I’ve read of the studies done regarding the effects of long-term isolation in solitary confinement on inmates, seen how researchers say it can ruin a man’s mind, and I’ve watched with my own eyes the slow descent of sane men into madness—sometimes not so slow. What I’ve never seen the experts write about, though, is what year after year of abject isolation can do to that immaterial part of our middle where hopes survive or die and the spirit resides. So please allow me to speak to you of what I’ve seen and felt during some of the harder times of my twenty-five-year SHU odyssey.
I’ve experienced times so difficult and felt boredom and loneliness to such a degree that it seemed to be a physical thing inside so thick it felt like it was choking me, trying to squeeze the sanity from my mind, the spirit from my soul, and the life from my body. I’ve seen and felt hope becoming like a foggy, ephemeral thing, hard to get ahold of, even harder to keep ahold of as the years and then decades disappeared while I stayed stuck in the emptiness of the SHU world. I’ve seen minds slipping down the slope of sanity, descending into insanity, and I’ve been terrified that I would end up like the guys around me who have cracked and become nuts. It’s a sad thing to watch a human being go insane before your eyes because he can’t handle the pressure that the box exerts on the mind, but it is sadder still to see the spirit shaken from a soul. And it is more disastrous. Sometimes the prison guards find them hanging and blue; sometimes their necks get broken when they jump from their beds, the sheet tied around the neck that’s also wrapped around the grate covering the light in the ceiling snapping taut with a pop. I’ve seen the spirit leaving men in SHU, and I have witnessed the results.
The box is a place like no other place on planet Earth. It’s a place where men full of rage can stand at their cell gates fulminating on their neighbor or neighbors, yelling and screaming and speaking some of the filthiest words that could ever come from a human mouth, do it for hours on end, and despite it all never suffer the loss of a single tooth, never get their heads knocked clean off their shoulders. You will never hear words more despicable or see mouth wars more insane than what occurs all the time in SHU, not anywhere else in the world, because there would be serious violence before any person could speak so much foulness for so long. In the box the heavy steel bars allow mouths to run with impunity when they could not otherwise do so, while the ambiance is one that is sorely conducive to an exceedingly hot sort of anger that seems to press the lips on to ridiculous extremes. Day and night I have been awakened by the sound of rage being loosed loudly on SHU gates, and I’d be a liar if I said that I haven’t at times been one of the madmen doing the yelling.
I have lived for months where the first thing I became aware of upon waking in the morning is the malodorous funk of human feces, tinged with the acrid stench of days-old urine, where I ate my breakfast, lunch, and dinner with that same stink assaulting my senses, and where the last thought I had before falling into unconscious sleep was: “Damn, it smells like shit in here.” I have felt like I was on an island surrounded by vicious sharks, flanked on both sides by mentally ill inmates who would splash their excrement all over their cells, all over the company outside of their cells, and even all over themselves. I have seen days turn into weeks that seemed like they’d never end without being able to sleep more than short snatches before I was shocked out of my dreams, and thrown back into a living nightmare, by the screams of sick men who had lost all ability to control themselves, or by the banging of the cell bars and walls being done by these same madmen. I have been so tired when sleep inside was impossible that I went outside into a snowstorm to get some rest.
The wind blew hard and snowflakes swirled around and around in the small SHU yard at Shawangunk, and I had on but one cheap prison-produced coat and a single set of state clothes beneath. To escape the biting cold I dug into the seven- or eight-foot-high mountain of snow that was piled in the center of the yard, the accumulation from inmates shoveling a narrow path to walk along the perimeter. With bare hands gone numb, I dug out a small room in that pile of snow, making myself a sort of igloo. When it was done I crawled inside, rolled onto my back on the snow-covered concrete ground, and almost instantly fell asleep, my bare head pillowed in the snow. I didn’t even have a hat to wear.
