Five Short Meditations on Rae Armantrout's "Djinn"
"Djinn." Not so much a genie. Rather a demon, a ghost, an influence. An influence in an age of influencers.
Djinn (from Poetry) Rae Armantrout Haunted, they say, believing the soft, shifty dunes are made up of false promises. Many believe whatever happens is the other half of a conversation. Many whisper white lies to the dead. "The boys are doing really well." Some think nothing is so until it has been witnessed. They believe the bits are iffy; the forces that bind them, absolute.
Armantrout's first stanza, about the terrain ghosts create, brings into relief the strange world-building of lying. She draws for us "soft, shifty / dunes" which are "haunted." They are composed of "false promises:"
Haunted, they say, believing
the soft, shifty
dunes are made up
of false promises.
We say “haunted.” This means we’ve created a landscape, hills of sorts. We can tread, but it is “soft, shifty.” It will be difficult–going up will be a different problem than going down. As a desert we can cross, it will be hot, dusty, and empty. The feeling every step is pointless reigns at the worst times. However, we tell ourselves that there will be a promised land. A promised land, we slyly admit, attained through false promises.
It sounds complex, but you can see it. Look at the dunes. Look how the wind sweeps the loose sand and ethereal beings are outlined. The dunes are "soft" and "shifty" because they are not meant for us. They are a home for ghosts which we must traverse. Were the ghosts also betrayed by what was said?
We're pushed toward questions, thoughts: How do our lies build our memories? The world we believe we are in? Maybe someone sees the dunes and thinks they can take another road entirely. But this ignores the reality of ghosts. The easy road is an even tougher dune. I live in the desert and know the sand is everywhere. What you escape by not walking will find you while driving.
Haunted, shifty dunes lead to two other mysteries. The first: "Many believe / whatever happens / is the other half / of a conversation." This is a riddling statement of fact. Why might people believe that "whatever happens" constitutes a conclusion to a conversation? And why would this be important?
I have to go back to graduate school for an answer. Back to a debate I thought I resolved. I spent years reading Xenophon, who tried to think through what the life of Socrates meant. Xenophon uses a sharp distinction, implicit and explicit, between thought, speech, and action: he likes to be very clear about what each cause and what they do not cause. It took me a while to realize he was fighting a popular notion about a philosopher or any person of knowledge. If you truly know, that means everything you say will persuade and every action you take will succeed, right? The truth is all-powerful and can never fail, only be failed. So if someone claims to know but is weak and can't do what they claim, or they need help, they don't truly know.
This is a bad skeptical argument which bullies use, but it also is implicit in a number of more noble claims. The response has to be that thought, even the truth, are separate from acting and speaking. Someone can know and fail to act. It doesn't make them less of a knower though it might make them less of a person. If the truth matters, we serve it. It casts a shade over our lives like a cloud until we understand how to respond to our combination of denial and inadequacy.
In a parallel manner, people who believe that "whatever happens" answers a conversation assign too much power to speech. It does not actually dictate what happens. It does reveal how we strive, what we believe are ideals, how we lie, what we panic about, what we love. We can follow speech, i.e. the logos, because we want to know how we can respond, accept, and sometimes exert control. But this is far more humble than seeing events as a direct response to anything said.
So far, we have traced two rich ideas out of this poem. Our false promises, our lies, are a haunted terrain we cross. Furthermore, we believe our words receive the world as an answer.
You can see how these ideas fit and do not fit together. On the one hand, there are lies which spin a world of our own choosing. On the other, we speak believing in a non-verbal response of some weight. The question of the poem, though, doesn't concern our freedom. It's not about whether we're powerful when we lie or whether our speech brings a state of affairs into being. The question concerns what is beyond us. Why do we lie to the dead?
Many whisper
white lies
to the dead.
"The boys are doing really well."
I confess I do this a lot. Why do I tell myself that those who have passed would be proud of me? Why can't I admit I have failed them, that I haven't done enough when called to do so? That I've quit on things which were important? That I haven't appreciated the amazing things I've been given? Why would I say "yeah, family's doing well" to a gravestone when I'm not sure how family's doing?
Why do I need to lie to myself?
That's the third idea, the central idea. We must lie. We must create the ghosts and the land we walk on. And this invites reality to intrude. None of it makes sense. As said before, we're trying to go to a promised land with false promises. We're assigning too much power to our own speech. None of that matters.
I lie to survive.
Witness, I believe, entails another realm. Sometimes it is an excuse for inaction. Plenty of people witness genocidal horrors, few act to stop them.
Still, that serves as an indirect proof of another place. People deny there is anything they can do but look. For those who are more serious, witness entails hope of another realm. There must be something better; we must make it so:
Some think
nothing is so
until it has been witnessed.
They believe
the bits are iffy;
the forces that bind them,
absolute.
"[N]othing is so / until it has been witnessed" encompasses a select few. All of us lie, all of us plead that we bear witness.
Only a few realize what witness means. The white lies told at the gravestone are an obligation. We owe the dead a better world for the living.
Hence, "the bits are iffy." It's strange to think about my own death that way. Just one more occurrence that may or may not be helpful. I can't imagine my peace depending on anyone speaking at my grave.
It doesn't matter what I imagine. "[T]he forces that bind them, / absolute." This is it, the after-life. We're in it now. We speak to the dead and try to join them to the living. All the bullies who mock and taunt, who say we haven't produced anything of value, who say we will never be remembered, miss the point. The forces pushed us to make those white lies. They will continue to push us to the ghosts we've created, ghosts who speak louder than any human voice.