only dying of brain cancer, but also that he planned to terminate his cryopreservation arrangements, then the only way she could hope to ensure their future together was to “kill” her husband now, while both his brain and his cryopreservation arrangements were still reasonably intact.
This was, in fact, exactly what she had done. As the show winds up there is a touching and very emotional monologue from the wife explaining that the tumor had warped her husband’s judgment and that he was no longer making decisions as he had when was well; she had no choice but to stop his heart with a gunshot, triggering his GPS-enabled bio-monitoring watch and summing the cryonics team. The wife is placed in a holding cell and Castle, Beckett and the Passage President confer about the situation. Suddenly, the Passage CEO’s smartphone registers an alarm: a Passage client has experienced cardiac arrest, butit makesno sense since the GPS feature shows the location as right there in the jail. It is quickly discovered that the wife has taken a cyanide tablet concealed in a ring she was wearing.[1] The wife lies lifeless on the floor of the cell and there is a moment of stunned silence, broken by the Passage CEO, who pleadingly asks if he can summon the cryonics team so that the wife can join her husband on the long journey into the future. Beckett says, “Yes,” having already expressed her sympathy with the wife for her act of “involuntary euthanasia” that put in him Passage cryonics with two bullets in his chest at the start of the story.
Whew! Every significant medico-legal issue in the public history of cryonics to date, all rolled into one ~ 45-minute long TV episode! That’s quite a feat! But a much more impressive one was that writer and the creator of “Castle” got all the important things right. No, they didn’t get much the technical side of cryonics right, and for that, we may arguably be thankful. The Passage cryonics patients, unlike the real ones, look like very startled solid-state versions of their living selves. This is the first time I’ve ever seen cryonics patients depicted with their eyes open – wide open, in fact.
But the shortcomings in the technical depictions of cryonics were more than compensated for by the fact that the show’s creative talents got the core messages of cryonics right. Medico-legal death is a process not a condition, and “irreversibility” is a function of brain structure and the sophistication (or lack thereof) of available medical science and technology. Life is a good thing, and the desire for indefinitely long and healthy lives, free from the burdens of aging, disease and death are reasonable goals being pursued by reasonable people. Indeed, they are romantic goals and they are technologies that offer everyday people the opportunity to continue expressing the best and brightest of their humanity; their love of each other, their pursuit of knowledge and growth, and their desire to transcend time.
Wow! That’s a lot, coming as it is from the principal engine of the popular culture: television. We cryonicists owe a sincere debt of gratitude and some heartfelt thanks to the writer, director and the producers of this “Castle” episode.
Please, write them and communicate your appreciation:
http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/castle/discuss#linkIdAll
REFERENCES
1. Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Inc. v. Mitchell (1992) 7 Cal. App. 4th 1287 [9 Cal.Rptr.2d 572]:http://law.justia.com/cases/california/caapp4th/7/1287.html. Retrieved 2011-09-05 . 2. Green, M. Her death ends the improbable love match of porn merchants Althea and Larry Flynt. People Magazine, 28(3);1987: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20096764,00.html. Retrieved 2011-09-05 . 3. Cieply, M. Iraquis ask firm about cloning Saddam Hussein. Los Angeles Times, 09 September, 1990: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-09-09/business/fi-718_1_saddam-hussein. Retrieved: 06 October, 2011. 4. Babwin, D. Coroner says lethal dose of drugs killed cryonics case figure. The Press Enterprise, Riverside County, CA, 28 February, 1988, start page: A-1. 5. Perry, R.M., our finest hours: notes on the Dora Kent case. http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html. Retrieved: 06 October, 2011. 6. Donaldson v. Lungren (1992) 2 Cal. App. 4th 1614 [4 Cal.Rptr.2d 59]: http://law.justia.com/cases/california/caapp4th/2/1614.html. Retrieved: 06 October, 2011.[1] A great deal of suspension of disbelief is required in watching in CASTLE; as anyone who has ever been arrested, or who is familiar with police procedure knows, all jewelry and other possessions, right down to hairpieces (but generally excluding corrective eyeglasses and dentures) are removed from any subject taken into custody.
Doing the Time Warp
By Mike Darwin
It’s astounding;
Time is fleeting;
Madness takes its toll.
But listen closely…
Not for very much longer.
I’ve got to keep control.
I remember doing the time-warp
Drinking those moments when
The Blackness would hit me
And the void would be calling…
Let’s do the time-warp again.
— “The Time Warp,” Rocky Horror Picture Show by Richard O’Brien.
