The Chaos Of Death

Dead Weight

2012-01-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

One day Luke and I went to Home Depot in an I-Go car to pick up--something--for the show. On the walk to the car we arrived at an interesting question: how much does all the death weigh? How much would all of the remnants of all the dead humans weigh? As far as I know it is an impossible question to answer. We might not have been at the Home Depot when the question was posed. It is years later now, but often when FEAR comes to mind, this unanswered question comes with it, so tonight I did a little research and came up with a few, rough, rough, rough, estimates.

The first number I found is an estimate of the number of homo sapiens that have ever walked the earth. 106,000,000,000. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead)

106,000,000,000 people. Ever. Ok. Ok?

The next number I figured I'd need is the average weight of those homo sapiens over time. After perusing a few sites and google books, I came up with roughly 173 pounds. So if we multilpy the two figures we find that if all of the 106,000,000,000 stood on a scale, they would weigh 18,338,000,000,000 pounds.

The problem is that I have found no way of estimating how much of that might still be around in a form that you could objectively say is part of a dead homo sapiens.

So we get guess-y.

If we assume that all of the organic bits are gone from most of the bodies, we are left with only the skeleton, which weighs 6 or 7% of one's total body weight. That comes out to about 11.25 pounds of the average body weight for homo sapiens. If all those bones are still around in some form, no matter how broken down they may be, to dust for instance, than that leaves us with 1,191,970,000,000.

We are left with One Trillion One-Hundred-Ninety-One Billion pounds of death.

Roughly.

These calculations began in my mind as a pile that somewhat resembles this one:

Which is of a landfill in Mexico City which, according to the article it comes from, is very large and unmanaged.

FEAR at the Neo Futurarium (Fall of the House of Usher)

2011-11-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

FEAR: Fall Of The House of Usher

Chris Zdenek, John Pierson, Vanessa Valliere, Clifton Frei, Sarah Seeber, Peter Sebastian, Luke Holladay, Michael Allen Rose, Evan Hanover, Bilal Dardai, Jason Sebacher, Cayman Unterborn.

Life After Death

2011-10-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

A mother recounts her time spent with her stillborn baby in a recent Salon article.

Le Neant

2010-01-23T17:23:00.000-08:00

I don't know if someone already posted about this, but I recently came across the following text:

In Paris there is a "cabaret philosophique" called Nothingness (Le Neant), which for a certain kind of playful grotesquerie is probably unmatched in the world. Everything in this cabaret is designed to remind the customers of death, including their own. They sit at coffins instead of tables, in a palatial room hung with skeletal remains and with various texts on the nature of death. A master of ceremonies dressed as a priest makes the rounds, reminding the customers individually about the ominous pallor of their complexions. One customer is generally persuaded to get into a coffin and be wrapped up to the neck in a shroud. What fun for affluent society!

--James Luther Adams, "The Grotesque and Our Future" from The Grotesque in Art and Literature, Theological Reflections

The Chaos of Death Birthday Song music video

2009-11-02T06:22:00.000-08:00

The Fool Machine Collective Birthday Song

2009-10-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

to be recorded this weekend for posterity

One year less of life to live,
one year less of life to live,
one year less of your short difficult existence on the face of this infinitesimally small planet and soon you'll be in the ground decomposing all alone or maybe your friends will die first and you'll have no one to talk tooooooo-
One year less of life to live!
(How many more?)

The Fool Machine Collective Birthday Song

2009-10-27T11:22:00.001-07:00

to be recorded this weekend for posterity

One year less of life to live,
one year less of life to live,
one year less of your short difficult existence on the face of this infinitesimally small planet and soon you'll be in the ground decomposing all alone or maybe your friends will die first and you'll have no one to talk tooooooo-
One year less of life to live!
(How many more?)

this assignment made me re-evaluate my childhood

2009-08-11T15:12:00.001-07:00

Interior
The carpet is dirt and everywhere you look there is brown brown a dark forest of brown and there's no way out. There is a chimney but that's where the birds hide and you don't want to the birds to get you because they'll peck your little eyes out and make you sick. Don't use the doors the doors are all locked and and broken and they'd fall if you tried. So just lay on the floor and look up look at the little yellow lights all covered in web and dust. They don't shine on anything. There is no light. You can't see the old creaking furniture waiting to break and snap and cut you and give you splinters in your eyes. Stay away from the chairs because they're the meanest and given half a chance they would gobble you up.

Basement
The worst part about the basement is the air which is damp and moist. It's the air at the bottom of a well. And there are noises, strange little noises which could be the house settling, distributing its weight on the foundation, but which could also be a million tiny bugs you can't see. The cracks in the walls let them in, and they might find their way into your bed, and into your clothes. You'd never know until it was too late. The room is oppressive; it weighs on you. It makes you want to curl up behind the recliner and never ever leave. You would just become a part of it, another fixture, covered over with dirty carpet and sawdust.

Crawlspace Chris Zdenek

2009-08-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Crawlspace is dead. A fat guy killed it. Clogged it up with his giant hairy body so nothing could get past. The air could not flow, it pooled, and caused the crawlspace to suffocate. Damn fat. The earwigs did not like this. They loved the Crawlspace. Scores would gather and dance on the wood beams, swim in the dirt, and raise their families in the muck. The filth was a Paradise. It will be missed. No more cold ground, or white webs, or pitch black. The earwigs will leave the crawlspace, and devourer their way through flesh, bone, and of course, fat. The feast will cause a confusion as to what is human and what is vermin. Once there is no more fat, the earwigs will be free to leave. Free to burst out of a square opening, an opening large enough for a fat man, and into the over-world. They will be forced to live in a world of light.

Inside House Chris Zdenek

2009-08-11T14:23:00.001-07:00

The knob is sticky. Dried Brother's blood changes the color of the knob. What was once gold is now brown. The window in the door is broken and cut him. His blood covered the glass and dried. The window and door were originally used to separate the kitchen and garage, but the window is broken now and the garage is in the kitchen.

It smells. It's not a unique smell.

The carpet is blue but full of toenails. The walls are blue but covered with small hairs. There is something dumb on TV.

The kitchen/garage, living room and a bedroom are all the same room, and it's small. There are three doors in this multi room that can't open. Nobody has ever wanted to open the bathroom door. People are behind the other two doors. They are asleep and will never touch the knobs.

The Attic

2009-08-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

In the back corner of the oldest child's room there was a door to the walk in closet - and in the back of the closet was a door to the attic. Up a wooden staircase like wood off a ship, still creaking, uneven, slightly swollen here or dried and splintering there - the walk up was narrow and the ascent caused arms to go out instinctively, reaching for walls for balance and guidance in the dim light. Fingers met with the crumbling surface of bricks and sticky cobwebs. Familiar was the attic's ceiling which was at its highest point in the center, but lower and lower on either side. Unnatural and unfamiliar was the utter lack of ventilation, which started over the mouth and and nose like heated gauze and slowly grew more viscous and cloying with every step. The single unlabeled box and rusted gold Christmas ornament were quiet witnesses to the unchanging light and time that passed most rapidly in the daily life of a spider and most reliably in the unimaginably subtle changes in the wearing and eventual decay of the corners of the room. But the most singular, and even most alarming, (after a person became uneasily aware of the their labored breathing) was the worn child-sized rocking chair, seemingly made of the same wood as the floor. In fact, coming up from it almost organically - as though the room had created it out of some unknowable necessity - certainly not made for a visitor, as most anyone who approached it did so reluctantly and with a feeling so strong in their gut that they curled their toes in their shoes and clutched some part of themselves in an effort to remain upright. It was almost as though there was an odor surrounding the chair- the way a person would stop at the exact distance from it and a look would cloud up their face in a new and ugly way. Once the chair made its presence known in the soundless room - it was impossibly to turn away from it without being convinced of a click clicking on the floor - the chair rocking back and forth just enough, as though a child with tiny toes and tiny pointed shoes sat in it, pushing off with an unsettling regularity. A guest would look away from the chair and then turn back to it, sick with expectancy, certain it would be rocking just that tiny bit, despite the lack not only of a breeze - but of any real air at all. Nothing but a kind of permanent stillness - so still as to resemble a death. But with that chair there, threatening to move, there was almost a new whisper - one of hostility, the moment before violence, but with a control that made even the strongest observer feel small and undeniable human - a sudden awareness of blood and fragility of bones, thin connections to the heart and of soft places like the throat, the very bottom of the belly, even the arch of the foot...and anyone who had visited the attic began an instant move away and most certainly a descent down the stairs backward - hands again on the walls - reluctant to turn their backs on the little chair, the seat of which curled upward like a toothless smile and seemed to watch them go - down, down one simple step at a time - until they finally had to turn and take the last few stairs at a leap while holding their breath.

2009-08-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

The family room to the South of the main entrance may also be regarded as the yellow room. Yellow curtains, yellow carpet, and yellow apulstrary on the furniture. The condition of the room is not decrepit, in fact, it is quite the contrary, the sterile condition of this room would inform one that it is indeed a room claimed, but not occupied. The air is still and suffocated. The condition and presentation of the furnishings is so matriculate that one walks carefully in this room. One dares not breath. As a mortician prepares the superficial layers of a rotting corpse for a funeral presentation, one must prepare the outer most layers of their begrudged soul for the presentation before the community.

