Journal 8: Is it better to burn out than to fade away?

"Do not go gentle into that good night" is a pretty cool poem, I guess. There's a lot of fairly interesting philosophical concepts floating around in it that give it depth, so, to be perfectly honest, I don't think it'll be that hard to write about. The following is my test of that hypothesis.

First of all, the impression I got from it was sort of similar to that Neil Young song "Hey Hey My My"... you know, the one that makes a bunch of sweeping statements like "rock 'n' roll will never die" and, of course, "it's better to burn out than to fade away." How accurate Neil's words ended up aside (rock 'n' roll as he knew it is essentially gone), the second statement is fairly powerful, whether you agree or not. Probably the most famous person to disagree with this was John Lennon, who said he hated the line because the people who did 'burn out' kind of went out in depressing, unnecessary ways. A lot of these people were pretty close to Lennon, so it doesn't surprise me - Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, etc, all of them pretty well known rock musicians who died too soon. That being said, however, the line can also be interpreted more closely to the general idea of this poem, which I don't think I really considered before - instead of 'burning out' meaning going in some notable way, maybe it means fighting as hard as possible not to let death get you.

And isn't that one of the biggest themes of existentialism? Apparently I learned quite a bit from Mr. Ingram, because that's what it sounds like to me. This whole poem is a denial of impermanence - maybe Dylan Thomas was having a bit of a moment of existential angst when he wrote it. He's telling his father - who is already dead - not to accept death lightly and to try to counteract it. He doesn't seem to be comfortable with the idea of his father's death, which can be more broadly applied to people in general. According to existentialism, the idea that we die causes inescapable suffering and that we all end up trying to ignore it or deny it in any way we can. This poem gives off a very similar vibe - the speaker can't see past his existential angst because he's, presumably, still grieving the loss of his dad. The poem doesn't appeal much to logic and instead takes a more pathos-oriented approach, which also seems consistent with these existential ideas. It isn't logic that causes us to deny impermanence, logic is what lets us know it exists. It's a more emotional thing, as is this poem.

Hm... I wonder if John Lennon would've changed his mind had he read Neil Young's line more like this. Unfortunately, he ended up being another prime example of the first interpretation, and as far as I'm concerned, a prime example of why that interpretation is a bit flawed.