Yesterday, on Cryonet2, a post caught my eye and ended up having a special resonance for me. The subject under discussion was a media story about a man who had been in prison for ~20 years and who, upon his release, found it so difficult to adapt to the technological and social change that occurred during his time in confinement, that he set fire to an abandoned building in order to be returned to prison for a good long time. The person commenting on this article wrote, “I find the story is bit hard to swallow, having some familiarity with the general issue. Prisons have televisions. Cell phones are commonly smuggled into prisons, and computers are common in prisons, including some for prisoner use.”
At first blush, his incredulity seems justified, and even with deeper consideration his skepticism may seem appropriate, because people from Bronze Age cultures can and do adjust just to cultural change and displacement far more massive than that prisoner experienced. For example, some of the Hmong People from Vietnam successfully made the jump to the US at the end of the Vietnam War (by 1978 some 30,000 were living in the US) and many actually out-competed their new compatriots in the US.
Figure 1: The Hmong people of South Vietnam lived a culture suspended in time between the Stone and Bronze and ages in the 1970s. Above is a typical Hmong village from that time period.
Figure 2: A Hmong village in southern Vietnam in 2004.
Nevertheless, the phenomenon of the culturally and temporally displaced prisoner who is unable to adjust to a changed world is, in fact, a commonplace that has been observed for many years in US prisoners who’ve served long sentences – certainly, since the 1940s. It is very real, and television and conversation with other recently interned inmates does little to relieve it, at least in some people. There is a huge and material difference between seeing a novel technology in use, and experiencing the transformative effect it has, not only on your life in general terms, but on your way of thinking and behaving. The science fiction author Larry Niven captured something of this when he posited “flash crowds” as an unforeseen social effect of teleportation technology. As it turn out, Niven’s “flash crowds” didn’t have to wait teleportation: the development and widespread application of smartphone and social networking technologies have not only created flash crowds, but enabled flash mobs that propel revolution forward (the Arab Spring) or coordinate riotous looting (the London Riots of the Summer of 2011).
This phenomenon should arguably be of special interest to cryonicists , because we propose to cross many decades or even centuries or longer, without even the advantage of network television programming, or tales of the outside world told by the newer inmates on our ward, or cell block. Because the average person is inescapably enveloped in and carried along by the time stream of the culture he inhabits, it is unlikely that he will have any experience of what it means to be cut off from technological advance and the enormous cultural change that accompanies it.
It’s so dreamy, oh fantasy free me.
So you can’t see me, no, not at all.
In another dimension, with
voyeuristic intention,
Well secluded, I see all.
With a bit of a mind flip
You’re into the time slip.
And nothing can ever be the same.
You’re spaced out on sensation.
Like you’re under sedation.
Let’s do the time-warp again.
– “The Time Warp,” Rocky Horror Picture Show by Richard O’Brien.
You can get a potentially deadly taste of this by traveling back in time by the expedient of “geographical atavism,” which is what I call going to places on earth where the technological level is decades, centuries or millennia earlier than the present, and then living there. This is getting difficult to do, since even the lepers in India now have cell phones.
You can also do it by virtue of living off the street, either in the US, or preferably in a “foreign” country. At first, you try to reach for all sorts of technology that isn’t there, and only gradually do you stop doing this and realize that you are now fundamentally different from them – e.g., all the other people in the world. You can no longer communicate effortlessly any further than you can shout. There is no medical care beyond basic first aid, and every step you take is taken with the knowledge that a misstep could be lethal. You are hot when it is hot, and you are cold if you haven’t prepared well, and you are still cold often even if you have prepared. If you can’t find food to eat you are hungry, or you have to ask (beg) for food.
Figure 3: Marks and Spencer was originally a moderately upscale department store chain in the United Kingdom. In recent years they have branched out into selling high quality foods, including “luxury” sandwiches and prepared meals under the brand name of M&S Simply Food. M&S adheres to a rigid policy of discarding most unsold prepared foods at the end of each business day, as well as to discarding baked goods, chocolates, flowers and most other food items at, or just beyond their peak of freshness. This creates the opportunity for “no cash outlay” gourmet meals for those with a dustbin key, a thick hide and a near total lack of “normal” social inhibition.
Figure 4: In the UK, as opposed to the US, dustbins (aka dumpsters in the US) are typically locked with a mechanism that looks a bit like a 3-sided Allen wrench (inset photo at left). It seems deceptively simple to open, say with needle nose pliers, but this is not the case. The triangular post that operates the mechanism has rounded edges, is recessed and requires substantial force to turn. It is thus highly desirable, if not necessary, to have a “dustbin key;” an item which can be procured at some £ (dollar) stores for £ 1 (about $1.60 US). This locking mechanism on UK dumpsters appears to be universal, and is considered in the same light as other keyed utility mechanisms, such as water, gas and electricity.