The door way to the basement is small and strangely shaped. Visitors often mistake it for a closet. Making one’s way down the stairs one must watch their head from obstruction from the corridor that directs the stairway. Only when one makes their way to the bottom are they able to view the basement. A picture of a benign and ghastly clown hangs crooked between the dirt and brown leafed clouded window. A large orange chair, the singular area of comfort, among the many boxes and hard corners remains torn and unintended as it drops foam from its left shoulder. A platform holding a most violent and miniature raceway hangs by a contraption created by an eccentric mechanic. Its very presence promises possible dismemberment.

8480

2009-08-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Interior.

The air tastes like iron and rust and sugar. The carpet dirt waits. The face on the wall is peeling and faded, but the disappointment in its eyes is not abated by the blood trickling down from forehead to sandals.

Healthy and easy recipes are bound up with digested american classics and stories of courage, soft- and hard- covered, and set into the headboard of the bed like lungs in a ribcage. Two windows, four walls, a closet, and a door.

The living room is not. The furniture is large, boxy, and wooden. The end tables are end cabinets, packed with losing magazines and papers. As the World Turns plays on an oak encased color-TV. A sweating tumbler of iced-tea and bourbon sits by a homemade ashtray with a golf ball handle on top of a squat table behind a loveseat parked three feet from the TV that holds the sleeping form of Cancer. On the edge of the puffy couch opposite the loveseat sits Cancer, snapping off the ends of green beans (the ends go in a trash bag, the middles in the metal colander sitting on the coffee table) with her daughter Pneumonia who sits cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the table. On the couch next to Cancer sits Cancer, wearing a moustache and a hat cocked at a jaunty angle. The gauzy white curtains of the bay window over the couch let in just enough dry and dusty sunlight to catch the eyes of Crib Death lying on a bed of pillows on a blue chair. Hepatitis-B and Overdose sit around the formica table in the kitchen picken’ at the crab Suicide and Suicide pulled out of the bay.

Next to the kitchen the dryer spins and from the couch in the living room I can hear the zipper on my grey sweatshirt tapping the door.

Attic.

Smoke. Splinters jut out of shoddy plywood, painted white as an afterthought, looking as though a chain of magnifying lenses extend from the wood to the eye of the viewer, giving the impression that the slightest forward movement would impale the eye, but upon stepping back the effect dissipates into the haze that caused it. Smoke. An arched ceiling, a single window, a curtain covering a hole cut into the side of the plywood that creates the 5 x 5 room in the corner of the attic. Smoke. A mattress lies flat in the center, sinking into the floor. Cutting through the dirty window is the sort of moonlight that one sees late on the night they realize that one day they will die. Muhammad Ali and Superman stand toe-to-toe in the ring, frozen into their final blows, barely illuminated by the single red glowing ember that freezes and binds everything in the room, trapping it in the smoke.

Sarah's Singularly Dreary Description of Her House

2009-08-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

Inside of the house:
At the right time of evening, a suppressive sun-sucking blue light seeps in through the window of the room. The blue moan only seems to further darken the ugly wood paneling that reaches from the floor to half way up the wall. The navy-blue stripes that complete the wall from where the wood stops up to the ceiling are as confining as prison bars. The large, moldy-pumpkin-colored, velvet couch, under the window, becomes a monster of cushions, capable of pulling anyone down for a suffocating slumber that paralyzes the body and strangles the mind. The doorway of the room exposes the light that is visible throughout the rest of the house. It is only a teasing glimmer of what resides outside of the jail that this room resembles.

Basement:
Again with the ugly wood paneling, only this time it encompasses the entirety of the walls, illuminating the image of a rabid beaver’s den. The musty brown carpet and stupidly low ceiling instantly make you feel as if you have just walked into the beaver’s trap. The overpowering brown color in the room is thick as mud. The nauseating smell of canine still lingers in this room like a stain; a ghostly reminder of the dog that was once imprisoned day after day in this murky den.

John's Singularly Dreary Descriptions of Rooms in His House

2009-07-31T00:18:00.000-07:00

Inside the house:
The two sectioned living room was once full of others furniture, dinner table with removable portion, a couch, cushioned seat faded eggshell white with splotches of brown and a television. Now it is mostly devoid of life, littered with random chairs, crisp pieces of used paper dust covered books that are piled on shelves and cascading out of china cabinet drawers. Rugs are stapled to the windows to keep out the sun, a stand up bass lies down with it’s strings coated in dirt and sweat. A light switch moves up and down but creates no light going on or off, a black chest full of shirts sits open in the middle of the room. Hundreds of records pressurized and warping packed into crates, the vinyl scratched.

The attic or crawl space:
The stairs are narrow and many, creaking at every step, first straight then twisting near the end as you enter the room. Down the center a tall man can stand but the more to the side one wanders the shorter the height allows. The floor boards are all removed in patches revealing weathered 2 by 4s, installation and electrical wiring. There is a small window at each end, allowing in just enough light on a clear day to see shadows and the silhouettes of bodies in motion. To one side an antique play-area-alcove for one or two children. Now all dusty, chalkboard cracked and lying on the floor.

Das Alte Buch: oder Reise ins Blaue hinein

2009-07-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

The true fairy-tale opens up with its child-like tone and its play with the wondrous, an area of our spirit into which other kinds of art and poetry cannot find their way. Our first, and most sacred relations with nature and the invisible world, the basis of our faith, the elements of our perception, birth, and grave, the creation around us, the necessities of our life, all this as fairy-tale and dream and cannot be resolved into what we call rational or consequent. Hence the sacredness and strange mysteriousness of all old romances. The creation, the origin of good and evil, the fall of the angels, redemption, call it what you will in Greeks, Gentiles, Jews, and Christians, the fresh originality of legend as well as of our closest everyday life, if we take the world in a sacred and serious way, is a fairy-tale.

-Ludwig Tieck

Translated from his 1835 novella "The Old Book and the Voyage into the Blue"

2009-06-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

We just received a comment on Dina's blog entry about The Chicago City Cemetery. And in this entry D. R. Torri mentioned The St. Johannes Cemetery located in Ohare Field. I never knew of the cemetery in the field. I know that a retired Fireman one night trapped me in a Dunkin' Donuts and told me many stories about burning houses and tricks Firemen would play on each other, like hiding a dummy in a closet and telling people it was a dead body. This retired fireman also talked extensively about how the first Mayor Daley annexed all of the land for O'Hare, even though the land wasn't technically in the city of Chicago. He talked about how "connected" the Mayor and the Governor were at the time. So I learned a few things on that long night in the doughnut shop, and I would often tell this story halfheartedly to others. Halfheartedly because I never took the time to look up any of the facts. So here we are now, present day, and we receive this comment about the cemetery snuggled inside the grounds, and the turmoil and court cases between the city and the St. John Church. There is much about sacred ground, relocation and interment. I don't know if all of this has been solved, the last article I found was published by the city on May 8 2009. This battle intrigues me. Even though I fear cemeteries are overflowing and taking over the world, the idea of removing dead bodies from "sacred" ground and putting them somewhere else, in my more romantic mindset, is perfect fodder for Poltergeist type happenings to occur. The employees of the Control tower all turn around for a moment and when they turn back all the planes are in a corner of the runaway stacked on top of each other. Little girls get sucked into the monitors in the terminal hallways. Little boys have battles with the toys they have brought to the airport with them, think evil clown.
Men looking in mirrors in the VIP lounge accidentally shave off their faces. Little short women are at all the gates yelling, "Don't go into the plane!" Then they change their minds and start yelling, "Go into the plane!" Then finaly during a wicked storm, where there is no seconds to be counted between lightening and thunder, skeletons and half decayed bodies begin to emerge from the cracking runways.
This is where my mind goes when I think about sacred ground nestled inside an airport. Here are some links that tell perspectives of the actual story.

A blog about the situation

St. John's accusation against the city

Chicago informs the relatives of interment.

2009-05-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

Musician and artist Marilyn Manson often talks and bases his music and artwork around the way people are fascinated with death, as well as fame (in relation). He comments on how people will use death to gain a certain immortality in the minds of others (fame). His stage name is a reference to Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson, one a symbol of fame (and early death) the other of murder. He has further commented that people are willing to die and kill if they know enough people are watching, to gain this immortality or fame. This extends into a social comment on martyrism, television, and the hypocrisy people show between their fascination and thus promotion of death, and their decryment of violence.

More produce that will one day decay or stay fresh forever

2009-05-24T09:37:00.001-07:00

I returned a bag of groceries
Accidently taken off the shelf
Before the expiration date
I came back as a bag of groceries
Accidently taken off the shelf
Before the date stamped on myself

Did a large procession wave their (Did a)
Torches as my head fell in the basket, (large pro-)
And was everybody dancing on the casket? (cession dance?)

Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over)
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do

I will never say the word
"Procrastinate" again; I'll never
See myself in the mirror with my eyes closed
I didn't apologize for
When I was eight and I made my younger brother
Have to be my personal slave

Did a large procession wave their (Did a)
Torches as my head fell in the basket, (large pro-)
And was everybody dancing on the casket? (cession dance?)

Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over)
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do

(So) So I won't
(Sit) sit at home
(And) anymore
(And) and you won't
(And) see my head in
(And) the window
(And) and I won't
(And) be around
(And) ever anymore
(And) and I'll be up there on the wall at the store

I returned a bag of groceries
Accidently taken off the shelf
Before the expiration date
I came back as a bag of groceries
Accidently taken off the shelf
Before the date stamped on myself

Did a large procession wave their (Did a)
Torches as my head fell in the basket, (large pro-)
And was everybody dancing on the casket? (cession dance?)

Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over)
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do

Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over)
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do

Zodiac Story told by Natsuki Takaya

2009-05-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

This is a version of the Chinese zodiac story as told in Fruits Basket. It touches a bit on my fearism, and some death themes. I think its a nice story:

Once upon a time in a particular place there lived a person. The person was alone for a long, long time. After leaving the mountain this person learned that many, many people lived below it. But the person was still alone. Even with a thousand powers and a thousand lives and a thousand memories. The person learned that such things were different from what most other people had. And thus developed a fear of other people. A fear of getting hurt. Despite having many powers, the person was afraid of being different from others.
One day a cat came to visit. The person was bewildered by the sudden visitor. The cat bowed his head reverently. “I have humbly watched you for a long time,” he said. “You are a very mysterious person. I cannot stop being attracted to you. I am merely a stray cat, but please let me be by your side. Please Lord God.”
From that time on, the cat kept his promise, he never left God’s side. Not even for a moment. And that made God very very happy.
Suddenly, God had an idea, “I see, maybe I can get along with others as long as those others aren’t people. If they know the same feelings that I do, maybe I can have a pleasant banquet with them.” God wrote many, many invitations, and sent out many many invitations. As a result, 12 animals came to see God. God was thus surrounded by 13 animals in all. They all held a banquet every night the moon sparkled. They sang and danced and laughed together. And God too laughed out loud for the first time. The moon quietly watched over the inhuman banquet. But one night the cat collapsed. Nothing could be done. His life had run out.
They all cried. It made them realize, that some day everyone would die. The banquets would come to an end. No matter how much they enjoyed them, no matter how dazzling and precious they were. God recited a signal chant, and drew a circle on a sake cup. God made the cat drink, and then spoke to everyone. “Our bond,” God said, “I will now make it eternal. Even if I or all of you die an rot away, we will be tied together by an eternal bond. However many times we die, however many time we are reborn, just as before, we will have our countless banquets. We will all be friends, until the end of time. We will be permanent.”
Everyone nodded empathetically. The rat was the first to drink. Next the ox, next the tiger, next the rabbit. All in order they shared the drink of their vow. When finally the boar drank, the cat started to cry his breath faint.
“My Lord God, my Lord God, why did you make me drink? My Lord, I don’t want eternity. I don’t need permanence.”
Those words were unexpected. To God and the others, they were words of rejection. It devastated them. They scolded and admonished the cat. Even so the cat spoke, “My Lord God, my Lord God, I know its frightening, but let us accept that things end. I know it’s sad, but let us accept that lives depart. My Lord God, I know it was only for a short time, but I was happy to be with you. If one more time we both die and are reborn, and if we meet again. I don’t want to only see you in the moonlight. I want to see you smiling under the light of the sun as well. Next time I don’t want to meet you with only those of us here, I want to meet you while you are smiling within a ring of people. “
The cat twitched his tail one last time and died. But no one cared about the cat anymore. They were filled with the sense that the cat had betrayed them.
Sometime after that, one after the other, the others died. Finally after the dragon died, God was left all alone again. And then another day came, a day when even God died. But God wasn’t afraid, because God was supported by the promise made with the others. “Again. We’ll hold our banquets. Once again, and as many times as we want. For as long as we wish, without changing. I may be sad and alone now, but everyone is waiting on the other side of our promise.”

Strange is the world

2009-04-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Strange is the world

Why should men

Receive life in this world?

Men's lives are as meaningless

As the lives of insects

The terrible folly

Of such suffering

A man lives but

As briefly as a flower

Destined all too soon

To decay into the stink of flesh

Humanity strives

All its days

To sear its own flesh

In the flames of base desire

Exposing itself To Fate's Five Calamities

Heaping karma upon karma

All that awaits Man

At the end

Of his travails

Is the stench of rotting flesh

That will yet blossom into flower

Its foul odor rendered

Into sweet perfume

Oh, fascinating

The life of Man

Oh, fascinating

-The Spirit's song from Akira Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood," the truest adaptation of "Macbeth" on film.

Asat

2009-04-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

Asat (Sanskrit) [from a not + sat being from the verbal root as to be] Not being, non-being; used in the Indian philosophies with two meanings almost diametrically opposed: firstly, as the false, the unreal, or the manifested universe, in contrast with sat, the real; secondly, in a profoundly mystical sense, as all that is beyond or higher than sat. "Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana" (SD 2:449-50). In its lower sense, asat signifies the realms of objective nature built out of and from the various prakritis, and therefore regarded as illusory in contrast to the enduring Be-ness or sat. In its higher sense asat is that boundless and eternal metaphysical essence of space out of which, in which, and from which even sat or Be-ness itself is and endures. Asat here is parabrahman-mulaprakriti in its most abstract meaning.

-From the Sanskrit Dictionary. The tree is called: ashvattha.

We Are The Lucky Ones

2009-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

As a companion piece to my dark and dreary musings on the fear of the unknown, I present to you now an excerpt from Richard Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow." It deals with some of the things we've covered in our fearism posts - pre-birth, birth, death, etc. - and offers a different perspective on the unknown.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

The present moves from the past to the future, like a tiny spotlight, inching its way along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything behind the spotlight is in darkness, the darkness of the dead past. Everything ahead of the spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. The odds of your century being the one in the spotlight are the same as the odds that a penny, tossed down at random, will land on a particular ant crawling somewhere along the road from New York to San Francisco. In other words, it is overwhelmingly probable that you are dead.

In spite of these odds, you will notice that you are, as a matter of fact, alive. People whom the spotlight has already passed over, and people whom the spotlight has not reached, are in no position to read a book.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?

Excerpt from RichardDawkins.net.
Image by Dani Jones.

By the Void!

2009-04-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve come to think that fear of death is nothing more than a biological mechanism that evolved to keep us alive. None of us has any recollection of the situation before birth. I have yet to meet anybody who feels traumatized by the state of affairs before they came to exist. If existence is far superior to non-existence, we should have negative reactions to non-existence regardless of whether it occurs before or after our lives.

Which brings me to a question: would you prefer to die tomorrow or never have existed?

This is from the blog Philosophy of the Void. I love the word void. This concept interested me when it was brought up in rehearsal. That there is nothing to fear of non-existence, that the time before you are born should be the same as after you are dead. It all seems a little too simple, but still interesting, and not the common way of viewing life.

Patterns, Change, and Rituals, makes the Death go away!

2009-04-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile, when writing I will focus on a character that is obsessed with one detail or one activity (a ritual). Writing this type of study helped my own mind calm down, while simultaneously building an exciting wall of endurable anxiety around myself. In the writing I could feel my mind and vision narrowing like someone has physically put blinders on me. It made the rest of the world and all my real anxieties dissipate for awhile. What if I didn’t have that release? I sometimes think I would lose my mind, and losing my mind, in my mind, goes hand-in-hand with death. I often acquaint losing my mind to the old figure of speech, “on the edge.” In my anxiety about losing control the “edge” is certain death. Here is some segments I selected from a paper on OCD I found online by Matt Shollenberger, Ph.D.

1: Obsessive-compulsive disorder is actually two disorders: the obsessive part is unwanted thoughts, while the compulsive part is rituals born out of these negative thoughts.

2: Obsessions are repetitive, intrusive, negative thoughts that cannot be stopped, and are rarely controlled through will power. They tend to be uncontrolled thoughts driven by fear; fear of
contamination, fear of not doing things perfectly, fear of harming oneself or others, or fear of death.

3: People with OCD may fear that their negative thoughts may cause a person to be harmed, which causes them more fear and anxiety.

4: Other rituals may have nothing to do with the obsession plaguing the OCD mind. For example, a person may suffer from morbid thoughts and in an attempt to calm himself or herself, that person may walk three times in a circle reciting the alphabet backward. The person may be fully aware that his or her compulsive ritual has nothing to do with thoughts of death, yet he or she cannot stop.

5: Part of the treatment involves teaching the person the irrationality and uselessness of his or her rituals. Treatment in counseling may involve teaching the person more logical, effective ways of combating his or her fears and anxieties.

6: Change is not accepted in their routines, and when it is forced upon them they may become depressed, anxious, or angry. Part of therapy may involve teaching acceptance of change and understanding of the unreasonable demands OCD allows people to place on themselves and the world.

This idea of changed is now stuck in my head. I don’t yet understand how to incorporate it, but change is what our center figure may be fearing more than death itself. The unknown, as we have mentioned a few times in our rehearsals. Simple change and rituals are concepts we can easily explore. Setting patterns and breaking them.

2009-04-21T23:01:00.000-07:00

This is a small and abridged segment from Allan Feldman's "Welefare Economics and Social Choice Theory, 2nd Ed." It is somewhat disturbing to me to know that there is a clear calculus for a man's worth. This is only one of the models presented in this book.

Chapter 11

LIFE AND DEATH CHOICES

1. Introduction

…what if the population changes? For instance, what if a set of individuals {1, 2, . . . , n} is attempting to choose between alternatives x and y, but x will kill oﬀ some of the people, and y will add additional people?

