SNP’s word of the day: Kismet
Word: Kismet
Meaning: Fate, or sometimes destiny; from the Turkish qismet or Arabic qismah, meaning “portion” or “lot.”
Usage: As an Elvis Presley song goes (thank you, songlyrics.com): “It’s kismet / When two hearts stand still, it’s destiny’s will.”
You should know it because: The death of Amy Winehouse seemed inevitable, which makes it no less sad. It was easy to remember things she sang—“love is a losing game, love is a fate resigned”—and substitute the word life for love. Love and life are nearly the same thing anyway, like fate and destiny.
Philosophically, fate implies a supernatural power, the hand of some omniscient god dividing all life into these little lots. Whatever you do, you can’t escape your boundaries. Destiny allows for a little more power of the individual; your own hand tipping the domino, triggering a series of then-unstoppable events, the final one predetermined (“meant to be,” they say). We call it “fate” when the end result is tragic, inevitable in retrospect—something we don’t want to think the victim could have wished; and so, Winehouse’s death is her “fate.” Though if you ask me, which you didn’t, I think an overdose—preceded by years of self- and substance-abuse—is more like a long suicide.
And still no less sad.
When the end result is beautiful, not tragic, we’ll say it’s destiny. Big stars are always believers in destiny, and of course they are, cause they have it on their side. Plus “it’s my destiny” sounds better than “I have never wanted to be anything but famous and if you get in the way of my ascent I will literally turn your skull to powder with my Nicholas Kirkwood heels.” No wonder Destiny’s Child, the ’90s girl group-turned-Beyoncé vehicle, was so called. Beyoncé wields destiny like a riding crop. She is a perfect machine, engineered to be famous like nobody’s damn business.
But most of us are human, not Beyoncé, and Amy Winehouse seemed desperately, painfully human. Addiction’s oft perceived as an escape, an insufficient anodyne for the pain of living. But David Foster Wallace, who wrote the greatest novel ever* to deal with addiction, Infinite Jest, thought it was part of (a desire to be part of) something bigger. In this really good Salon interview, Wallace said contemporary sadness had to do with loss of purpose, and that the “addictive impulse” is “an obvious distortion of a religious impulse.”
Winehouse’s death has been categorically added to a list that includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain: the “27 Club” (Wiki it). It seems like an eerie cosmic fate; or, it’s self-made. Her kismet was really something more like destiny, and she chased it, hard. I don’t see the coincidence in her addiction, which was as huge and undeniable as her talent. They must’ve come from the same too-humanness. The same anguish and masochism and amor fati that made her—and made Back to Black one of the best albums anyone can remember—would also break her. It’s not an accident, not a surprise.
And not less sad.
*probably. I still haven’t finished it.
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Word: Kismet
Meaning: Fate, or sometimes destiny; from the Turkish qismet or Arabic qismah, meaning “portion” or “lot.”
Usage: As an Elvis Presley song goes (thank you, songlyrics.com): “It’s kismet / When two hearts stand still, it’s destiny’s will.”
You should know it because: The death of Amy Winehouse seemed inevitable, which makes it no less sad. It was easy to remember things she sang—“love is a losing game, love is a fate resigned”—and substitute the word life for love. Love and life are nearly the same thing anyway, like fate and destiny.
Philosophically, fate implies a supernatural power, the hand of some omniscient god dividing all life into these little lots. Whatever you do, you can’t escape your boundaries. Destiny allows for a little more power of the individual; your own hand tipping the domino, triggering a series of then-unstoppable events, the final one predetermined (“meant to be,” they say). We call it “fate” when the end result is tragic, inevitable in retrospect—something we don’t want to think the victim could have wished; and so, Winehouse’s death is her “fate.” Though if you ask me, which you didn’t, I think an overdose—preceded by years of self- and substance-abuse—is more like a long suicide.
And still no less sad.
When the end result is beautiful, not tragic, we’ll say it’s destiny. Big stars are always believers in destiny, and of course they are, cause they have it on their side. Plus “it’s my destiny” sounds better than “I have never wanted to be anything but famous and if you get in the way of my ascent I will literally turn your skull to powder with my Nicholas Kirkwood heels.” No wonder Destiny’s Child, the ’90s girl group-turned-Beyoncé vehicle, was so called. Beyoncé wields destiny like a riding crop. She is a perfect machine, engineered to be famous like nobody’s damn business.
But most of us are human, not Beyoncé, and Amy Winehouse seemed desperately, painfully human. Addiction’s oft perceived as an escape, an insufficient anodyne for the pain of living. But David Foster Wallace, who wrote the greatest novel ever* to deal with addiction, Infinite Jest, thought it was part of (a desire to be part of) something bigger. In this really good Salon interview, Wallace said contemporary sadness had to do with loss of purpose, and that the “addictive impulse” is “an obvious distortion of a religious impulse.”
Winehouse’s death has been categorically added to a list that includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain: the “27 Club” (Wiki it). It seems like an eerie cosmic fate; or, it’s self-made. Her kismet was really something more like destiny, and she chased it, hard. I don’t see the coincidence in her addiction, which was as huge and undeniable as her talent. They must’ve come from the same too-humanness. The same anguish and masochism and amor fati that made her—and made Back to Black one of the best albums anyone can remember—would also break her. It’s not an accident, not a surprise.
And not less sad.
*probably. I still haven’t finished it.
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