I recently saw Leonardo Dicaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The decimation of Hughes’ life and psyche after his accident caused me to wonder if there are some catastrophes of such magnitude that life becomes inappropriate for the victim. By escaping death in impossibly narrow terms, the survivor is thrown into a rift between what should be and what actually is. The survivor was conscious for their own physical deconstruction, and must go through a period of psychological fissure during which rituals are performed that constitute “rebirth.”
The circumstances of near death and ritualistic rebirth that Hughes underwent are strikingly similar to the story of Joseph Bueys. Both suffered a single-man plane crash. Both burned. Both survived only by the heroic intervention of another. Oddly, both accidents were in the mid-1940's. And afterwards, both were pretty crazy; but there were distinct methods to their madness. Bueys’ obsession with the felt-and-fat agents of his salvation is comparable in purpose to Hughes’ OCD quarantine regiment. Hughes patted around naked in a locked room for several months with a looping plane crash reel and fastidiously consumed nothing but glass bottled milk that he then used to organize his own urine. By covering themselves in rituals that in some way signified their death, both men sought a fetal state and a cleansing. The difference between them is mainly contextual. Bueys’ semi-psychological break ran its course in the name of Art while Hughes declined from (business) competency in shameful secret. The fact is that had Hughes chosen to inflict his quarantine in a glass box instead, his symbology would be a ripe performance vocabulary to go along with that of his kindred contemporary.
for nice anecdotes on Hughes:
http://www.solarnavigator.net/inventors/howard_hughes.htm
scroll down to the Time mag cover
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