By Edward Curtin - February 23, 2025

I was asking this question recently when the nightmare of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians greatly disturbed my reflections and took me in another writerly direction.

Now I wish to return to this matter that seems perpetually pertinent, a pertinence, of course, not unconnected to the dead in Gaza, Ukraine, and everywhere else. There are so many ways of getting dead – and living – that complicate my question.

I am certain of this, however, that there is much to be said for talking to the dead, even asking them if they are nostalgic.

I have just awakened from a night of dreams in which I was cavorting with a bunch of the dead and they told me many things, one of which was to pursue my question into my daydreams, which this essay may be called, in the etymological sense of that word – to essay, that is, to try, to experiment without knowing where one is going.

Surely one does not want to forget that life is an experiment into the unknown, as is its companion – death. And that all travel ends in the enigma of “arrival.”

Michel de Montaigne spoke for me when he said:

“I am by nature not melancholy, but dreamy. Since my earliest days, there is nothing with which I have occupied my mind more than with images of death. Even in the most licentious season of my life, amid ladies and games…”

So too for me, no matter how fiercely in my youth I competed on the basketball court to win accolades and the admiration of the ladies, I always felt I was performing for a deeper reason that I couldn’t articulate at the time but which I vaguely sensed.

I got a hint of it once, when after a game in which we won against our arch-rival and I played very well, a visitor to the locker room congratulated me by saying, “Great game,” and I responded with false modesty, saying “It was okay,” knowing that I did play very well but was unable to accept the compliment.

I have never forgotten that incident that suggests to me that there was something deeper than playing well and just winning a game that I was after, and that my stupid response to the compliment revealed – or did it conceal? – this from me.

So I wonder: Why am I writing this essay? To win your applause? Something more? I know I am writing it for myself, but I could keep it private.

Perhaps you will agree that the question about the dead’s nostalgia is a touchy philosophical question that might have no definitive answer. Even if we could, in modern data-driven fashion, construct a sociological survey, how would we choose a “representative” sample of the dead? Where would we find them – up, down, way out there, next to us? The thought of it seems flippant in an impossible way, which it is, but its flippancy holds a secret message.

So I asked the dead who would speak to me and got a few mixed, muffled replies. You can understand their reluctance to say anything.

If I heard correctly, one of them said, “You should ask the living.” Another, who seemed offended that I considered him dead, said, “Why are you asking me?” Most didn’t answer, which had me wondering why. Were they disgusted with us?

But then I wondered: Who are the dead? That too is a touchy question.

I have always heard that . . .

[SNIP]