In fact, this is an extremely common question that policy makers and economists face almost every day. For instance: Should a state spend $5 million replacing a highway if those repairs will likely result in 1 less traffic fatality in the next year? Should a government spend $10 billion on AIDS drugs if those drugs will prevent 1,000 deaths? Should a government prohibit a sport or leisure activity if that sport creates a 1/6 probability of death per play (e.g., Russian roulette with a 6-chamber revolver)? Should it prohibit a sport or leisure activity if that sport creates a 1/1,000,000 probability of death per day (e.g., downhill skiing)?

Is it better for a country to have a higher population or lower? If it is better to have more people, should this be done by encouraging births, or increasing life expectancy? If it is better to have fewer people, is it better to reduce birth rates or increase deaths? …

2. Economic Model

The Money Value of a Life Placing a money value on a life in legal disputes is an ancient practice. The modern Anglo-American legal treatment of accidental killing, which started in the mid 19th century, typically provides that dependents of a deceased person may recover for pecuniary losses they suffer, especially lost wages the deceased would have provided. The deceased is primarily viewed as a money making machine. The value of his life is mainly given by lifetime income or earnings, possibly net of expenses needed to maintain the machine (e.g., food, clothing, etc.), possibly discounted to present value, and possibly augmented by the value of non-paid services provided. This can be called the human capital approach: the person is valued as a (human) money making machine.

The human capital approach to valuing lives, however, ignores how much the deceased himself would value being alive.

3. A Formal Version of the Economic Model

We will now develop a relatively simple model to show how one individual “computes” the value of his life.

In this model there is just one person, so we will dispense with an identifying subscript. There are two time periods. In period 1, the planning or ex-ante period, he decides on how to allocate his spending. He can spend on consumption, on precaution, or on insurance. Between period 1 and period 2, the ex-post period, events unfold, which leave him either alive, or dead. The probability that he ends up alive in period 2 depends on how much he spends on precaution in period 1. If he is alive, he consumes the amount he chose in period 1. If he is dead, the amount he would have consumed, plus the value of any insurance policy he bought, is bequeathed to his heirs.

We use the following notation:

x = consumption in period 2 (or part of bequest, if he is dead)

y = precaution expenditure

z = insurance expenditure

w = x + y + z = initial cash endowment

q(y) = probability he is alive in period 2

V = face value of any life insurance policy he buys

We assume the q(y) function is nicely behaved: 0 <>

y, q(y) increasing in y, concave, and smooth.

We assume that the cost of life insurance would reﬂect the actual odds that he will die, so that z = V · (1 − q(y)). That is, the price of insurance

is “actuarially fair.”

f (x) = xα if alive

g (x + V ) = (x + V )α − K if dead.

Anti-Life Equation

2009-04-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Anti-Life Equation is the fictional equation for which the DC Comics villain Darkseid is searching in the Jack Kirby's Fourth World setting. It is for this reason that he sends his forces to Earth, as he believes part of the equation exists in the human subconscious. Various comics have defined the equation in different ways, but a common interpretation seems to be that the equation is a mathematical proof of the futility of living.

loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x shame x failure x judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side

Darkseid first became aware of the equation approximately 300 years ago when he made contact with the people of Mars. Upon learning of the Martian philosophy that free will could be defined by a "Life Equation", Darkseid postulated that there must exist a negative equivalent[1].
Jack Kirby's original comics established the Anti-Life Equation as giving the being who learns it power to dominate the will of all sentient and sapient races. It is called the Anti-Life Equation because "if someone possesses absolute control over you - you're not really alive."[2

By speaking said equation, Darkseid can insert the full formula into people's minds, giving them the mathematical certainty that life, hope and freedom are all pointless. According to Oracle, who barely escaped the "full" effects of the Equation by shutting down the entire Internet just in time, the Anti-Life Equation further states that the only point in anything is to conform to Darkseid's will[3].

the Anti-Life Equation is revealed as a living shadow-based deity that corrupts and destroys everything it touches.

First Paragraph of First Chapter of "speak, memory" by Vladimir Nabokov

2009-04-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people- and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated."

2009-04-15T23:49:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was very young, five or six, I was troubled and could not sleep. I was overcome with a confusing sense of dread. My mother, hearing that I was up, came out bleary eyed wondering what I was doing out of bed. I remember telling her that I was afraid of life. My mother quickly told me that life is nothing to fear and it was death that I should be afraid of. I was then sent to bed.

The thought of being afraid of life lingered while I laid in bed that night. I don’t know what I meant by it. I want to say that I sensed the burden of choices that were ahead of me. Choices that seemed so important. Choices that would shape who I am and what I would become. I felt paralyzed by those choices. My eyes grew weary but my mind raced as I stared at the ceiling. I was afraid. I had no idea how I would make any decisions for myself. I was afraid that I would grow up lame and would have to own my lameness. I wanted to hit a reset button but there is no reset button. I tried to turn my mind to other things. Towards friends, a funny joke, fart sounds. I’ll be stuck with my decisions and whatever I become. In the end, death will come and finalize all of my decisions. They won’t be able to be taken back. I’ll die with them. Outside a car drove by, it’s fleeting lights washed across an otherwise dim and still room.

2009-04-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

He has a black bean inside him, at the base and center. Tissue floats out from it, translucent white and waving from his underwater belly. Sometimes when he is sleeping I think I could pull it out of his eye, slide my finger down his nose into the pinky flesh and scoop it out like a pellet, hard and coming out with a curl of my finger, dropping to the floor- his death that he was born with. But it is deeper down and untouchable, waiting and not spinning or jostling and not making sound. Absent sound. Absent movement. Almost confident. But mostly just nestled – a sure thing- more certain than anything. I want to pluck it out but all of his soft insides curl around it, humming.

Stage Directions for a Fearism

2009-04-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

Three people stand on stage, each walking on pieces of bright tape that have been made into circles. A fourth, outside person, tears a piece of tape from one person’s circle and everyone stops to watch. The torn person changes direction while the others change the way/ the manner in which they are walking. This repeats for all three circles until each person is essentially walking back and forth on a disconnected circle (a line). Each time the walkers get to an end of the line they change direction and they change their manner of walking (as though if they change their manner, their circles will be made whole again) until finally, one by one, they step off their lines and are completely still.

Clif knows a third person who is afraid:

2009-04-15T19:22:00.001-07:00

Fear of bad newspaper headlines, Mayan numbers, climate change, loss of polar magnetism, and/or large objects hurtling from space at mindbending speeds:  

is the fear of global catastrophe 
is the fear of that which is beyond control 
is the fear of the loss of control 
is the fear of being defenseless 
is the fear of not being able to prevent the end of this existence 
is the fear of there not being another existence 
is the fear of non-being 
is the fear of death

It’s 1993 on the T.V. and he has wrapped himself up in 1994,
v-necked and allowing for deep breathing and openness and interconnectedness, but he recalls:

driving in 2001, listening to 96x; hearing the friend of a classmate on the radio telling him an asteroid has a date with the planet some night in 2017 and in

2009 he sits and starts to shake and thinks of
armageddon commercials,
reports of rising waters,
the pot-smoking engineer playing Dr. Mario and warning him that the poles are losing their ability to point a compass north and
he just shivers and
runs in circles, but not away from the global catastrophe that awaits.

Running in circles, not cutting through the floor, not stirring anything but the air in the sitting room, exerting control over nothing he fears, in the air or space, because the air and space are quite beyond his control, he quite involuntarily becomes nauseous and falls, quite lacking the self-control to prevent himself from vomiting on the hardwood, violently, eyes tearing,

on all fours, insensible, he thrashes about, searching for something upon which to steady himself, he finds the T.V. stand to be wheeled when he tries to lift himself up, it slides, the T.V. falls,
he is defenseless,
unable to prevent flashing/singing 1993 from crashing down upon him in high definition.

There is a fire now.

1993 is broken and so is his shoulder. He has also received quite a blow to the spine. He cannot move, other than to quake and tremble with a • b + c - d=y (let a represent the thing you won’t tell anyone, b=smashing force, c=the dark, d=dignity, y=you), as he watches the flames lick up the walls, but he does not scream out because all of his energy has run up into his mind to consider this:

he did not exist before birth and he was unable to prevent being born, thus he will be unable to prevent what is shaping up to look a lot like impending death, thus he is as unable to prevent the end of his existence as he was to prevent its start,

and unless you have been in a slightly prolonged death experience you cannot challenge the fact that he could, or would, have been thinking such things Mr. or Ms. Reality-Cop, which, you of all people should know, is impossible because you are dead and probably unable to read internet bloggings,

burning alive is probably no good, there is a shard of glass he could bleed himself out with, but he is clinging to every second,
not remembering the time before he was born, he worries
there will be no existence to follow, and
so he must savor the exquisite pain of what remains.

1994 is turning to ash around his body, v-neck not having much to do with breathing anymore and there is nothing to sweater because his skin will no longer let moisture pass through its blackening pores.

His thoughts are all that is left, but they seem to rattle around, trying to shake the idea that he will cease to be.

They solidify on an image of what is not even the color white nor the absence of light nor bright nor black.

The 90’s and all other decades become irrelevant as the neighbors dog runs out of the buildings front door. He is cold because they cut off all of his hair and his head looks much larger than his body.