Figure 5: Kitchen, or food waste, must be segregated from other waste in the UK. Typically, the chain merchants such as the Co-Op, M&S Simply Food, and Pret a Manger (another upscale ready-to-eat sandwich shop) conveniently over-bag their various types of food waste in clean, unused plastic bags – often double-bagging it. Food is also discarded on a fairly predictable schedule, so it is possible to retrieve refrigerated and frozen goods in pristine condition, whilst still safely chilled or frozen. The letters “KP” stand for “kitchen policing” wherein the word “police” is used as a verb to mean “to clean” or “to restore to order.”
Figure 6: A not untypical haul from an hour or so of foraging in the dustbin at M&S, the local fruit monger and one of the high-end green grocers. One broken egg in a carton of 6 or 12 eggs means the entire lot is discarded. Since I don’t eat land vertebrates, my flat mate had a steady supply of choice cuts of meats – fresh and frozen.
Figure 7: Living “off the street” as a latter day hunter-gatherer carries with it wholly unexpected difficulties in readjusting to the more typical existence of the technologically sophisticated work-a-day world. I had not previously understood why people would pay good money for something as trivial and ephemeral as fresh flowers. When I returned to the US this past July, after experiencing months of beautiful, sweet smelling flowers in the flat every day, I was disconcerted to find that I had acquired a costly and wholly unsupportable new taste.
Figure 8: Sadly, my difficulty in readjusting to “normal” life was not confined to missing the presence of the severed reproductive organs of plants. I found I had grown accustomed to what were, to me, gourmet meals: good bread and fresh fruit whenever I felt like having them. Above, cold potato leek vichyssoise, smoked salmon with organic string beans, an organic free range egg and Italian tomatoes with a vinaigrette dressing. I have never before (or since) eaten so well so consistently.
Figure 9: Dishes, cutlery, pots, pans and household appliances were available in dustbins for the taking and with very little competition. The books, clothing, duvet, TV and 3-shelf stand in the photo at bottom right were all acquired from the street within a matter of ~2 weeks. In the UK a TV license is required to watch television – something that, fortunately, both of my flat mates possessed. Failing this, the advent of Blue Ray technology has caused conventional DVD players (and DVDs) to be treated as barely better than rubbish in many large cities in the US & UK.
If you live this way for quite awhile you become transformed. If you return to a world of truly enormous choices and possibilities, even if it is one you formerly inhabited with ease, it is very fatiguing, and it can be confusing and stressful, as well. Since time immemorial men have set on journeys of transformation and enlightenment. From the travels of Gilgamesh to Jesus Christ to Buddha, to the mythical travels of Swift’s Gulliver, all such journeys have in common the individual removing himself more or less completely from his normal environment and thus from his accustomed, culturally imposed way of experiencing and seeing his own life. And there is one more thing; they involve danger and some degree of hardship. The important lesson in this latter element for cryonicists is that any environment different from that in which you have grown to maturity in is a dangerous one. The nuances of other languages and cultures, and the even more subtle nuances of the myriad unspoken but vital cues for survival are necessarily inaccessible to the stranger in a strange land.
Many men who take such a journey return transformed – and sadly – inarticulate and unable to communicate what they have experienced. It is not uncommon for them to repeatedly return to such sojourns, or to attempt to rework the “mundane” lives they have returned to, in an effort to mirror the transcendence they have experienced during their journey(ies). This transcendence, so elusive and so impossible to put into words, consists mostly of the radical change in perspective that occurs when a person is removed from his “time stream.” If we grow up in a reasonably stable culture and remain there throughout our lives with our cohorts, our perception of reality necessarily becomes circumscribed.
The exigences of daily life act to preclude our living in the world that exists beyond our moment-to-moment experience of it. The time we spend in conscious contemplation of the distant past and the far future becomes negligible – we become both confined and defined by the time stream we inhabit; the unfolding of events that are largely determined by our culture and our cohorts. And so it is all over the world – different peoples in different lands, all existing at the same time, but in different currents, eddies and streams that are largely isolated from each other. This is a crippling state of affairs, because we either lose, or altogether fail grasp the larger perspective of the universe as a vast, complex place which is unfolding not only in myriad ways, but over myriad different timescales, as well. That reality has important implications for our survival, both as individuals, and as a species.
Well I was walking down the street
just a-having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an
evil wink.
