Eternal Agains

Some time ago, I was saddened to hear news of Roddy Piper’s death. Roddy was, as I recollect, a famous wrestler who reached his peak in the 1980s, not only as a professional wrestler but as an aspiring movie actor. It was around the time of his death that I started to google search a famous science fiction movie he was in, called “They Live”. This movie had a rather outlandish premise: something involving an alien conspiracy, and a pair of sunglasses that allows people to see the aliens hiding in human’s skin and clothing. Back in 1988 or so, I remember watching this movie with my dad and my brother and thinking that the special effects were rather interesting, in spite of the strange plot. It is a typical reality-bending type of movie which has one questioning what is real and what isn’t.

Google searches do have a way of getting me off topic. I ended up googling another actor in that movie, Raymond St Jacques, and this somehow brought me to a music video by his son, Sterling St Jacques: a little known video called “Again”. I was quite shocked to read that Raymond’s son had died in 1984, a few years earlier than his father, a seasoned actor who appeared in many Westerns and action adventure movies.

I watched this video by Sterling St Jacques, a bit entranced by how unusual and even silly it appears. On the one hand, it is a kind of typical early 80s music video: not much plot, a lot of headshots, an opening sequence with a fainting girl, and a very cheesy set to boot. But there was something about the singer’s facial expressions and the song’s lyrics that kept me lingering on that music video for a while.

Throughout the music video, we pretty much only see Sterling St Jacques’ face. His eyes are about to tear up in many places, as he sings the lines, “I tried before, and all I saw was sadness/but now I’m sure I’m walking toward gladness”. While the lyrics don’t sound so original in places, the range of St.Jacques’ expressions is quite startling to look at. In some places, he smiles broadly, while in other places, a single tear falls down his face. And during the whole performance, I begin to wonder, which of these emotions most fits the song itself? Is St Jacques really sure he’s walking toward gladness? We never even learn if the tears he sheds are real, or are just a camera effect. But what is amazing is the stillness of this performance. Though we only see Sterling’s face, in less than four minutes, we see a kind of reality unfolding, where love is lost, recollected, and found again in a new form. But when I hear the words “See me go again, falling in love again,” I can’t help but feel that he’s been through this one too many times: love lost, love reclaimed, sadness encroaching. And the tear that Sterling St.Jacques sheds is the knowing tear. It’s the tear that suggests a foreknowledge that perhaps all love leads to loss.

Since I saw this video back in August of this year, I have been a bit haunted by the tune, as well as the way this video is presented. Sterling’s presence and relatively still position throughout the video reminds me that the mind is not moving even when emotions appear to move. Sometimes we even say this to our participants in the meditation class: even when their bodies are moving in the opening exercise, the mind is still and clear about what’s happening. But I am also reminded of the ‘again’ of Kuan Yin, her resolve to shed tears for all sentient beings as they too descend into their ‘agains’. Over time, I believe that the heart embraces that pain, because again-ness also opens the opportunity to connect and to assist someone in the path to liberation. But again also simultaneously opens up a path to unending delusion, as one starts to spin in one’s wheels with desire or hopes.

 

References

 

Sterling St Jacques, “Again” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubg6wfX5UY4