Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Philip Seymour Hoffman, My Son William, and.......

Bob Dylan, himself no stranger to heroin, may not have been thinking about addicts or how we treat them, or how we stigmatize them, when he wrote these lyrics.  It’s cynical, I know, to ask why Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death will wake us up any more than anyone else’s death will.  Over one hundred others died of opiate deaths the day Mr. Hoffman did.  Anonymously.  And another hundred will today. Will any of those deaths help us get the message?  How many will it take for us to get the message?  Celebrity or no, they are all tortured souls, closing themselves off from the real world, shrouding their pain with drugs, suffering from the same disease.  Hence the question for the rest of us, penned by Mr. Dylan:
Yes, how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn't see ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky ?
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry ?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.