Attention, Affirmation, and the Spiritual Law of Gravity

All of us had fallen from 100 stories.

—John Leonard

Falling is rarely a good thing. It is something to avoid for safety, and such avoidance, for those of us fortunate enough to be in good health, has been burned into the unconscious memory of our muscles and bones. Unless we find ourselves in high places (pursuing intense pleasure, such as rock climbing, or performing work that few will do, such as painting a steeple), or on some kind of precipice (the edge of a sidewalk, a balcony with a loose guardrail), falling tends not to be on the mind. It is, most of the time, a surprise.

But it is also always a possibility, in part because of one of those characteristics that define the human—our upright posture. Without this trait that makes us bipeds instead of quadrupeds, that gives us a slightly greater distance from the earth, falling would be less of an issue. Thus, one can say in a rather abstract and grandiose way, that our humanity makes us prone to falling (and makes falling a convenient and pervasive moral metaphor).

We are not, however, simply prone to a particular action but are also prone to the force or condition that creates that action—gravity. While falling might not often be on the mind, gravity occasionally is, finding its way into thought and language. For physicists, especially of the theoretical variety, gravity is the sticky phenomenon that has prevented the reconciliation of general relativity and quantum mechanics, and thus it has proven to be an obstruction to the much-desired Theory of Everything (TOE)—absolute (scientific) knowledge. In addition to its physical pull, gravity has lifted its way into metaphor. In philosophy, Nietzsche speaks of the spirit of gravity as a nihilistic resentment toward life that prevents one from affirming life's immanent value; its antidote is the free-spirited practice of philosophy (303-07). Simone Weil describes gravity as a metaphysical force that draws one away from the transcendent light of god; its antidote is grace (1-5). And, of course, in everyday language, when something is described as grave, or a situation is characterized by its gravity, what is indicated is a somberness and seriousness that could well approach tragedy. To use these terms in such a way means something has badly gone wrong. Gravity is troublesome. In our fantasies, we wish to defy it (as superheroes do); in our everyday movements, we resist it (as when walking or picking up things).

I come to these thoughts, in part, by way of Don DeLillo's recent novel Falling Man. The novel's title refers to a New York City performance artist who, in the days after 9/11, jumps off of buildings, bridges, and other high places wearing a business suit, only to be caught by an inconspicuous safety rope tied around one of his legs. These performances attract crowds and a variety of emotional responses—from fascination and awe to consternation and censure:

She'd heard of him, a performance artist known as Falling Man. He'd appeared several times in the last week, unannounced, in various parts of the city, suspended from one or another structure, always upside down, wearing a suit, a tie and dress shoes. He brought it back, of course, those stark moments in the burning towers when people fell or were forced to jump. He'd been seen dangling from a balcony in a hotel atrium and police had escorted him out of a concert hall and two or three apartment buildings with terraces or accessible rooftops.

Traffic was barely moving now. There were people shouting up at him, outraged at the spectacle, the puppetry of human desperation, a body's last fleet breath and what it held. It held the gaze of the world, she thought.

(DeLillo 33)

At first, these performances seem to command to the viewer: "Remember." The collective urge to move on after a trauma is strong. Returning to business-as-usual indicates health, resilience—a grasping onto the life that remains. This is why the reopening of the New...