An hour or so later I was awakened by the guards come to take me back to the stink and insanity inside: “Blake, rec’s over . . .” I had gotten an hour’s straight sleep, minus the few minutes it had taken me to dig my igloo. That was more than I had gotten in weeks without being shocked awake by the ca-rack! of a sneaker being slapped into a Plexiglas shield covering the cell of an inmate who had thrown things nasty; or the thud-thud-thud! of an inmate pounding his cell wall; or bars being banged and gates being kicked and rattled; or men screaming like they’re dying and maybe wishing that they were; or to the tirade of an inmate letting loose his pent-up rage on a guard or fellow inmate, sounding every bit the lunatic that too long a time in the mind-breaking confines of the box had caused him to be.
I have been so exhausted physically, my mental strength tested to limits that can cause strong folks to snap, that I have begged God, tough guy I fancy myself, “Please, Lord, make them stop. Please let me get some peace.” As the prayers went ungranted and the insanity around me persisted, I felt my own rage rising above the exhaustion and misery—no longer now in a begging mood: “Lord, kill those motherfuckers, why don’t you!” I yelled at the Almighty, my own sanity so close to being gone that it seemed as if I were teetering along the edge of a precipice and could see down to where I’d be dropping, seeing myself shot, sanity a dead thing killed by the fall. I’d be afraid later on, terrified, when I reflected back on how close I had seemed to come to losing my mind, but at that moment all I could do was feel anger of a fiery kind: anger at the maniacs creating the noise and the stink and the madness; anger at my keepers, the real creators of this hell; anger at society for turning a blind eye to the torment and torture going on here that its tax dollars are financing; and, perhaps most of all, anger at myself for doing all that I did that never should have been done that put me into the clutches of this beastly prison system to begin with. I would be angry at the world; enraged, actually, so burning hot was what I would be feeling.
I had wet toilet paper stuffed hard into both ears, socks folded and pressed into my ears, a pillow wrapped around the sides and back of my head covering my ears, and a blanket tied around all that to hold everything else in place, lying in bed praying for sleep. But still the noise was incredible, a thunderous cacophony of insanity, sleep impossible. Inmates lost in the throes of lava-like rage firing philippics at one another for reasons even they didn’t know, threatening to kill one another’s mommas, daddies, even the children, too. Nothing is sacred in SHU. It is an environment that is so grossly abnormal, so antithetical to normal human interactions, that it twists the innards of men all around who for too long dwell there. Their minds, their morals, and their mannerisms get bent badly, ending far off center. Right becomes whatever and wrong no longer exists. Restraint becomes a burden and is unnecessary with concrete and steel separating everyone, so inmates let it go. Day after day, perhaps year after year, the anger grows, fueled by the pain caused by the conditions till rage is born and burning so hot that it too hurts.
Trying to put into words what is so unlike anything else I know or have ever experienced seems an impossible endeavor because there is nothing even remotely like it any place else to compare to, and nothing that will do to you on the inside what so many years in SHU has done to me. All that I am able to articulate about the world of a Special Housing Unit and what it is and what it does may seem terrible to you indeed, but the reality of living in this place for a full quarter of a century is even more terrible still. You would have to live it, experience it in all its aspects with the fullness of its days and struggles added up, to really appreciate and understand just how truly terrible this plight of mine has been, and how truly ugly life in the box ca
n be at times, even for just a single day.
I spent nine years in Shawangunk’s box, six years in Sullivan’s, six years in Great Meadow’s, and I’ve been here in Elmira’s SHU for four years now, and through all of this time I have never spent a single day in a Mental Health Unit cell because I attempted or threatened suicide, or for any other reason. I have thought about suicide in times past when the days had become exceedingly difficult to handle, but I’m still here. I’ve had some of my SHU neighbors succumb to the suicidal thoughts, though, choosing death over another day of life in the box. I have never bugged out myself, but I’ve known times that I came too close. I’ve had neighbors who came to SHU normal men, and I’ve seen them leave broken and not anything resembling normal anymore. I’ve seen guys give up on their dreams and lose all hope in the box, but my own hopes and dreams are still alive and well inside me. The insidious workings of the SHU program have yet to get me stuck on that meandering path to internal destruction that I have seen so many of my neighbors end up on, and perhaps this is a miracle. So thanks be to God for the miracle; I’d rather be dead than lose control of my mind.
