(Some people asked me to publish a text I wrote in December 2009, so here it is.)
Complete rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament; medial meniscus tear with unstable fragment; femorotibial bone contusions; signs of stretching (grade I injury) of the lateral collateral ligament; focal patellar chondropathy (grade III injury); and joint effusion.
This was the result of the MRI scan of my right knee.
How did I manage to completely destroy my knee?
Well, simple: Playing guitar!!!
All this feat happened on the 1st chord (a very low E) of the 1st song (Tom Sawyer by Rush) playing with some friends at a show in October 2009. And continuing to play for the rest of the show was a kind of medieval torture.
Two months later, I'm drafting this text in a hospital room. I just had knee reconstruction surgery, and the effects of the epidural anesthesia are still taking hold, so I still can't move my legs.
I think that's why I can't stop thinking about Metallica 's ONE .
For those who don't know, the song was inspired by Dalton Trumbo's 1970 book titled 'Johnny Got His Gun'. A year later, Trumbo himself directed the film adaptation (in Brazil, 'Johnny Vai À Guerra') from which Metallica used several scenes in the construction of the famous ONE . The scenes from the film appear in more detail, obviously in the full version of the music video (not in the edited version that was usually shown on MTV).
'Johnny Got His Gun' tells the story of soldier Joe Bonham (I imagine the name is just a coincidence in relation to the drumming genius of Led Zeppelin) whose body was torn apart by an explosion during World War I. Without legs, arms, or most of his face, Joe cannot communicate with the outside world, although his brain is intact and therefore he can think and reason clearly.
On the VHS release of the music video for ONE" ("Metallica: 2 of One", 1989), in addition to including the two versions of the video, Metallica also included a 5-minute interview with Lars Ulrich, who says that James Hetfield's goal in writing "ONE" was to show a human being in TOTAL isolation. A healthy mind trapped inside its body without the possibility of communication with the outside world. In Lars' words:
‘James was talking to me about what it would be like to be in a situation where you were basically a kind of living consciousness, a terrible situation where you couldn't reach others or communicate with anyone around you; where you wouldn't have arms or legs; and certainly wouldn't be able to see, speak, or do anything like that.‘
This theme, so brilliantly portrayed by Metallica in the " ONE" , was, almost 400 years ago, the basis for the creation of the most famous phrase in the history of philosophy (I'll tell you what the phrase is in a moment, but I'm sure you've heard it and very possibly even recited it). Before that:
Once upon a time, there was a very radical guy named René Descartes who wrote a text called 'Discourse on the Method' where he questions something totally 'Matrix' (the movie). He questions the following:
How can we know if the world we perceive through our senses truly exists? How can we differentiate between 'real things' and things that are dreams or thoughts? How can we trust our senses (and by extension, how can we know that we are not trapped in a machine like in the movie)?
To answer these questions, Descartes envisioned the exercise of detaching himself from all his senses. No longer trusting them. As he himself said:
' Considering that all the thoughts we have when we are awake can also occur to us when we are asleep, without any of them being true at that moment, I resolved to pretend that all the things that have ever entered my mind were no more true than the illusions of my dreams ' (Descartes in 'Discourse on the Method').
And in doing so, he transformed into someone exactly like the character from ONE , that is: Someone who no longer has the sensory abilities to interact with the outside world. Someone who only has his mind.
And without any information coming from outside, without any thought that can be built upon something perceived by the senses, what remains? Descartes realized that almost nothing remains… Only one certainty remains.
There is only one thing that anyone (René Descartes, Joe Bonham, you, me, anyone, any ONE ) can be absolutely certain of, even without trusting their senses:
The certainty lies in the fact that the person asking all these questions exists. After all, to doubt all these things, there must be some 'thing' (an existing entity) that doubts everything. Or, in Descartes' words, ' soon after, I perceived that, at the same time as I wished to think that all things were false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking, was something .'
' I think, therefore I am '. The First Principle of Philosophy.
After that, many philosophers agreed and disagreed with Descartes, and many others used the 'Discourse on the Method' to postulate new theories, but the objective of this text, if it has one (all this 'crazy' talk should have some objective), has nothing to do with Philosophy. It has to do with the great evil of the world, in my opinion: Prejudice.
The more we know or interact with something, the less likely we are to be prejudiced against it.
This is true for races, beliefs, illnesses, musical preferences, sexual orientations, football teams, tall people, short people, fat people, thin people, political opinions, and so on.
The more 'ignorant' people are ('ignorant' in the sense of 'not knowing' or 'not interacting'), the greater the chance of prejudice and all the problems that stem from it.
What does this have to do with Metallica and Descartes? To me, everything…
Or isn't it ignorance and prejudice on the part of those who think that Heavy Metal is 'all noise and the songs don't say anything meaningful '???
(someday I'll write about Queensrÿche's Operation: Mindcrime, the best story ever written to be used as an album theme).
Or isn't it ignorance and prejudice for someone to say that Philosophy is a bore, without even knowing what it's about???
(It's worth noting that I'm not a Philosophy expert, quite the opposite, but I find the subject interesting and sometimes read about it. The idea for this post came from a text about Descartes written by Joanna Corwin, Master of Philosophy from the Catholic University of America).
Or isn't it ignorance and prejudice on the part of the numerous critics at the time who said that Metallica included ONE just to sell it on MTV???
(disregarding the fact that in an era of "Glamour-Hair-Metal" videos, ONE was made in black and white, and that from the middle to the end of the video, the music transforms into something visceral, totally 'And Justice For All', a real punch in the gut for the viewer).
For anyone who wants to test their own biases, I recommend clicking here to learn about a study conducted at Harvard University using the implicit association method. You can test yourself online for free. And the best part is, it covers a wide range of topics.
To finish this post (which I admit, literally 'went off on a tangent' through several items) and return to the original topic:
The climactic ending of ONE (those who saw it live will never forget the explosions every time James calls out 'Darkness' or 'Landmine') concludes with the album's most brutal sequence when he says, ' has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with life in hell '.
This sequence is spine-chilling anywhere, anytime, live, on vinyl, in the studio, on an iPod, at home, but especially when watching the video because it's exactly at that moment that Metallica inserts the scene of the doctors realizing that Joe Bonham is still thinking (and therefore, yes, he exists).
Finally, in a lighter way that's still relevant to the topic (I'm much more optimistic today, two days later, without the effects of the epidural and already walking with crutches), John Lennon spoke of a world without prejudice a long time ago:
I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will live as ONE.
Daniel Dystyler
Listen to the Philosophy Professor William Irwin talk about One and Philosophy (in English):
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