He shook-a me up, he took me by surprise.
He had a pickup truck, and the
devil’s eyes.
He stared at me and I felt a change.
Time meant nothing, never would again.
Let’s do the time-warp again.
— “The Time Warp,” Rocky Horror Picture Show by Richard O’Brien.
Several years ago, I was digging through a dustbin in back of a charity shop in London. They were usually a good source for classical CDs (they toss any CD without a jewel case, and any that don’t sell in a fortnight). I found this device in the dustbin (Figure 10).
Figure 10: My first MP3 player was mistakenly acquired because I thought it was a jump drive. I was stunned when I puzzled out that this tiny device could store up to 100 popular songs and index and “shuffle” them! The carrying lanyard was a promotional giveaway handed out on the street in Soho during London’s Gay Pride celebration.
I pulled the end off of it and saw it had a male USB plug. I figured I’d found myself a jump drive – a brand new one, too, since it still had the adhesive protective plastic covering the little screen on the front of it. I took it home and hooked it up to my computer. It took me a fair bit of time before I could understand what it was; an MP3 player. In fact, I didn’t know what an MP3 player was. I did know about iPODs, but only from TV; because they are small, they are also inconspicuous, and I’d not really seen them up close, nor did I know anyone who had one. I had noticed that people no longer used CD players in public and that they, along with CDs, were now a commonplace in the charity shop dustbins (just as perfectly “good” Sony Trinitron, and other nice color CRT TVs are now a commonplace outside thrift stores in the US and the UK (they can’t throw then in the trash because of the heavy metal content, so they set them out to be carted away by people who can’t afford flat screen technology).
The MP3 player I had found had something like a 100 songs on it! Imagine that! I had no idea that you could carry around a hundred songs, let alone hundreds, or thousands, on such a tiny thing! What was even more astonishing to me was when I realized that MOST of the volume of the device was consumed by the primitive mid-20th century AAA alkaline batteries that powered it. Gradually, I realized that I could get most of the music I liked for free on-line, or from my UK CD collection, and organize it such that I could have the music “match” my travels around London. I could go to the Design Museum, the V&A, or anywhere else I liked and create a perfect soundtrack of music, period or otherwise, to accompany me! In effect, I could make a personalized soundtrack for my life! I quickly realized that if I had several MP3 players, I could select from a nearly endless variety of “collections” to suit my mood – Edith Piaf, The Beatles, Louis Armstrong, torch singers from Dietrich to Sara Vaughn, or the Goldberg Variations (while dozing on a long train or bus ride).
The dustbins of charity shops (thrift stores in the US) are a seemingly inexhaustible source of all manner goods. Many urban charity shops have no laundry facilities and do not find it profitable to carry bedding, linens, or items of clothing such as underwear, socks, and the like – even if they are new and still in the packaging. These things are thus often discarded outright. Items not sold within a fortnight are also typically discarded, as are items that the shop chooses not to sell; medical supplies and equipment, some kinds of music or art, many types of books (most confine themselves to the trendy, bestselling authors and “coffee table” books; the rest are discarded, often still in the boxes). Often,. Whole households of goods flow into the shop as a result of the death of an elderly person whose relatives live far away, or who are uninterested. In such cases the overflow of goods (beyond the capacity of the shop’s shelves) passes immediately into the waste stream. Furniture, dishes, every kind of household appliance and gadget imaginable, and “obsolete” technology such as CD players, low megapixel digital cameras, flatbed scanners, cordless and mobile (cellular) telephones are present in abundance, as are all manner of toys and child-related items (car seats, cribs). Finally, and very importantly, anything that the staff who work or volunteer in the shops do not recognize, understand or value, is also discarded.
The shop where I found the MP3 player was staffed by elderly female volunteers. I quickly learned to seek out shops staffed in this manner, because they were almost a guaranteed source of the most exotic technological goods. In a few short weeks I had accumulated 3 MP3 players, an ASUS EAH6670/DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 6670 video card[1], two “tiny” digital recorders on neck lanyards and ~ 5 gigs of add-on memory for my laptop and my desktop computers, as well as half a dozen jump drives.
Interestingly, just as the charity store staff was blind to things of value they did not understand (and thus they discarded them), I soon discovered that the same phenomenon applied to me, and others like me, but in reverse. It was impossible for us to see things of value, sometimes of considerable value, even when they were right in front of our eyes, unless we knew what to look for! The ASUS video card was a prime example. There are countless electronic bits and boards in dustbins, and in this case, it took the savvy of a young man who played computer games to recognize the manufacturer, thus saving the card from being salvaged for its muffin fan and instead allowing it to make its way into my desktop computer.