Fearism Story: Fear of others

2009-04-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

The Fear of others is the fear of judgment is the fear of rejection is the fear of loss is the fear of being alone is the fear of having nothing is the fear of being nothing is the fear of death

Janet is so scared all the time. People people everywhere, she hates people. She doesn't want anything to do with them. Why do they talk to her, why do the look at her, why do they, why do they? No peace for Janet, always people, but never peace. A person will talk to her and look at her, and she knows, is absolutely certain. She is clearly not good enough for people. People are much better than Janet, they are much more firm and smell so nice, look so fine, taste so ripe and sound so clear. People hate what Janet lacks. They say, "she isn't like me at all."

Janet has a secret. She tried once. To be with others, but people rejected her. People wanted nothing to do with Janet. People gave Janet loss. She greeted loss, and loss stuck with Janet. Never left Janet's side. Loss became a close friend to Janet, holding onto her ribs. Janet carried loss around and it would climb up her ribs and into her ear and speak the only word it could say. Alone. Alone Alone Alone Alone. Janet was alone. There was just Janet. Just Janet. Alone. There was nothing else in the world. Janet had nothing but Janet.

As Janet drifted in her void, she looked around the nothing and a thought came to life in her head. "If everything is nothing, how could I possibly be something?" Panicked, she scrambled to define herself, her role in the void. Something that had purpose, meaning, texture, but it was useless, there was nothing. All Janet could do was become nothing. All Janet could do was turn to death.

Hi Death, I'm Janet

Hi Janet I'm Death

Pause

Janet?

Yes Death

Would you like to become me? Would you like to be Death?

Gee Death, I would be honored.

Luke's fearism as silent film in one act

2009-04-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Fear of the unknown/unidentified
is the fear of lack of knowledge
is the fear of powerlessness
is the fear of inefficacy
is the fear of being forgotten
is the fear of temporality
is the fear of death

interior, victorian parlor.

everything is lace and candles. in the center of the room is a circular table, draped in white. on the table sits a box. a black box. it absorbs the light around it. one might even say it exudes darkness. in a high-backed chair in the corner of the room sits a man. there is one door in the room. it is closed.

the man rises from the chair with precision. he strides towards the table with purpose. he stops short. stares at the box. he is making a decision. he continues towards the table, moving more slowly. he cannot make himself move closer. he does not know why.

the man moves around the room. he collects burning candles from various surfaces and places them around the edge of the table. the box remains unchanged. it does not move. it does not brighten. it remains.

the man begins to panic. his eyes, shifting, focus on the door. he runs to it. his hand pauses on the knob. he could open it. but they will not let him out. they will not let him out until he opens the box. the man returns to his chair.

he stares at the box. the candles are going out. no one is coming. he cannot see. slowly, the man dies.

John's Fearism as Third Person Narrative

2009-04-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

The Fear of Stepping on the Cracks in the sidewalk Is the Fear of breaking a pattern Is the Fear of disorder Is the Fear of losing control Is the Fear of the non-existence of meaning in a random universe Is the Fear of having no purpose Is the fear of being nothing in a world of nothing and a non-thing is as if dead.

After many years of fearing the cracks he chose to step on the third one on the way to the corner store.

A fraction of a moment later he regretted his decision and continued to walk in between the cracks. But his gate, his way of walking altered slightly, it was unfamiliar to him. He was going to turn around and begin again to make it better, but that didn’t seem to make sense.

He looked back towards his destination. Looking into the distance he couldn’t distinguish the difference between the shape of the minimart and the shape of the planned parenthood building. The letters on the signs no longer seemed to hold together as words, they were just lines and squiggles. He could no longer keep his eyes focused so they wandered uncontrollably.

Had he turned around accidentally or was he facing his home? How many times had he turned around? Now there seemed to be no difference between where he was and where he was going. He began to run in random directions, sometimes jumping sometimes veering sometimes turning completely around again.

He tried to say to himself that this was progress, whether forward or back, but he assumed he was just tricking himself. Was he always tricking himself? There is no home, there is no direction that leads anywhere, no history.

So he stopped. Was he standing or sitting, or was he even there anymore. Was that light coming towards him, away, was it always there? He felt the steal against his leg and then he felt nothing.

Naming the Dead

2009-04-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

They call them "Tent Girl", "Johnny Dupage", and "Homestead". These are among the substitute names given to the unidentified dead, bodies that have yet to be connected to a history, family, or life. There are thousands of them which are known. There are thousands more that have not been reported, or put in the appropriate databases and lists. Determining the true identities of these Does is difficult and time-consuming - most police and medical examiners don't have the time or resources to devote. Enter the Doe Network.

The Doe Network is a product of the Internet age - a collection of individual citizens brought together across great distances for a common cause. They share resources, communicate about cases, and work with law enforcement in the hope that they can find names for the unidentified dead. The first article I read about the Network is archived here. I still cry when I read it. It follows one of the original members, Todd Matthews, in his search for the identity of "Tent Girl", so named for the piece of canvas she was wrapped in when discovered. There is a similar article with more information here.

The second article contains this quote from Matthews:

"The one real fear in life is not death -- the greatest monster of all is the unknown. Particularly when the location of a loved one is the unknown. I see folks with missing loved ones literally writhing in pain."

This gives a little insight into the reasons why so many Network volunteers spend their free time hunched over their computers, scouring medical records and message boards for the smallest clue that might lead to an identification.

The fearism I posted started with "fear of the unknown/unidentified". The Doe Network and what I learned about missing persons was my inspiration for that. My fears about the unknown are largely related to becoming unknown myself - going through life without making a difference, or affecting other people in a significant way. To die without a name is one of the worst things I can imagine. I suspect many of the volunteers feel the same way - or they empathize with those left behind, and feel an obligation to bring closure to long-forgotten cases.

Their obsession with the dead is a help to families, medical personnel, and law enforcement in a very real way. Hopefully our obsession will be a help in its own strange way.

Photo courtesy of Kim Fowles.

Remember Me

2009-04-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

Building on Dina's Death-related radio listening, last week's This American Life also touched on the topic:

Stories about people who are remembered very differently than they'd wished. The ghost of a kindly, distinguished philanthropist supposedly plays pranks on guests at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. A dying mother makes a tape for her developmentally disabled daughter, hoping she'll watch it someday, knowing she might not.

Prologue.

Host Ira Glass talks to Laura Mayer, editor of the New Trier Township High School yearbook, about the renegade student who jumps into as many club photos as he can. And contributing editor Jack Hitt explains how this impulse—to be remembered as someone you're not—can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin. It turns out even the man who invented bifocals padded his resume for history. The key on the kite story, for instance? Probably not true. (9 minutes)

Act One. Thinking Inside the Box.

David Wilcox tells the story of how his mother, who was dying of lung cancer, made a short videotape for his sister, who is severely developmentally disabled. She hoped the tape would become a daily part of her daughter's life, like the other music and movies she liked to play, that she would watch it and remember her mother. But she also knew her daughter might never even see it. (9 minutes)

And we hear two stories from people who recorded their own memories in a booth in Grand Central Station in New York, as part of the StoryCorps project. The first is Don "Moses" Lerman, a champion eater who's thought a lot about what he'll be remembered for. The second is Ronald Ruiz, a bus driver, who's never forgotten one of his passengers. StoryCorps funders include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute. (3 minutes)

Act Two. Where's Walter?

Starlee Kine rents a room at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where a ghost supposedly plays pranks on the guests and staff. The ghost's name is Walter, for Walter Schroeder, the guy who originally built the hotel in the 1920s. It turns out Walter was a successful businessman and a kindly philanthropist who threw great dinner parties. So why would he bother haunting a Ramada? Starlee originally wrote and read a version of this story for The Little Gray Books Lecture Series. (14 minutes)

And...two more stories about remembering, from StoryCorps. The first is a conversation between Ralph Tremonte and and Donald Weiss, who were in mental institutions together as kids, and are reunited after 40 years. The second is Brad Skow talking to his mother, Mary Lou Maher, who gave him up for adoption when she was 17. (4 minutes)

Act Three. Giving Up the Ghosts.

Writer Shalom Auslander reads his short story about how he decided to start forgetting the dead, even though his job required him to remember. Shalom's book of short stories is called Beware of God. (15 minutes)

Song: "Live and Let Die," Guns N' Roses

Listen here.

The Death Show

2009-04-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday afternoon I listened to a beautiful episode of Third Coast International's Re:Sound entitled The Death Show:

April 4, 2009 (#89)- The Death Show
Originally aired on April 12, 2008

Little Black Train
Nora Harrington - Independent Producer, USA

A year and a half after Nora Harrington's father died, at the age of 53, she was still trying to sort through her feelings about mortality. So she did something that most of us avoid: she confronted the topic head-on. She had a series of frank, intimate conversations about the end of life with a few elderly friends, her grandfather, and her mother. What results is a story that's sometimes profound, sometimes poignant, and sometimes surprisingly funny.

The Dead Can't Do You Nothin'
Katie Mingle - Independent Producer, USA

While in New Orleans, Katie Mingle poked around a pauper's graveyard -- even spent a night there -- hoping to encounter a ghost. Instead she befriended some gravediggers and learned a few truths about life and death in the Big Easy.

Live? Die? Kill?
Karen Michel - Independent Producer, USA

When someone dies, when someone is born, it's a little like the world stops turning for the people who are most closely affected. You can't help but think about the big questions: who are we, what is life about, why are we here... These things were on the mind of Karen Michel when she moved to Pleasant Valley, NY right after September 11th. She wanted to find out what was really important to people at this critical time. So she devised three very short, very big questions that got the heart of people's central beliefs and she started asking them.

You can listen to the episode here.

