Notes from a Coma (12 page)
Authors: Mike McCormack
Totalling a mere twelve words, the brevity of the text prevents us from subjecting it to any of those intra-document
analytics which enable us to compute those fault and readability indices which accommodate conclusions about the writer’s educational level; the lack of complex words using suffixes and prefixes is a further prevention. Likewise the absence of recurring phrasal patterns, adjectives, adverbs and intensifiers preclude conclusions as to the writer’s state of mind vis-à-vis such moods as stress, anger, anxiety, etc. Given the context and its intended audience one might surmise that the note was written in this abrupt manner with just such a purpose in mind.
Without mood signifiers and devoid of any circumstantial evidence concerning the writer’s life and loved ones the text might therefore be better understood as an elliptic philosophical argument. Expressed as a desire, the writer wishes to have his mind escape his mind. Implicit here is a distinction between his mind and the intentionality of his mind—his thoughts. His wish to relieve his mind from the stuff of his thinking, be they experience, memories or ideas, points to a kind of dualism which can be interpreted as a wish to achieve a peace of mind independent of thinking. While recognising that his thinking is a defining part of his identity as a conscious being, the writer now
believes it to be a process which is damaging and which, for a while, he seeks to be relieved of. His thinking is now other, an unintegrated and mendacious part of himself. One might say that the writer is at odds with his own thoughts and seeks for the time being to be rid of them.
In this context the writer’s temporal orientation is of interest. Entered as a qualifier which accepts the limited duration of the experiment the phrase “for a while” implies acknowledgement of a future wherein the writer sees himself ready to resume his cognitive selfhood once more.
It should be noted that nothing in the text indicates a suicidal or parasuicidal ideation. The text evinces none of the hostile or exculpatory themes common in suicide notes; if anything its brevity and refusal to enter any justifying arguments points to a mood of fatigue. Neither does the writer levy any of the usual value judgements on himself or on loved ones. The self-reflexiveness of the text prevents the writer from seeing himself as a social or cultural being; nowhere is the self considered as perceived of or thought of by others. The subtlety and directness with which it addresses the question is also at variance with the emotive and repetitive rhetoric of suicidal
discourse. Nowhere is the word “love” or its many synonyms used. Constrained within their narrow theme and stressful context, suicides show little ability to think about thinking and seldom if ever achieve the subtlety of this note’s embedded argument. Suicides and parasuicides do not make good philosophers.
Written within the context of the experiment the script’s severe brevity presupposes a large degree of background and contextual information on the part of the reader. This is a deliberate application—we can assume it is carefully pitched to arouse curiosity and an aura of mystery. Nevertheless, the writer’s clarity of mind and disinterest in the project as a whole are attributes which should strongly recommend him to the panel.
As you can see, Evers’ report expands somewhat on our layman’s analysis, more or less confirming in academic language what our hunch told us. That was heartening but we needed more. The next stage was the interview. JJ was one of five who’d made it through to this stage but it was still anybody’s guess as to who would be successful. Walking into the room he made an immediate impression. We were familiar with his background from his file but his height and his cheekbones took some of us aback; he was more Slavic-looking than Latin. And there was this confidence about him as well. Straight off it was obvious there would be no attempt to glad-hand us or second-guess what we wanted to hear. Yes, he had read the terms and constitution of the project, but no, he had no interest in it. Whether it was successful or not as a penal experiment did not bother him. Yes, it was a
historic opportunity, but no, he assured us, he had no wish to make a name for himself. Yes, he had discussed it with his loved ones and, no, it hadn’t been easy. However, his father was used to this degree of recklessness in his personality and if he did not exactly have his enthusiastic blessing he was here with his best wishes. Of course he anticipated a degree of media curiosity about whoever was chosen and yes he was prepared to do a number of interviews. However, beyond the fact that he was a fit young man with the necessary degree of courage, he didn’t see that his personal biography was all that relevant. This was an important point and it was well answered. The other candidates had come across far too eager to fill out the blank spaces of what we knew would be one of the stories of the year. JJ’s wariness struck a different note. It spoke the proper sense of his role in the whole thing and when, as we anticipated, the whole project became a media circus this was the type of diffidence we needed in our candidate. Finally, what was in it for him? A rest, he said simply. To go to sleep for a few months, nothing on his mind: just a rest. The impression he gave during all of this was that he was doing us a favour. His demeanour was that of a man with other options on his plate and the loss would be ours if we did not choose him. It was arrogance all right but it was the kind of arrogance you could warm to; it inspired confidence. He spoke clearly, without rambling. No, he had no questions of his own, everything was clear to him and it was the shortest of the five interviews. Watching him walk out of that room my feeling was that we’d found our candidate.
I wasn’t the only one with this feeling. A straw poll around
the table after the interviews showed him to be the favourite. He was elected by a unanimous vote at the next meeting and he was informed a few days later and told to report for a medical briefing in Beaumont Hospital. Of course the interview and the psychologist’s report were not the only deciding factors. JJ is a single man—that was important; no spouse or dependants were part of the criteria. Also his physical condition—two years working as a labourer had left JJ fitter than most men his age. His cardiovascular fitness and fat to muscle ratio were the best of all the applicants. Odd as it may seem coma patients need their bodies to sustain them. Muscular atrophy is an inevitable effect of long-term coma no matter how much physiotherapy they receive. But according to medical projections JJ had muscle to spare—two years shovelling and pushing wheelbarrows had seen to that.