Figure 11: An ASUS EAH6670/DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 6670 video card. I picked it out of the dustbin for the muffin fan, only to be told it was likely a working video card.
The technology embodied in the MP3 players was transformative in ways I had not even begun to understand from watching television – and I watch/listen to a lot of television. I had no idea that there were competing brands of tiny, non-hard drive, digital music machines – let alone that they had gotten so small. The people on the street that I interacted with surely had them, but I paid no mind, because I assumed that the earbuds they often sported were connected to radios. Radios had gotten very small; I knew that, because I found AM/FM radios the size of matchboxes in the dustbins frequently. But that was the limit of my understanding; even though I was immersed in a culture where such devices had become commonplace.
I don’t like social media, like Facebook and Linkedin (please, stop sending me spam for Linkedin!), but I do understand them, and I know how powerful they are. A guy in prison hasn’t a clue, and he can’t get a clue from TV, or from hearing about it from another inmate. In fact, his position is much like me and the MP3 player; no one saw fit to explain to me that such technology had evolved, let alone that it was so inexpensive and commonplace that MP3 players were given away as promotional items and might easily be so little valued as to be tossed into the waste stream.
Figure 11: In the UK, homeless people on the street are a rarity, compared to the US. Both the UK and most of Western Europe maintain social welfare programs that are readily available to almost all residents who want them. Three of the most common reasons that people refuse this safety net are substance abuse, having a dog, or some other unwillingness or inability, such as mental illness, to comply with the rules of Council housing or other government social welfare requirements (including criminal activities).
And, why would they? Such technology is a commonplace for those in the mainstream of the culture, something they take for granted, and it is not likely to be a topic of conversation except amongst peers. When you cease to be a peer, and you step outside of your cohort, you have exited one of the time streams that the rest of the world inhabits. If you have children, they will help keep you oriented and in sync with the culture. However, if you are isolated by prison (or by choice) in a rapidly technologically evolving world, you are in for some major surprises – and for no small amount of cognitive dissonance.
I am a technophile who became involved in cryonics as a child. I’ve lived my whole life in expectation (and largely in welcoming anticipation) of technological advance. Statistically, people who are in prisons, or who gather at watering holes such as urban dustbins, are very different from most of the rest of Western, “civilized” humanity. Many are emotionally or intellectually damaged, and most tend to “live in the moment.” Their event horizon extends only so far as the next cigarette, the next hit of spliff or Tina, and maybe to some consideration of where and how they will spend that coming night. They know almost nothing about the past, and are constitutionally unable to see beyond a few days, or weeks into the future. Many will start to forage for a tarp or a piece of plastic to protect them from the rain only when the sky clouds over, or it actually begins to rain. This, as it turns out, is a critically important observation, because it points up the powerful leverage to be had by living in longer timescales.
The capitalist philosopher A. J. Galambos divided the timescales we humans inhabit in the following way: [2]
Trivial Timescale: Moment to activities and thoughts which dominate most of our daily awareness time; I need to make a phone call, check my mail, brush my teeth, get something to eat, go to the loo.
Personal Timescale: What kind of training should I take, whom should I marry, how should I plan for my retirement, how should I apportion my estate, how can I provide from my children and grandchildren?
Species Timescale: Concern and involvement with history, the environment, the future of mankind. The Species Timescale lasts as long as man himself.
Cosmic Timescale: How does the universe work, what causes the stars to shine, how long will the universe last, can we live forever?
Galambos correctly pointed out that while almost all of us (of necessity) spend most of our time in the Trivial Timescale, preoccupied with things of the moment, to the extent we transcend the trivial we gain power and control over the world around. Newton and Einstein may have spent only a brief moment of their total conscious time in the Cosmic Timescale, but the benefits in terms of technological advance were enormous and gave us not just the laws of Classical Physics and of Relativity, but the calculus, the tools for spaceflight and the capability for self annihilation with the hydrogen bomb.
So, in the sense that people inhabit prisons, or who are squatters or otherwise homeless, are so often condemned to live only in the moment, and thus exclusively in the Trivial Timescale, they are fundamentally different.They are “transtemporally crippled,” and in many ways have less foresight than a really clever dog or cat. It is not uncommon for such people to be unable to retain even very basic possessions, such as a sleeping bag, a CD player and essential toiletries such as a toothbrush, deodorant and a razor. “Now” pretty much encompasses their sphere of action with respect to the past and the future. To expect such people to stay technologically and culturally integrated with a rapidly changing world – especially when imprisoned away from it for decades – is akin to expecting your dog or cat to discourse learnedly on the nuances of Shakespeare, or to explain to your the excitement experienced whilst listening to Justin Bieber.