Sketching Death

2009-04-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samsa1973/sets/1144252/
I worked in a gallery in Providence, RI and I was looking for artists who had work to show...William Schaff invited me to his apartment to take a look at his stuff. At the time (2005?) his front room had a bunch of pleasant sketches of his dog up on the wall. But in the second room, the main living room, there were a lot of scratchboards of piles of dead bodies and politicians vomitting skeletons. When he saw how much we liked his work he took us into another room in which he had many sketches and scratchboards of holocaust victims. It's true that the images were...gruesome...? But there was something about them that made me feel like Wil wanted to look at death as directly as possible - in a way that was far more courageous than the rest of us. What I would most like to post here is a link to his Flickr account, in which you can see the sketches he did of his dying father. The scratchboard work seems appropriate for some of his other images of death - carving images out of the dark.

Sarah's Fearism Storyyyy

2009-04-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

There is a war going on. A war between the red team and the blue team. People are being slaughtered like cow.

The blue and read teams are such great enemies. Such enemies that if a blue as seen on red land they could be shot immediately. The same tragic sentence is also true to any red seen on blue land. A hatered so great
that the two teams constantly stay on gaurd, waiting for the other team to prevoke a feud.

. . .

My family and I are on the red team. The red team is known for its extreme scientists. Mad scienctists, recognized for their ingenious knowledge of equations and logic.
My father has the knowledge to move the stars around and realine the entire solar system. My mother can genetically alter anything from a cactus to a dinosour. My brother and sister died in the womb. My parents say my brother killed my sister during a fight over the chromosome that held the answer to some very epic scientific mystery.

Me, well I have the ablilty to solve any equation. My ability to disect and arrange information in my head is so sharp, I can solve problems before they even occur.

As far as my parents know I am at the Jorba College of Extreme Intellect. It's a red team college filled with genious from all forms of science and mathematics. I can alreay solve every equation, there is nothing to learn for me there. There I am stuck with no chance of growth.

Where I really am is the School of Profound Language, deep within the hills of the blue side. The blue team is known for their exquisit linguistics and wit. The blue team is full of people who can speak, write, and communicate with serious eloquence.

I lead a duel life, scared of associating myself to one team. I am afraid to live a life of settlement and stability on the red side, but I am also afraid for my physical life if anyone were to find out that I am a red on the blue side.

I am expecting a child with one on the blue team.

. . .

My parents got a call from the Jorba College of Extreme Intellect today. A government offical followed by a few squat cars arrived at the school today looking for me. "Number 7627. where is number 7627?" a large man in a gray suite questioned the school's executives.

A number! a number in an equation. They knew that I was missing from the equation.

When they could not find me at the institution they went straight to my parent's home. They took my parents into custody, and threathened them with death if I was not found and turned in.

I have two options. One, return home and be arrested and killed. Shame my parents and their fortune. Once the blue side finds out they would kill my child on the way.

Two, stay on the blue side where I have created life, and let my parents die. If either of these options occur I will have created risk for the fate of both teams. I could start an uproar between the two teams putting everyone in serious danger of each other.

Affliation with either group will cause death.

I have created an equation where the only answer is death. Whether it is the deaths of my parents, my child and the one associated, or of many other team members; I have control of the variables. What I choose to be will decide whose fate is on the other side of the equal sign.

. . .

:::A NEWS PAPER HEADING:::

UNIDENTIFIED SHOT SIXTEEN TIMES BY BOARDERLINE SECURITY BETWEEN RED AND BLUE TERRITORIES

Now I am dead, unidentified/unaffiliated with either team.

I created the equation, so I solved. To solve the equation one must die, and in some cases when the cost is too great on either side, you must give your own life to solve it.

Sarah's fearism

2009-04-04T21:54:00.000-07:00

Fear of Affiliation
Fear of being juged
Fear of being understood
Fear of no more growth
Fear of the definitive
Fear of being stuck
Fear of and END...or death

2009-03-27T07:32:00.001-07:00

Death and Philosophy

2009-03-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's section on death. I have been both intrigued and overwhelmed by it. Here is my relatively brief synopsis/regurgitation of it. To investigate these ideas more fully go HERE.

The Stanford Encyclopedia brings up six quandaries involving death.

1) What constitutes a person's death? Because the concept of life is not completely pinned down it is difficult to determine when exactly life ends? Here we must begin to distinguish between the end of a corporal being and the end of a psychological being. These deaths (of the corporal being, of the psychological being) do not necessarily coincide.

2) Challenges of the harm thesis of death. The harm thesis of death is the fair assumption that death causes a person harm. The Stanford Encyclopedia raises three challanges against this thesis.

a) The first challenge is known as the symmetry argument. Because we do not think of the non-existence preceding our births as being harmful to us it is irrational to consider the non-existence after our deaths as being harmful.

b) The second challenge is known as the timing puzzle. It is reasonable to presume that death or posthumous events may cause harm only if:

-there is a subject that is harmed.

-there is a harm that the subject incurs.

-there is a time in which harm is incurred by the subject.

We have to ask ourselves, when is the harm incurred? If it is incurred before we die, then there is a clear subject. However, it is difficult to see how the harm is inflicted onto the subject before the event (death). If the harm occurs after we die then there is no subject that is harmed (because the subject ceases to exist).

One might be inclined to say that the harm is incurred at the moment of death. However, such a moment is difficult to pin down. As Epicurus has stated "Death..., the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not."

c) The third challenges addresses a variation on the harm thesis known as the posthumous harm thesis. This assumes that harm can be done to a person posthumously. The challenge is known as the immunity argument. This claims that the posthumous harm thesis is irrational because there is no subject to incur the harm posthumously. In other words, death leaves us invincible to further harm.

3) Support of the Harm thesis would consist of the idea that the harm incurred is not in the form of some kind of pain.

4) What is the misfortune of death? Presumably death harms us by precluding us of certain goods and pleasures. However, we are not necessarily harmed by states of affairs that block our access to goods and pleasures. For instance, I am not a rock star. So my state of affairs (not being a rock star) blocks me from the goods and pleasures of living like a rock star. However, we would not say that I am harmed by this state of affairs. We might tighten our definition of the harm imposed by death by saying that it precludes us of certain goods and pleasures that we would have had. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say with any certainty what goods and pleasures we would have had if only.

5) Are all deaths a misfortune? In this section, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy concerns itself with a dispute between Thomas Nagel who says that death is always an evil because continued life always makes good things accessible and Bernard Williams who argues that it is a good thing that we are not immortal since we can not stay meaningfully attached to life forever.

6) Can the harm of death be reduced? Presumably it is possible to adjust our concepts and attitudes in order to make the passing of death harmless. Doing so would require us to alter our desires as to not have any interests that death would get in the way of. However, such a condition would leave us with an "impoverished conception of our interests" and make life basically not worth living.

FEARISMS

2009-03-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

At our last meeting for Fear, we discussed the idea of a main character sitting center, stagnant, in fear of moving, the fear of life. This fear of life is explored through fears of death. This "character" is tricked, manipulated, persuaded to engage in tangible and abstract activities which all eventually lead to his demise. We want these fears to be planted in our own experiences and imagined dreads; the fears we overcome to prevent ourselves from hiding in a hole in seclusion. We thought a good way to approach this to vary experiences was to first find outlines for fears of death. I had talked about the idea that all fears lead to the fear of death. We thought this was a good beginning point to generate stories. So I pose that in the comments of this post that anyone can create what I will now refer to as Fearisms. Fearisms are kind of like syllogisms that lead all fears to death. I acknowledge that these are purely based on opinion and that one fear may lead to another fear in one person's case but not in another. This is also with the knowledge that fear of death, in itself, may actually stem from another fear, perhaps of the unknown, or fear of hell, or fear of their own transgressions. So to start it off here is one that I worked out:

Fear Of Success

Is the Fear of Maintaining Success

Is the fear of losing personal freedom to overwhelming responsibility

Is the fear of loss of time to pursue non-profit activities that make you happy

Is the fear of the finitude of our time.

Is the fear of Death

Wisconsin Death Trip

2009-02-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

Anyone blog about this yet?

Watch this movie: Wisconsin Death Trip (I haven't yet but I am going to)

Or read the book: Wisconsin Death Trip

Or:
Go here.
Go here.

Lewis Payne

2009-02-05T08:06:00.001-08:00

In 1865, young Lewis Payne tried to assassinate Secretary of State W.H. Seward. Alexander Gardner photographed him in his cell, where he was waiting to be hanged. The photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the studium. But the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like Winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.

- Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

Camera Lucida

2009-02-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

Shortly before the end of her life, shortly before the moment when I looked through her pictures and discovered the Winter Garden Photograph, my mother was weak, very weak. I lived in her weakness (it was impossible for me to participate in a world of strength, to go out in the evenings; all social life appalled me). During her illness, I nursed her, held the bowl of tea she liked because it was easier to drink from than a cup; she had become my little girl, uniting for me with that essential child she was in her first photograph. In Brecht, by a reversal I used to admire a good deal, it is the son who (politically) educates the mother; yet I never educated my mother, never converted her to anything at all; in a sense I never "spoke" to her, never "discoursed" in her presence, for her; we supposed, without saying anything of the kind to each other, that the frivolous insignificance of language, the suspension of images must be the very space of love, its music. Ultimately I experienced her, strong as she had been, my inner law, as my feminine child. Which was my way of resolving Death. If so, as so many philosophers have said, Death is the harsh victory of the race, if the particular dies for the satisfaction of the universal, if after having been reproduced as other than himself, I who had not procreated, I had, in her very illness, engendered my mother. Once she was dead I no longer had any reason to attune myself to the progress of the superior Life Force (the race, the species). My particularity could never again universalize itself (unless utopically, by writing, whose project henceforth would become the unique goal of my life). From now on I could do no more than await my total, undialectical death.

