The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [90]
For Richards, he and Anita Pallenberg fueled the fire together, and it was tumultuous. He eventually chose a companion who is the buffer between his chaotic cauldron and the world. Patti harnessed Mercury. Most everyone made it out alive, though I’m sure not without Patti bearing the brunt of the tension at times. Richards has cooled the fires and relaxed the vapors a bit, which keeps him out of jail and the grave. His part in The Stones is to re-conjure the fire when necessary. His days in the Shaman-trance are over, and he’s chosen to live out his life with a quasi-normal family and only a few cracked bones as reminders of his days maniacally stoking the fire.
The Sartre and de Beauvoir pact ended on April 15th, 1980, when Sartre died. Rather than being surrounded by family, Sartre was surrounded by his lovers and students. Though many of his lovers knew of each other and got along, there were still rifts. Instead of family fighting over inheritance, as is the often the case with traditional arrangements, Sartre’s women quarreled over his dead affections. The emotional complexity of that many open lovers seems baffling to the trained eye. I often wonder if de Beauvoir would simply have preferred a life of monogamy. Regardless of what she might have wanted, she chose a life and lived it out. On a few occasions, in the throws of passion with another woman, Sartre considered breaking the pact and marrying another. But he never did. For Sartre and de Beauvoir, getting what they needed meant maintaining their freedom and choosing independent lives, rather than embracing emotional, domestic, and financial stability that can come with monogamy.
The philosophers are now buried next to each other in Montparnasse, Paris. It’s difficult to look at their headstone without some sense of respect and bewilderment. They made it longer than most with a pact they created and ended up sharing a tombstone like my grandmother and grandfather. Hard to say which manner of relationship creates less heartache for those involved. The same goes for Charlie and Shirley, Pattie and Keith, Mick and whomever. The truth is that each of us has to choose what kind of love (or loves) will fulfill us most. Making that choice is part of being human. Heraclitus had it right when he said that life is a matter of tension. For the existentialist, the tension (Sartre even called it “nausea” in one of his plays) comes from realizing that we are responsible for every choice we make—for relationships or otherwise. In fact, civilization itself is the tense product of all human choices.
I was once in Oklahoma, having dinner with a group of friends. As the night went on and the wine kept coming, the stories and discussions got better, as they often do. I was talking about relationships with a friend. She was on her second marriage, which had lasted twenty-five years. She’s a very sweet and devoted woman, but had an interesting Okie aphorism regarding relationships: “Luke, every relationship has an element of shit to it. Staying married is a matter of finding a plate of shit you can deal with. I couldn’t deal with my first husband’s shit. I divorced him. Now, I have new shit to deal with. But this is shit I can deal with.”
Some people want domestic stability and sexual satisfaction and financial well-being and intellectual stimulation and perpetual passion and sexual freedom and personal freedom. Having everything is probably impossible. So, one has to choose a romantic path. Which path? I guess it depends on what you need.