Frank Zappa, Albert Einstein, and Dying Wishes

Does it matter if we follow the final wishes of loved ones?

Image: Frank Zappa, occhionotizie.it

In her recently published memoir, Earth to Moon, Moon Unit Zappa reveals her father Frank’s wish that upon his death, his wife Gail would sell the rights to his music to one of the corporate conglomerates Frank had spent his career opposing. Doing so would provide for her and his children and keep Gail from having to deal with the moral cesspool that is the entertainment industry. His hope to transfer control of his subversive artistic catalog was intended to create the preconditions for a happy life for his beloved widow after his passing. It was an act of care, motivated by love.

And Gail ignored it. She did not sell off the rights but became active in protecting the family’s control over Frank’s oeuvre. Generations of fans have seen his son Dweezel perform “Zappa Plays Zappa,” but beyond that, there has been little exploitation of the works of Frank Zappa. Gail has made sure of it.

In a case to the contrary, one of Albert Einstein’s dying wishes has been obeyed. Einstein spent his last years in Princeton, New Jersey, living at 112 Mercer Street. It is a modest, two-story cottage that does not even bear a plaque mentioning its former resident. In line with Einstein’s desires, it remains a private residence. Einstein made it perfectly clear that he did not want the home to become any sort of museum, and his desire has been honored.

Is there a special obligation to follow last requests? Unlike Gail Zappa, we do often treat dying wishes as sacrosanct. There appears to be some sort of deep insult to someone when we disregard their expressed final desires, indeed, more so than when they are alive. Do we, the living, have obligations to our loved ones after they have passed that we did not have when they were with us?

Not Everything Is Relative

Image: Einstein, foxnews.com

From a materialistic perspective, the power of dying wishes makes no sense. A promise is a contract between two people, each of which has dignity because they are entities with goals, dreams, and interests. When one party dies, they cease to be the sort of thing with whom one can enter a contract, and therefore the obligation becomes moot. Dead bodies are ex-people, non-people and as such are no longer the bearers of rights which eliminate our obligations to them.

But this feels wrong to us.

It seems as if we are sullying their memory by disobeying what they expressed as their explicit desire. This was a loved one who made a difference in people’s lives and obeying their dying wish may be one of the final ways in which their thoughts, their plans, their hopes, the part that made them human, can continue to impact the world. They will not be around to see it all through, if we loved them, then it seems like we acquire a responsibility to do this one last thing for them.

And this is true even if we don’t agree with what they want. Take the Einstein non-museum, for example.

Now, there is something special about the tactile connection we have with history by knowing that we are sharing space across time with those who made history. Consider the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam which was converted into a museum. Reading her diary has affected generations of young people, giving them a personal handle to grasp when trying to wrestle with the horrors that humans can inflict upon one another. But when you see the attic, when you understand your feet are on the exact spot upon which hers once stood, there is something more direct, something soul-stirring when you are aware of the physicality. It becomes even more real to you and, therefore, more life-changing.

Albert Einstein was not only a genius who changed the way we know space, time, light, matter, and energy; he was also a force for world peace. From his home on Mercer Street, he sent so many letters supporting people trying to flee Nazism during World War II that he joked to a friend that he was running a one-man immigration bureau. An Einstein museum in his last residence would serve the cause to which Einstein himself was devoted.

But Einstein did not believe in idols, and he worried a museum would turn him into one. He believed that we all have our own minds which we need to use to think rationally about how the world is and how the world ought to be. We need to figure it out for ourselves, not blindly follow someone else. A museum dedicated to him would undermine this commitment to universal autonomy. As such, the house remains just a house.

Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Remaining Spouse

Is the Einstein case different from the Zappa case? On the one hand, there are the obvious surface-level similarities. Both Albert Einstein and Frank Zappa had firm beliefs about the problematic socio-political-economic structure of the West, especially America, and sought to undermine those structures on behalf of the vulnerable, whom both identified as harmed by it. Both recognized the human mind being held hostage to pre-packaged conclusions and freeing those minds was essential to human flourishing. Both were revolutionaries whose work was considered beyond the pale, obscene for breaking the paradigms of their times in search of a better world.

But there is an important difference. Frank’s wish for Gail was intended to free her from what he saw as evil. As he puts it in “I’m the Slime”:

I am gross and perverted,

I’m obsessed and deranged.

I have existed for years,

But very little has changed.

I’m the tool of the government,

And industry too,

For I am destined to rule

And regulate you.

The last thing Frank wanted for the woman he loved was for her remaining life to be ruled by the slime.

But that wish, which Frank regarded as serving Gail’s interest in a happy life, she experienced as an insult to her autonomy. It is her life and while she and her husband could discuss their lives together, it must be her who makes her own choices.

And that choice was made with just as much care and love as his. Yes, she would wade into the slime with nothing but a pair of Zircon-encrusted tweezers and a Sears poncho for protection, but she was doing it to preserve the integrity of Frank’s lifework. To sell the rights to his music would be to throw it into the slime. After all, it was Frank who pointed out the slime’s demands:

You will obey me while I lead you

And eat the garbage that I feed you,

Until the day that we don't need you.

Don’t go for help, no one will heed you.

Your mind is totally controlled,

It has been stuffed into my mold,

And you will do as you are told,

Until the rights to you are sold.

To obey Frank would mean obeying the slime by selling the rights to Frank who was fighting against selling the rights to our humanity. It would be to betray everything he was fighting for. But it was his dying wish.

Yes, and that wish was no doubt a part of an ongoing debate between them. Spouses argue. That is part of being in a relationship where two distinct people are made into one. The parts don’t always fit together. There will always be tension. Does dying mean that you get to win the fight?

The passing of a spouse does not end the arguments. When you’ve been married to someone long enough, you know what they would say back to you, the tone they would say it in, and how long it would probably take them to apologize for the tone. The remaining partner continues the debates even in the aching absence of their life’s love.

In cases like those of Einstein, his last wish shapes the world one last time in accord with the hopes he held. In Zappa’s case, on the other hand, his last wish shaped the world of his wife, whose life remained and which now was exclusively hers, and she chose to endure the slime to continue to honor him.