Of course, slipping out of the time stream is not confined to the sphere of technology, or to prisoners behind bars. It is the fate of every kind of exile everywhere. I have been long exiled from cryonics, and much longer still isolated from the social wellsprings (scant that they may be) that constitute cryonics organizations. Thus, I have no idea if many of the people with whom I once worked and socialized with are still alive, and if they are, where, what and who they are now. I wonder, often, at the anonymous case reports that appear on-line, and try to fathom if it is one of the many people I once knew so well, but that exile for over 20 years has left me isolated from? And those are just the people from my past…
Figure 12: Frank Cole crossing the Sahara desert and the whole of the African continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea on camel in 1990. Cole was murdered by Tuareg bandits near Timbuktu, Mali, in late October 2000.
Very recently, someone made a derogatory remark about a man I had not previously heard of. He was a cryonicist and a filmmaker by the name of Frank Cole (1954-2000). The commentator remarked on his stupidity for being “killed by bandits in Africa.” I was struck by this remark, because, even more astonishing to me than the discovery that MP3 players existed in 2007, was the discovery of even the possibility that a man like this Frank Cole, could have been a cryonicist. The idea was incomprehensible to me.
It took me quite awhile to find out something of who Frank Cole was, and it was not until I saw his searing final film, Life Without Death, that I think I began to grasp what he was about. But, truth to tell, it was not until I read his former lover, Anne Milligan’s reminiscence of him (see below), that I felt I fully understood him. And that made me very sorry that I had missed the opportunity to know him, because in his work I believe I see the same, almost otherworldly ability to see the culture and the world “we” inhabit from outside, above, below, or beyond it. And in his work I see the exact same vision of the loss of those we love as the penultimate evil, and of death as what it is; the ultimate horror and the ultimate evil.
Figure 13: Frank Cole as a young man.
I think Cole would have understood when I say that that ability, or practice, if you will, is the perhaps the best psychological preparation possible for recovery from cryopreservation. It is not a place you can ever get to by watching TV, reading books, or otherwise attempting to escape the time stream you inhabit by being distracted from it.
To understand that kind of alienation and isolation, and to taste of its absolute irreversibility requires that you step completely out of the world you inhabit and go to another one that is embedded not just in a different time, but in a different era, and in a different place in space. To do that is, necessarily, to take a horrific risk, because where you will be is not a simulation, and there is no recall from error or mischance, and no opportunity for “a reboot.”
In writing this, I am reminded of one of the songs that was on that discarded MP3 player from the dustbin in London, when it came into my possession. It was by a British pop group called ‘The Enemy.’ It’s lyrics come to mind now, as I think of Frank Cole, the nature, fragility and arbitrariness of life, and how absolutely essential it is that we continue to transcend our accepted experience of it, forever and ever, even for trillions and trillions of years, as the Ancient Egyptians liked to say.
We’ll Live And Die In These Towns
Lyrics by The Enemy
You spend your time in smokey rooms
where haggled old women
with cheap perfume say,
“It never happens for people
like us you know.”
Well nothing ever happened on its own and well,
the toilets smell of desperation
the streets all echo of aggregation
and you wonder
why you can’t get no sleep
when you’ve got nothing to do,
and you’ve had nothing to eat.
Your life’s slipping
and sliding right out of view
and there’s absolutely nothing
that you can do well
We’ll live and die,
we’ll live and die in these towns
don’t let it drag you down
don’t let it drag you down now
we’ll live and die,
we’ll live and die in these towns
don`t let it drag you down
don`t let it drag you down now
Dirty dishes from a TV meal
that went cold from the wind
through a smashed up window
You can’t go out if anybody calls ya
cause you can’t have a bath
when there`s no hot water
and your friends are out
on the town again
and you ask yourself if it will ever end
and it`s all too much for your head to take
just a matter of time
before you break, well
We’ll live and die,
we’ll live and die in these towns
don’t let it drag you down
don’t let it drag you down now
we’ll live and die,
we’ll live and die in these towns
don`t let it drag you down
don`t let it drag you down now
now…
now…
we’ll live and die,
we’ll live and die in these towns
don’t let it drag you down
don’t let it drag you down now
we`ll live and die,
we’ll live and die in these towns
don’t let it drag you down
don’t let it drag you down now
Our critics often say that practical immortality will result in a world of boredom – in a world of eternal sameness inhabited by people making the same choices over and over again. There is merit to this criticism because success, a prerequisite for indefinite survival, breeds complacency. Even with lives as short and turbulent as ours in the developed West are today, it is easily possible to become anesthetized by the time stream we are embedded in. When this happens, we lose all consciousness of the bigger picture, indeed the true picture of reality and we risk losing our ability to transcend the Trivial Timescale and inhabit the Cosmic one, however briefly. Lose that and we lose our ability to survive. Men like Frank Cole remind us that while there is great peril in journeys of transcendence which allow us to step out of our given time stream and cultural imperative. However without them, we face the even greater peril of forgetting, or failing even to understand the complex, challenging and utterly alien nature of the universe as it really exists.