Had I known in 1987 that I would spend the next quarter century in solitary confinement, I would certainly have killed myself. If I took a month to die and spent every minute of it in severe pain, it seems to me that on balance that fate would still be far easier to endure than the past twenty-five years have been. If I try to imagine what kind of death, even a slow one, would be worse than twenty-five years in the box—and I have tried to imagine it—I can come up with nothing. Set me afire, pummel and bludgeon me, cut me to bits, stab me, shoot me, do what you will in the worst of ways, but none of it could come close to making me feel things as cumulatively horrifying as what I’ve experienced through my years in solitary. Dying couldn’t take but a short time if you or the state were to kill me; in SHU I have died a thousand internal deaths. The sum of my quarter century’s worth of suffering has been that bad.
To some judges sitting on high who’ve never done a day in the box, maybe twenty-five years of this isn’t cruel and unusual. To folks who have an insatiable appetite for vengeance against prisoners who have committed terrible crimes, perhaps it doesn’t even matter how cruel or unusual my plight is or isn’t. For people who cannot let go of hate and know not how to forgive, no amount of remorse would matter, no level of contrition would be quite enough, only endless retribution would be right in their eyes. Like with Judge Mulroy, only an eternity in hell would suffice. But then, given even that, the unforgiving haters would not be satisfied that hell was hot enough; they’d want the heat turned up higher. Thankfully these folks are the few; in the minds of the many, at a point, enough is enough.
No matter what the world would think about things that they cannot imagine in even their worst nightmares, I know that twenty-five years in solitary confinement is utterly and certainly cruel, more so than death by an electric chair, gas chamber, lethal injection, bullet in the head, or even immolation could possibly be. The sum of the suffering caused by any of these quick deaths would be a small thing next to the sum of the suffering that this quarter century in SHU has brought to bear on me. Solitary confinement for the length of time that I have endured it, even apart from the inhuman conditions that I have too often been made to endure it in, is torture of a terrible kind. And anyone who doesn’t think so surely knows not what they are thinking.
I have served a sentence worse than death.
GUANTÁNAMO MIXTAPE
Advocates for prison reform have lobbied actively for the elimination of solitary confinement lasting more than fifteen days in American prisons. Political detainees have far fewer advocates and little recourse to justice. In January 2002, the Bush administration founded the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba to detain and interrogate enemy combatants captured during the War on Terror. Since then, hundreds of detainees have been held in indefinite detention without trial for the war crimes that they had allegedly committed. While in detention, they have been subjected to cruel and degrading treatment. Red Cross inspectors and detainees who have been released have reported abuses that constitute torture, such as sleep deprivation, physical mistreatment, and cruel confinement.
One of the more unusual methods employed by US interrogators to break the will of detainees during harsh interrogation at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Mosul, and elsewhere is the use of loud music. The 2006 edition of the US Army’s field manual for interrogation advocated the use of abusive sound as a method of interrogation, a practice corroborated by former detainees who were subject to this abuse. At Guantánamo, inmates reported being held in chains without food or water in total darkness “with loud rap or heavy metal blaring for weeks at a time.” This music played several roles during interrogation. It provoked fear, distress, and disorientation, crowding out the thoughts of the detainee and bending their will to the interrogators’. Even when played at excruciatingly high volume (often as loud as 100 decibels during harsh interrogation, the equivalent of a jackhammer), music leaves no marks on detainees and sheds no blood; it inflicts severe physicial and psychological pain without betraying any evidence of its source.