-Roland Barthes

Word of the Day

2009-01-23T14:57:00.000-08:00

The Study of Death is known as Thanatology.

2008-12-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

I would like to continue the idea of objects that block the face. I don't want to repeat the crate idea, but I do want to carry that idea across in Fear. What can we use that may have the affect of the crates, but with less bulk. Maybe we just make sure parts of the face are covered. Perhaps on one person the eyes and on another the mouth. In Fools the covering the face played into themes of disconnection, isolation, and just down right foolery, but with this piece I would like it to be more of dehumanizing us, but in a way that is disturbing. Perhaps like the morose feeling one gets reading about the use of cadavers for crash test dummies and experiments talked about in "Stiff," I would like to get this same feeling seeing the fool machine cast used in this piece, without having to pander to the concept of monsters, zombies, or any of the incarnations of living dead.

A Disconnected Heart

2008-12-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

I have been reading Mary Roach's book "Stiff." Which has quickly become an inspiration for me in regards to ideas for the Fear show coming up this September. The only other book in my large collection of death tomes that has affected me as much is Phillipe Ares' exhaustive historical study called "The Hour Of Our Death" Both study death's affect on society's construct. Where Phillipe Ares' study is buried deep in ancient texts and historical literature, Roach's book is a study of the here and now. Her graphic take is submerged in humor and pathos, which I imagine is much needed to move from one dissected corpse, to discussing waters affect on body parts in plane crashes, to standing in a garden of dead bodies lying around decaying for the sake of science. One must have to find the humor in order to avoid having never-ending horrific nightmares and existential dread. She is out their "in the trenches" taking part in cadaver examinations and the observing of crash test carcasses falling from meticulously measured heights.
I am trying to figure out how to avoid the pitfall of making our section of Fear episodic in nature, which is the most used approach in neo-futurist shows, probably because we spend most of our time writing short plays for Too Much Light. The idea I have to avoid this is to have the narrative follow one member of the Fool Machine collective, not specifically as a rounded out character but as a vehicle for the study to take place. I see this person manipulated in the space by the rest of the cast. We will pursue this idea. Along these lines, I came upon this section in Stiff. The chapter explores transplants and possible soul residue from the organ's previous host. This text is from a letter a patient sent to their doctor after they had been given their life back. They had been given someone else' beating heart. I think some arresting images could be pulled from the text:
"The Consciousness of my donor's heart was in the present tense...He was struggling to figure out where he was, even what he was...It was as if none of your senses worked...An extremely frightening awareness of total dislocation...As if you are reaching with your hands to grasp something...but every time you reach forward your fingers end up only clutching thin air."
I would love to create illusions of moving away from parts of your own body, not out of body, but moving away from actual parts, this can work with the ideas around sterile deaths and our abilities to disconnect in order to save ourselves from depression, anxiety, or fear.

Coming Up for Air

2008-06-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

This except is taken from the George Orwell book 'Coming Up for Air.' The context is that a man grows disillusioned with what his life has become and travels, or escapes, back to his hometown to revisit his youth only to discover that things have changed. He is just arriving to his old town when he stumbles upon a new grave yard and has these thoughts:

It was enormous, twenty acres, I should think. There's always a kind of jumped-up unhomelike look about a new cemetery, with its raw gravel paths and its rough green sods, and the machine-made marble angels that look like something off a wedding-cake. But what chiefly struck me at the moment was that in the old days this place hadn't existed. There was no separate cemetery then, only the churchyard. I could vaguely remember the farmer these fields used to belong to - Blackett, his name was, and he was a dairy -farmer. And somehow the raw look of the place brought it home to me how things have changed. It wasn't only that the town had grown so vast that they needed twenty acres to dump their corpses in. It was their putting the cemetery out here, on the edge of town. Have you noticed that they always do that nowadays? Every new town puts its cemetery on the outskirts. Shove it away-keep it out of sight! Can't bear to be reminded of death. Even the tombstones tell you the same story. They never say that the chap underneath them "died", it's always "passed away" or "fell asleep." It wasn't so in the old days. We had our churchyard plumb in the middle of the town, you passed it everyday, you saw the spot where your grandfather was lying and where some day you were going to lie yourself. We didn't mind looking at the dead. In hot weather, I admit, we also had to smell them because some of the family vaults weren't too well sealed.

George Orwell

Coming up for Air

I think this passage address some of the questions that have been raised about how we remove ourselves from death in our modern culture. How we satanize death in our language and space so we don't have to address it directly. Raising the question. How does shielding ourselves from death affect our attitudes about death? and for that matter, how does shielding ourselves from death affect our appreciation of life?

Here today, canned tomorrow...

2008-06-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Caught this article in the Guardian today...click and enjoy!

"Ashes of man who designed Pringles packaging buried in crisp can."

"(Fredric) Baur requested the burial arrangement because he was proud of his design of the Pringles container, a son, Lawrence Baur, of Michigan, said on Monday."

As well as this being a novel idea - it made me wonder about other people that were so proud of their accomplishments that they either chose to be buried along with something they created, or in this case, buried inside of something they created. I'm sure there's more examples that I just can't think of at the moment...perhaps the Kiss Koffin?

Ghost Bike

2008-05-23T07:39:00.001-07:00

NPR is virtually a gold mine of death-related information. Yesterday, Eight Forty-Eight reported on Ghost Bikes, a "junker bike that has been painted stark white and afixed to the site where a cyclist has been hit or killed by a car driver. Ghostbikes are intended to be memorials for the fallen and reminders to everyone to SHARE THE ROAD with one another."

To listen to the story, click here.

I've never seen a Ghost Bike. I think I would know if I had: it's bright white frame, like a ghost itself, would have inevitably caught my eye. I also think it's unfortunate that I never knew about them until now. It's a fitting, wonderful memorial to those fallen, and a reminder to all how important it is to be safe.

This is a prime example of the evolution of death practices. As more and more people ride, more get hit, and as they get hit, they are memorialized for what they were: cyclists.

More info in Ghost Bikes:

www.ghostbike.org

And in Chicago:

www.bikechicago.info/ghostbikes/

There is also an annual Ride of Silence that occurs across the country to honor those injured or killed while riding a bike. We just missed this year's ride, it happened on Wednesday night.

capsula mundi

2008-05-22T13:17:00.001-07:00

I luh-HUUUUUUVE this idea for an alterna-coffin. (I never thought I'd type that sentence.) Seriously, if I didn't think cremation was pretty much the way to go, I'd totes do this:

The Capsula Mundi is an egg-shaped container made of bioplastic. The body of the deceased rests in a fetal position within this capsule, which gets planted in the earth like a bulb. A shallow circular depression is dug above the capsule to symbolize the presence of the body, in the center of which a tree is planted. Over time, the groups of burial sites become a sacred memorial grove. (via Inhabitat.)

Hidden Truths: Chicago City Cemetery and Lincoln Park

2008-05-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

I have been interested in exploring the history of Chicago's City Cemetery, the city's first major cemetery located in what is today Lincoln Park. It was difficult to find much of anything about City Cemetery--until this website launched. It's creator, Pamela Bannos, was interviewed on 848 this morning.

An entire website dedicated to the history of Chicago's city cemetery in 19th century Lincoln Park. Check it out. It's awesome. From the website:

From 1843 through 1859, the only graveyards in the city of Chicago were in the area of the southern edge of Lincoln Park and the neighborhood now known as the Gold Coast. This cemetery cluster consisted of the City Cemetery, the Potter’s Field, the Jewish Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery. During these sixteen years of exclusive use, there were more than 20,000 interments.

In 1859, with the opening of Rosehill Cemetery, followed the next year by the Graceland and Calvary Cemeteries, there became additional options for burials of the deceased in the fast-growing city. In 1866, further burials in the cemeteries by the lake were prohibited. From 1860 through that time, an additional 15,000 interments had taken place in those locations.

(Burial by the lake was prohibited because graves were filling with water--as graves were dug, the water would start coming in after about 4 feet.)

In 1866, it was determined that city officials had illegally acquired a 12-acre parcel of land within the cemetery grounds, known as the Milliman Tract. For the next two years, the remains within the graves in this area were relocated to other cemeteries and the land was returned to its rightful owners. The two-year disinterment period of this section of the 57-acre City Cemetery seems to be where the history of the cemeteries’ removals becomes confused.

In 1869, the city officials passed control of the cemetery grounds, along with the northern 50-acres of unused area of the cemetery property, already used as a park, to the Lincoln Park Commissioners. The Commissioners spent the next few years landscaping the park grounds north of the City Cemetery.

In 1871, the Chicago Fire ravaged the City and Catholic Cemeteries’ grounds, effectively destroying and eliminating grave markers.

In 1872, the potter’s field disinterments commenced. The Chicago Tribune claimed the potter’s field disinterments occurred in 25 days, even though by their own calculations at the rate they estimated, it should have taken more than a year. (The ten assigned gravediggers were estimated to be able to disinter 20 bodies per day.) There were also nearly 4,000 Confederate prisoners buried in the potter’s field. In his 1999 book, To Die In Chicago, George Levy writes that many Confederate soldiers were likely left buried in what are today’s baseball fields.