October 4, 2009
I delivered this tribute at the Book Launch “Life Beyond Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole” & Film Retrospective sponsored by the Canadian Film Institute at the National Library, Ottawa Oct 3rd, 2009. Frank Cole was a Canadian Documentary Filmmaker who was killed in 2000 by bandits near Mali while crossing the Sahara Desert. Rick Taylor is a Professor at Carleton University, Author and Frank’s best friend.
Dear Rick,
I just finished Life Without Death. I read it in one sitting and was sucked down the rabbit hole. It’s a beautiful book and I especially wanted you to know how much I loved your memoir, Saltwater Road to the Sahara. Your lovingly recreated details brought everything back so vividly It was poignant and bittersweet
And thank you for portraying me with such kindness and especially saying that I loved him whole heartedly because I did, though in truth, I don’t often revisit those memories now, weighed down as they are, with the silent echo of words never spoken, with youth’s uncertainty and unbending pride.
I enjoyed the book immensely but I was sorry that no one had written about Frank from a woman’s perspective because that dynamic informed both his art and life. I don’t think a man, even you Rick, could fully comprehend what it was like to be Frank’s Eve, to be the snake, the seductive field of sleeping poppies. To inherit the complicated push pull of his relationship with his mother. To stand innocent against the charge that intimacy leads to complacency, loss of purpose, and ultimately loss of self.
And so I hope you’ll indulge me while I revisit the piece of Frank’s story that was also mine, through the lens of my sensibilities.
I met Frank in the late 70’s in response to a laundromat ad for a roommate. To say that Frank was different is, of course, an understatement. While it’s true that he seemed remarkably serious and mature for his age, there was something more. His clipped words were punctured with unnerving silences and delivered with an enigmatic assuredness that seemed to announce that he had not only cornered Truth but had it up against the wall by the throat.
The disarming combination of animal magnetism, a rejection of society’s conventions, and a driving intensity body-slammed those he met through their comfort zone. People either loved or hated Frank, they were never indifferent.
In those days he was the enfant terrible in the Algonquin Film program and our apartment became the meeting place of a never-ending parade of Ottawa’s counter culture, drawn by Frank’s aura. It was palpable – Life seemed to be to be more meaningful, more vibrant, and more exciting in his presence. I was captivated and determined. I set out to impress Frank Cole.
Though Frank was not traditionally handsome, there were plenty of women vying for his attention. With his love of the outrageous and the absurd, I sensed that he would be won over by nothing less than a grand gesture.
So one night I placed a small table outside his bedroom and covered it with linen cloth and formal place setting for one. Wearing only a fedora and boots, I perched on the plate and knocked. I can still hear him roar with appreciative laughter as he opened the door… In the morning he took photographs and wrote a terse and clinical account of the night.
That was my introduction to Frank as the outsider. At 24 he had already adopted the practice of precisely and unflinchingly documenting his life with his uncanny ability to be both the observer and the observed,
It isn’t easy to pinpoint the various trajectories that coalesced into Frank’s view of the world. No doubt accompanying his parents to war torn countries, long separations at boarding school, his beloved brother Peter‘s open heart surgery at 8, and later the death of his grandparents, all contributed to his lifelong fear of becoming dependent on anyone or any thing including his own basic needs.
Being in relationship with Frank meant that I too, was expected to engage in this struggle. Work always came first and often our dates started around midnight after Frank had completed a long day of disciplined writing. (Canada Council really got its money’s worth)
He refused to play the role of boyfriend – he wouldn’t meet my parents or socialize with my friends. When we went on trips, he kept a notebook where he meticulously divided expenses down to the last cent. He allowed me to move in with him several times only to kick me out when, as he put in, things got a little too cozy. It was a joke among his friends that when I got sick he would move back home to his mother, and leave me to fend for myself
But just when I’d think that I had his nihilistic angst-ridden, intellectual little ass pigeon-holed, a new aspect of his personality would emerge. Like when he took me to visit the Mountenays. .