Music carried cultural content as well, which interrogators employed to intimidate and humiliate detainees. The lyrics of rap and heavy metal songs were threatening to hear, but the purring and panting of female singers like Christina Aguilera seem to have been chosen specifically to offend the religious sensibilities of Islamist prisoners. The ironic, cloying sentiment and maddening repetition of songs for children, like the “I Love You Song” by Barney and Friends, and commercial jingles, like the “Meow Mix” theme, made these tunes especially effective instruments of torture. Lastly, loud music also had an influence on US interrogators themselves, who digested the violent lyrics of heavy metal and rap songs to strip themselves of any empathy for their captives.
Here follows a sample of the songs played again and again at maximum volume to break the will of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay and other US detention centers around the world. In the context of harsh interrogation with no legal recourse or hope of freedom, these songs and others like them became the soundtrack of Hell for those subjected to them.
Christina Aguilera, “Dirrty”
Barney and Friends, “I Love You Song”
Deicide, “Fuck Your God”
Drowning Pool, “Bodies”
Eminem, “Kim”
Marilyn Manson, “The Beautiful People”
The “Meow Mix” Theme
Nine Inch Nails, “Somewhat Damaged”
Queen, “We Are the Champions”
Britney Spears, “. . . Baby One More Time”
Notes
TARTARUS, PRISON OF THE TITANS
1. Hesiod, Theogony, trans. Dorothea Wender (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 45–48.
2. ALALE! was a battle cry.
NETHERWORLD MEGAFAUNA
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Seneca, Hercules Furens, lines 782–829, ed. Margarethe Billerbeck, in Seneca, Hercules Furens: Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1999), pp. 144 and 146.
ODYSSEUS AT DEATH’S DOOR
1. Homer, The Odyssey 11.617–28 and 11.643–731, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), pp. 267–70.
SOCRATES PONDERS THE PUNISHMENT OF SOULS
1. Plato, Phaedo 113d–14c, trans. Christopher Rowe, in Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Euhyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), pp. 163–65.
INTO THE REALM OF SHADOWS
1. Virgil, The Aeneid 6.273–377, 6.439–553, 6.628–32, and 6.637–727, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking, 2006), pp. 190–93, 195–98, and 200–203.
2. Duplicitous relationships sealed the fate of these women: Phaedra was the wife of Theseus, and she fell in love with Hippolytus, his son by another woman. When Hippolytus rejected her, Phaedra told Th
eseus that he had raped her. In revenge, Theseus killed his son, and the guilt-ridden Phaedra commited suicide. Procris was a woman who suspected her husband of cheating on her. When she surprised him on a hunt, he inadvertently killed her with an arrow. In exchange for the gift of the Necklace of Harmonia, Eriphyle persuaded her husband to undertake a doomed raid on Thebes and was slain in vengeance by their son Alcmaeon.
3. A second group of ill-fated women: Evadne’s husband died at the siege of Thebes; she threw herself on his funeral pyre in grief. Pasiphaë was the queen of Crete who commited adultery with a bull, producing the Minotaur. Laodamia was the wife of Protesilaus and commited suicide when he died during the Trojan War. Caeneus was a woman named Caenis who had been raped by Poseidon. When he offered her a wish, she chose to become a man.
THE FIRE AND THE WORM
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Visio Pauli, ed. M. R. James, in Apocrypha Anecdota: A Collection of Thirteen Apocryphal Books and Fragments (Cambridge: The University Press, 1893), pp. 28–34.
2. A cubit was a unit of measurement based on the distance between a grown man’s fingertips and elbow (about eighteen inches).
THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Luke 16.19–31.
DEATH’S DEFEAT: THE HARROWING OF HELL
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Euangelium Nichodemi, ed. H. C. Kim, in The Gospel of Nicodemus: Gesta Salvatoris, edited from the Codex Einsidlensis, Einsiedeln Stiftsbibliothek, MS 326 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973), pp. 35–46.
2. Isaiah 9.1–2.
3. Luke 2.30–32.
4. John 1.29.
5. Luke 3.22.
The Penguin Book of Hell Page 23