Crazy After All These Years

No past or future, nothing around us, just us outside of space and time.

Image: Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher, reddit.com

I bumped into an ex-love while racing through a crowded crosswalk. We smiled into an embrace that unmoored us from the frigid air like an enveloping blast of sidewalk grate steam on a cold city night. For a second, we were not a memory, but both-at-once, present for one another as if nothing else existed around us. A good way to understand being both at once is to think of uncontrollable laughter with someone. Laughing with another is to be both-at-once. 

I couldn’t handle it and pulled away saying, you look fantastic, fumbled some sentences while hearing nothing she said, moving on and into reflection where memories may bring me a smile, but are nothing more than objects to reflect on, a place where there is no living presence. They are something that once was.  

Why did I run instead of reminiscing with her? I was overwhelmed, scared, surprised by being crazy for her after decades, while now tethered to another. Nanoseconds after walking away, my brain cued Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years,” a sad song with an upbeat melody, an interesting juxtaposition in itself. The song has always reminded me of the revolutionary philosophy of Martin Buber’s great post-WWI work, I and Thou. 

The song describes what just happened to me. 

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

This is when we were both-at-once, no past or future, nothing around us, just us outside of space and time. I was all smiles. Although our love had faded over the years, our presence for one another showed it still burned. Still crazy after all these years. 

Friendship was not our path. We didn’t get along as friends. Having the ingredients to be both-at-once made that impossible.

Image: Martin Buber: historiahoy.com.ar

Martin Buber explained after WWI that our embrace of technology is blinding us to the lives of others, those unlike us. He wrote this eighty years before smartphones. Others are mere objects to be grasped, known, and sometimes discarded. It was understanding others as just objects that permitted Europeans to mass murder one another. WWI was the first war in which technology facilitated easy slaughter of many at a time, such as gassing the enemy. 

How does one get to a place where gassing enemies is acceptable? Hating the other keeps them locked away. Now a target to do something to, as if there to receive anything, you have for it, e.g., hatred. In war, the enemy is not a present human, but an ‘it’— a target to be destroyed. 

Buber explains we all live on a spectrum, not a linear one. It’s all around. When we are far from someone or something, they are an object I may reflect about. They are one for whom I am not entirely present. Buber identifies this as I-it communication. Think of I-thou as uncontrollable laughter with another vs. chuckling at a friend’s comment. In the first case, we often try to explain it after the event to others, but have to resign ourselves to the futility of saying “I guess you had to be there.” It was the connection of the moment, the both-at-once that cannot be merely described but has to be lived.

Buber shows a way out of this. Most of our time is spent in an I-it relationship, relating in ways in which we’re not wholly present for the other. I-thou happens unexpectedly, e.g., bursting into laughter with someone.

Such outbursts require having spent time together. For example, many couples have a date night. Most date nights are not extraordinary. Occasionally the couple would prefer not to go. But they must, not because it guarantees good times of being both-at-once, but because if they don’t go, they will never have sufficient ingredients of togetherness to be both at once. The magic of both-at-once is unpredictable but also manifests a profound relationship.

We didn’t go for beers to discuss old times like they did in the song, I was comfortable living in my memories of that time, not wanting to risk today for the past. Yet, the subject of the song went out with her and chatted over beers. 

And we talked about some old times

And we drank ourselves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Going over old times is to engage in an I-it discussion. Note that I-it isn’t a foil for I-thou. There’s no I-thou without an it. 

It is to savor the past without committing it to today or tomorrow. We experience the past, but I-thou is more than experience, for experiences can be objects of thought. One is too present when both-at-once to reflect on the I-Thou. Think again of laughter. When we come out of it, we may speak of it as incredible in helping it become an object of our history in which to reflect. And that’s what they did in the song. They reflected with smiles. Wonderful. Nevertheless, they were not both-at-once again in the conversation that night. Yes, they enjoyed one another’s company, but it was looking back to objective moments in time that they had shared, not the melding that occurs in the experiencing. 

Four in the morning

Crapped out, yawning,

Longing my life away

I'll never worry, Why should I?

It’s all gonna fade

I-thou invariably fades. It will consistently become an item of thought. It is here we risk defacing someone when reflecting on them as an item, not an inhuman item, but an object to reflect on. As the subject makes clear, why invest in what will fade? They just watch life from their window, empty of attachment and thus the opportunity to be both at once. 

Now I sit by my window

And I watch the cars.

I fear I'll do some damage

One fine day,

But I would not be convicted

By a jury of my peers

Still crazy after all these years

Unlike the song, Buber’s concern was aspiring to live a life in which they did not deface the other, turned into objects without a face, such as one who betrays another by doing something hurtful, or ugly. Murderers do not see the face of the other. 

Buber invites us to take care of those around us, to give to those we love. Date night may sometimes be uneventful, maybe boring, but nevertheless, creating love with another needs date night. Without it, one gives up the chance of being both at once, the possibility of laughing with another. Don’t stop like the subject of the song at letting joy become only an object of the past, live a way of life that allows for the prospect of being both at once, a life with laughter.