Writing, Empathy and Dealey Plaza
Empathy is a tough one.
For a writer, it’s vital. Undoubtedly, somewhere in the mix there will probably have been a few great writers who weren’t overly empathetic, but the links between our capacity to empathise and our ability to create complex, interesting, relatable characters (whether they are likeable or not) seems clear. On the other hand, sometimes being empathetic can be overwhelming. Sometimes it seems that if you would let go and allow it to, the world would devour you.
It can feel like a fine line between remaining sensitive to emotion, and drowning in it.
We visited Dealey Plaza on Sunday morning before we left Dallas. The city was cooler than it had been on Friday afternoon, and we strolled somewhat aimlessly from our hotel until we reached the Dallas JFK memorial. The brass plaque describing the loss of JFK that fateful day in November, 1963; the intriguingly created white artistic memorial almost floating above the ground on Main Street; the stark golden lettering of his name in the centre of it.
There are some places and events in life in the presence of which, a hush falls over the soul. As we walked from that simple memorial down along the streets where the motorcade had driven on November 22nd, a sombreness weighed on me. I squeezed James’s hand a little tighter. The knowledge of where our feet were inexorably taking us made each footstep seem weighted, far more significant than it was. People milled along the street, touristing just as we were; strolled over the grass, posing for photos.
Nearby, lies the building now known as the Dallas County Administration Building, but once called the Texas School Book Depository: a seven-floor building that overlooks Dealey Plaza, from the 6th floor of which some people believe Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. There are businesses that continue daily life on the lower floors, but on the 6th and 7th, time has been stopped.
As we climbed the stairs to the downstairs entrance, a whisper of reluctance warred with my indescribable need to see the remnants of that day. We walked through the 7th floor, sparsely decorated with the posters, footage and paraphernalia of Kennedy’s 1960 presidency campaign. Watching the thousands of people who gathered around him in the cities and towns he visited, the way they reached for him, it’s almost impossible not to get swept up by the romanticism of the man.
As a beacon of hope, as a symbol of a better world.
I’m not saying that JKF was without flaw: any slightly targeted Google search will reveal that he was a licentious womaniser and allegations of illegal drug use. But his death remains a tragedy. You need only look at the grief displayed around the world at his murder, and the fascination with both his life and his final moments that continues, more than fifty years later. And as I read the boards that line the wall of the 6th floor, and looked at the FBI’s shooting model, as we watched the grainy Zapruder footage of the moment he was shot and later, as I read the story of Jackie Kennedy’s experiences following his assassination, I felt like I was drowning.
Empathy is beautiful, but it’s also a danger, because it can overpower you, sink into your bones and cling to you. All I want in that moment is to strip myself raw, to open myself completely to the agony of experiencing what is little more than a tiny fraction of the encompassing grief of that day. To dwell in the smiling seconds before the shots rang out, to replay every heartbeat of Jackie Kennedy’s terrified scrambled over the car towards Special Agent Clint Hill, who clung to the car trying to reach her and the President.
Sometimes, in those moments, all I want to do, even as it flays me alive, is to let myself feel.
It’s a misery that sits with you, an agony of wanting to grieve for someone you have never known, brutally murdered decades before you were born. Those who die young are immortalised as perhaps greater than they truly were; such is the nature of tragedy. But the death of JFK felt, in many ways, like a callous assassination of the hope for a better world. Superficially reliving it by visiting the site of his assassination has left it indelibly etched on my mind and I can only hope that writing this blog post, and the next few weeks will allow it to fade more fully from my mind and cease to preoccupy me so much.
In times like this, empathy can seem more like a curse than a blessing.
— Ana.
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