Love-Lies-Bleeding Book

"What good is a life that doesn't experience some trace of all possible lives?"
-- Don DeLillo, Love-Lies-Bleeding



"The roses in the window box
Have tilted to one side
Everything about this house
Was born to grow and die"
-- Elton John, Love Lies Bleeding



Love-Lies-Bleeding is the common name for "Amaranthus caudatus". A lovely plant to allude to in a play about death or as an opening track on a rock album. I adore DeLillo as a novelist, and I'm pretty happy with the first play I've read of his. It is a powerful look at end-of-life discussions. DeLillo loves that space. He love exploring the edge of things, the terminus, the edge of the horizon. Sometimes, the best way to explore life is to look at the choices we make regarding life -- and death.

The set-up is pretty simple and spare. Four characters: an artist, dying; his son; his second wife; his fourth and current wife. After two strokes, the artist is in a permanent vegetative state. Debate and discussions follow. This was performed in May of 2005 and it was in March of 2005 that Terry Schiavo eventually died. I'm not sure if this play was written shortly before the litigation or during those sad events. One thing I'm sure of, however, is those who want to reduce the moral calculus of ending someone else's life into simple math short change all of our lives. I'm not sure how I feel about the Terry case, but I'm damn sure the discussion is important. This play is beating the same drum.

One other interesting piece of note about this play. In scene 3 of the last (3) act, there is a joke:

"All right, here's a joke. It's a philosophical joke. I told it to my seniors in geophysics. Goes like this. Two tiny young fish are swimming in the sea. They come upon an older fish. He says to them, Hey, fellas, how's the water? They two young fish swim on past. They swim for many miles. Finally one of the fish says to the other, What the fuck is water?"

Those of you who are David Foster Wallace fans will recognize that DFW also related this joke in a commencement address at Kenyon College that was later put into a small book called: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. This play was first performed in early May. DFW's commencement address was late May. Not sure. It was a minor part of the DeLillo play, but was developed by DFW. Perhaps, they chatted about it before. Who knows. Perhaps, one day I'll explore DFW and DeLillo's papers at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin and find out.