That, loosely, was the procedure and evaluation process. You can read a more detailed account of the whole thing on the official website. This is a public experiment and most of the material can be accessed by the public. The only information kept private is the family details and the individual medical histories of the candidates. And of course it’s JJ’s medical history which has you here today. Let me say that the disclosure of this information is a severe embarrassment to this department. A full public apology has been issued to JJ and his loved ones and how it became public was the focus of a departmental inquiry. Unfortunately, the inquiry never reached any conclusions. Lines of inquiry just disappeared into the sand. When his medical history was lodged in the official website guest book we were appalled. That
attachment was traced to a public library in Dublin where the email account was set up. The account had never been used before nor has it been used since. That is as far as any back-trace can go. That is the difficulty of the Web, its openness and anonymity.
†
Of course that disclosure cast a shadow over JJ’s involvement. Yes, we knew of his medical history and it was discussed by the panel. But it was not considered an obstacle. JJ was not ill, mentally or physically, when he was chosen. When he presented for the project he was ten months out of St Theresa’s with a clean bill of health. The confusion about JJ’s state of mind arises as a result of all those articles which persist in confusing unhappiness with mental illness. They are not the same thing, as any psychologist will tell you. Put simply, a person who is unhappy or sad or guilty or grieving is not necessarily a sick person. Sadness is not an illness, neither is guilt or grief; it does not have a pathology despite what all the New Age spoofers would have you believe. Whatever about being desirable it is a normal part of the human condition. And to say, as some have, that JJ was not in his
right mind is pure arrogance. JJ’s right mind is a sad mind—that is his normal condition. That is not the same as saying that his condition was desirable but it is the fact of his whole existence. He is not a happy young man. We knew all this and it was explained to us by the supervising psychologist. We discussed it but did not see a problem.
And that’s it; those are the reasons and that was the process. I can assure you it’s all above board—certainly no other project in the history of this government or any other has gone through such an exacting series of checks and examinations. Medics, lawyers, accountants, environmentalists—all areas of expertise were considered. The Attorney General was consulted to make sure nothing in the project would offend the constitution—the Council of State was convened twice. The world is looking on at this, everything has to be out in the open. This project will not be filed under conspiracy in some sort of paranoid
X-Files
dossier. It’s about figures, nothing more or less: the punitive cost of the present-day prison service. And yes, I have an investment in all this. This is my constituency; JJ is one of my
constituents. I have to go before the people in two years’ time for re-election; the last thing I want is to be writing letters of condolences to loved ones and answering questions before a government subcommittee. Something going wrong is not an option.
*
Legally, there were no insuperable obstacles to the project. Harmonisation of judicial and sentencing procedures across the EU meant that the smooth running of the project was down to making sure it didn’t snag on translations of conveyancing warrants and so on. Documents had to be flawless. Months were spent haggling over them by translators and paralegal teams, calibrating every nuance and word before they were brought to effect. It’s a tribute to the work of these people that each of these warrants passed without hitch through the relevant courts and legislative bodies.
There was no shortage of volunteers. Several countries—Germany and France in particular—were inundated with applications. Most of them came from prisoners serving long-term convictions with an eye to passing three months of their sentences as quickly as possible. Most were deemed unsuitable from the off. A screening process affixed to the European Penal Commission’s initial proposal and further amended in consultation with various legal advisers significantly reduced the eligible number of volunteers. Serious offences, second offenders and likely recidivism excluded hundreds of applicants. These amendments were the first obstacles within the internal constitution of the project. The EPC worried that the amended screening process would prove overly restrictive and narrow down the pool of volunteers below a viable threshold. They were out of sympathy with the concerns of the legal bodies. However, the legal advisers would not countenance any circumvention of justice and, as one of them said in an internal memorandum, “If the twin concerns of justice and research could not be conjoined then the project had no future.” This focused minds and a joint session of both bodies published an agreed document which contained all the proposed amendments of the legal advisers within the EPC’s initial conditions. Legally and medically, each volunteer would have to meet each condition separately and independent of each other; there could be no question of an aggregate success.
It was essential from the point of view of public confidence that the project be seen to come under the authority of the EU penal system. This was to offset worries that research institutes might gain a foothold within the EU penal system which would allow them to come in and recruit volunteers for further projects. To guard against this, a redundancy clause written into the project’s constitution would come into effect at its close.
In line with this, the governor of the
Somnos
would have ultimate say on when and if the project should be aborted. A full-time medical observer liaised with the attending neurosurgeon and anaesthetist on a daily basis and so long as his report squared with the daily report of the project coordinator the project could continue. Any discrepancy between these reports or deterioration in any of the subjects’ conditions below certain paremeters would be taken as legitimate grounds to abort. Ultimately, next of kin retained an absolute right to withdraw the volunteers at any time.
†
Is this how we faded from ourselves, the protein and electrical weave of the self giving up the ghost and watching as it drifted away, with good reason, through these walls? And did we part on good terms, shake hands and go our separate ways but still, in our heart of hearts, hanging on in the expectation of a plaintive call or a postcard from the other side telling us we were missed,
wish you were here …
? Or was it bitter and acrimonious, both of us glad to be shut of each other, both of us vowing never again, not in this life?
Something in the here and now disappoints us, something in it has us turning away from it. We might say that the time and place is gone when we were identical with ourselves, when we were at one with our IDs and no margins or discrepancies threatened our ontic alignment. Now, by way of imaging technologies, information systems and bureaucracies, we find ourselves in this lateral drift from ourselves. Nothing else can account for this rush towards the abstract. We have come to live in this deferral of ourselves, drifting away on a digital tide, a hail of ones and zeroes which sift down through the ether and resolve to a lattice of pixels on screens and printouts—our very own hauntology. We have renounced the here and now, drifted to elsewhere and elsewhen, trailing in our wake a spoor of forensics and telemetry over a paraphrase of our timelines, a line of crumbs we hope one day to find our way back home over.