The whole family would surround the car whooping “Mamma, it’s Frankie, Mamma, come on out and see Frankie” and he’d smile warmly, laughing wholeheartedly at their childlike jokes and shyly acquiescing to their boisterous wranglings to get him to join this or that team for baseball or cards.
There was nothing patronizing, or condescending in either his personal dealings with them or his affectionate tribute “The Mountenays”. He loved being sucked into the vortex of their exuberance and vitality. And perhaps he also envied their complete lack of self consciousness, and their ability to dissolve into the collective, two things that were totally foreign to his nature.
He was both drawn and repulsed by the rawness of life, the primal power of sex and fascinated by those who clashed with it full on, unencumbered by society and Hallmark sentiments.
After the Mountenays, he considered making a film about the sex trade and we spent endless nights in New York City strip clubs and on Rue St Laurent in Montreal peering into shadowy doorways, and talking to prostitutes.
In light of what was to happen, I still feel a twinge of remorse for telling him that he could never inhabit the desperate world of these people because he had a safety net. Unlike them, he could go home.
Frank wrote his life like a well scripted film. All the action was subservient to the main theme. He told me that he couldn’t marry me or make a home with me and he didn’t want our child to be born.
But in unguarded moments, the dispossessed part of him that yearned for intimacy seeped around the corner of his resolve. One time after being ill with a high fever, he told me that in his delirium he had imagined his body was divided into tiny squares, all of which I had lovingly cared for in turn. “It was great” he admitted wistfully.
Night after night, under the blanket of darkness, I witnessed his agonizing and repeated struggle to conquer his need for connection, and love. No matter that he failed more often than he succeeded.
He told me that I would commit suicide in his film. Sacrifice myself to set him free to force him to be independent, strong and alone. Catching the mirrored reflection of his eyes , I realized he wished it were true.
In the end, the very things that attracted me to Frank made life with him hell. Once, in a heated argument, hurled the most vitriolic insult in his arsenal, predicting with disdain that I would end up a housewife”
keeper of the home, keeper of the heart….
In his world of no compromise, my only option was to disown myself as a woman, to devalue the gifts of the feminine. It broke my heart to choose …me. I ended the relationship.
In October 1988, I received a call from Frank asking to see me. Over the years our paths had crossed mostly at his parents’ home. After dinner we would retreat to the basement, where, drawing up battle lines, we would spar with feigned indifference over such topics as cryogenics and the locus of the self, (Frank insisting on the head, while I argued for the heart), the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the merits of Juan Butler and always his safety in the desert.
But this night was different. His usual bravado was absent- he was drawn and pale. After some time he answered the question I could not ask. He was going to the Sahara in the morning . “Annie “, he said quietly,” don’t leave me alone tonight, don’t go. I’m afraid ”.
That night I held faith on Frank’s behalf, folding him into my body like a child, words spilling like beads of blood, dropping into the confessional of night. In the morning he was gone and when he returned months later, the wall was back . We never spoke of it again.
And now I sit with Frank’s account of that trip open on my knee. I notice the date, Oct 28, 1988, a week since his arrival, a week since the last night we had spent together. He writes that he despairs over how he will ever manage to cross the Sahara. Then he adds “ I rode behind Sid Ahmed toward a bed of sand. He chose it because of it’s softness and because it had a bush that provided shelter from the wind. He checked it for scorpions and snakes and then covered any fallen thorns with sand. He laid down a groundsheet for my sleeping bag… like a father putting a child to bed. This was how,. This….was how. ..with these people’s hearts…, nothing would be impossible.
I read that paragraph again and again, – grief and gratitude flooding me in equal measure.
Frank Cole lived his life with courage. He called it the strength to be free. As for me, I like to remember that in October 1988, in the Sahara Desert, he came to recognize the true meaning of the word. Courage – Avec Coeur- with heart. Because Frank Cole lived his life with heart.
And that is a life well lived
With much affection
Annie
Copyright E. Anne Milligan 2009
Footnotes
[1] The ASUS card features 1480 stream processors, a 810MHz core clock, 1000MHz (4.0Gbps) effective memory clock, 1GB GDDR5 128-bit memory, supports Direct X 11, Bus Standard PCIE 2.1, one DVI output, one HDMI output, one Mini DisplayPort output.
[2] Galambos, Andrew (1998), Sic itur ad astra: This is the way to the stars, Volume One – The Theory of Volition, San Diego, California: The Universal Scientific Publications Company, Inc., ISBN 0-88078-004-5.
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