In 1874, The Lincoln Park Commissioners condemned the grounds of the unclaimed cemetery lots, incorporating that area into the park. Fewer than 1,000 disinterments occurred after this point, leaving thousands buried in the park grounds.

In 1875, The Lincoln Park Commissioners removed the 150 remaining headstones with their graves to a one-acre fenced area within the park. In 1883, the stones were removed, leaving those graves in the park.

In 1877, the Chicago Tribune reported that all remaining vestiges of the City Cemetery had been removed except for the Couch Tomb, which was deemed too expensive to move. The newspaper wrote, "....the Commissioners have determined to let it remain, and plant trees thickly around it" to hide it from view.

In 1884, A.T. Andreas published the second volume of his three-volume History of Chicago. In addressing the closing of the City Cemetery, he misrepresented the 12-acre Milliman Tract disinterments, stating that those exhumations represented the entire 57-acre City Cemetery.

In 1899, the Chicago Tribune published the first story about unexpectedly finding skeletal remains in Lincoln Park. By this time, it appears that the presumption that the cemeteries had been totally vacated was incorrect.

The Dead Still Walk

2008-05-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

The dead still walk
This city,
I dreamt once that
Children burnt in a fire,
With only their arms for blankets,
Sang in the frozen night
Outside a church
While angels wept down upon them.
92 children howled and screamed
Like dying animals,
Singing for God
To let them in
Back in.

The dead still talk
In this city.
My Dad drove an ambulance
For Thompson Funeral Parlor
At 79th and Ellis
And sometimes the dead
Spoke to him through
The radio
Or called him on the phone
But when he turned
On the TV
They'd only
Stare back
Waving silently
In black and white.

The Irish dead still talk
A lot in this city.
The fog is like cigar smoke
At the foot of the lake,
And Richard J. Daley
Could always see through
The smoke.
Every wink, every nod,
Every smirk
Turned into highways,
Skyscrapers and bridges.
"I'm a kid from the stockyards--
I'll stand with you."
And he did.

Then the Irish
Licked the frosting,
Ate the cake
And sold the
Plate.

Who built the pyramids?
Mayor Daley built the pyramids.

--Tony Fitzpatrick, Bum Town

The Death Test

2008-04-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

Since I was invited to join this blog, I've been reluctant to post or to dwell too long reading these entries. Not because they're not fascinating -- but because I'm realizing that I'm sick to death of death.

I don't like to pick it apart as an academic subject, I can't stomach most artistic takes on it (movies, books, TV, theater -- but especially movies); in general, I can't treat it impartially, as if it were somehow separate from me, as a thing to dissect and ponder.

And I'm wondering, is this because of my personal experiences with death? Am I less objective, less impartially curious, because I've just been too close (as a witness, not a participant) to the dying process? Can I ever connect to it again in a way that is observational -- and somewhat aesthetically enjoyable?

So, I'm interested to know the personal death histories of this particular Death Squad. A sort of Death Purity test, if you will. Who has:

...had an acquaintance (not-close friend) or distant relative die?

...had a close friend or relative die?

...had someone in their immediate family (sibling, parent, grandparent) die?

...been to a funeral or funerals? If so, how many?

...watched somebody die?

...been on the verge of death themselves?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Wise Blood

2008-04-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

"In his half-sleep he thought where he was lying was like a coffin. The first coffin he had seen with someone in it was his grandfather's. They had left it propped open with a stick of kindling the night it had sat in the house with the old man in it, and Haze had watched from a distance, thinking: he ain't going to let them shut it on him; when the time comes, his elbow is going to shoot into the crack. His grandfather had been a circuit preacher, a waspish old man who had ridden over three counties with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger. When it was time to bury him, they shut the top of his box down and he didn't make a move.

Haze had two younger brothers; one died in infancy and was put in a small box. The other fell in front of a mowing machine when he was seven. His box was about half the size of an ordinary one, and when they shut it, Haze ran and opened it up again. They said it was because he was heartbroken to part with his brother, but it was not; it was because he had thought, what if he had been in it and they shut it on him.

He was asleep now and he dreamed he was at his father's burying again. He saw him humped over on his hands and knees in his coffin, being carried that way to the graveyard. 'If I keep my can in the air,' he heard the old man say, 'nobody can shut nothing on me,' but when they got his box in the hole, they let it drop down with a thud and his father flattened out like anybody else."

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood (1952)

Smiling at Death

2008-04-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

The following was written by a co-worker of mine in response/addition to the Chaos of Death blog. She is currently working with a group in Chicago on a performance project dealing with Afro-Cuban responses to death.

Most recently, after two weeks of scrambling, furious writing and serious proofreading, my colleague and I were awarded a large grant to produce my 2008 “dream performance.” It will use personal accounts about death, loved ones’ deaths, violence, catastrophe and aging tied into a narrative about a family that uses traditional Afro-Cuban spirituality to grapple with their heritage, family history and death of an important matriarch. Yet this post is not to explore performance ideas, but instead proposes examining the feminine orishas that will be main characters of this piece and how they might challenge our ideas of Western perspectives of death.

The Museum of Mourning Photography intrigues me as a Chicago resident. It seems very unique, how do you create a museum around mourning? In this case photography is the answer, which documents events in a way that is comforting to our contemporary society. Many envision death as the ending of a human life, and our memories and mourning center around the life of the dead. While we capture moments through photographs that we believe genuinely speak to people’s character, their essence, we still have the need to piece it all together. Thus the museum creates narratives that we hold as truth (supported by other documentation of course), which can be comforting. Marrying narratives and photographs transports us into the past, connecting our present to a not too distant past.

Perhaps this explains Catholic and Afro-Cuban (Caribbean) religious aesthetics concerning imagery of the divine. Afro-Cuban Lucumi religious images are undoubtedly influenced by Catholic saint imagery. There are great debates as to the degree that enslaved Africans syncretized these Catholic saints with their own “deities”. Without rehashing cultural anthropology from its American beginnings with Afro-Americanists like Boaz and Herskovits, and drawing on extensive field-work in Afro-Cuban religious communities in the U.S. and abroad, a narrative emerges. Africans and Afro-descendants were and are not as concerned with representing their deities with Catholic imagery as with recognizing the divine everywhere. And thus building altars, ritual costumes, statues, photographs commemorating the (divine) dead and other artistic expressions are just as important as the divine themselves for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren (etc.) of these enslaved Africans; the last of which arrived to Havana around 1886.

Yet the academic, primarily anthropological, narratives we have created around New World Afro-Cuban (Brazilian, Trinidadian, Puerto Rican, Haitian, etc.) religious aesthetics and imagery have become incredibly problematic. Like many “indigenous” religions of the world, Afro-Cuban Lucumi (Yoruba derived from Nigeria) divine forces are characterizes as a pantheon. In this “pantheon” the “gods” have clothing, attitudes, divine “powers”, colors, numbers, foods, etc. that define who they are.

The orishas become syncretized with “gods” in scholarship and in national folklore; casting Changó as a King and the “god” of thunder, lightening, masculinity and strength complimented by the Queen orisha, Oshun, “goddess” of the rivers, sensuality, sweetness, and femininity. And in this light, how do we conceptualize obscure orishas in the “pantheon” that do not have Changó and Oshun superstar status? We have to rethink the ideas of pantheon and static identities that too often characterize these Afro-Cuban divine forces.

Orishas are like many indigenous concepts of divinity where God can be seen in many divine forces of nature that concur with human nature. On this level Afro-Cuban beliefs become concur with Western Judeo-Christian monotheistic perspective on divinity. There is one God and the orishas simply help us in dealing and communicating with this complex force that interacts directly with humans.

Oyá, Obbá and Yewá are Afro-Cuban orishas of the cemetery. They govern death just as the female orishas Yemayá, keeper of the oceans and mother to humans, and Oshún, keeper of female sex organs, sexuality and reproduction, govern birth. The fact that female energies are responsible for life and death is our first departure from ancient European pantheons, which characterize the underworld as a world of men, just like the world of the living. Perhaps more importantly, it forces us to rethink Oshun and stereotypical depictions of femininity in the West and in Afro-Cuban culture and religion.

After all, Cuba, like all former European colonies and former transatlantic slave trade societies, is in the West. However, the Judeo-Christian views of death as the end of the human life and transition into Heaven or afterlife in these faiths still marks death as a departure from the human life. In fact, the human life in Christianity is what determines one’s eligibility into the type of afterlife, a somewhat unique view of death compared to indigenous cultural worldviews, which propose death itself as the token into one afterlife—usually connected to the world of the living.

In Afro-Cuban patakines or mythology, Oyá, Obbá and Yewá are not just female, they are warriors. They are among the few women who can go to battle with the men and critique male orisha power and dominance while at times even rejecting it. Oyá is the storm and cemetery gate-keeper. She is the hurricane that accompanies Changó’s thunder and lightening. Obbá, the cemetery grounds keeper, is the first and faithful wife of Changó to the extent that she cuts off her left ear as a show of devotion, only to find that another wife had tricked her into doing so. Yewá, a pristine virgin, is seduced by Changó and then aborts her child, finally fleeing to the underworld after rejecting the harshness of life among humans and orishas. She lives in the grave and is the decomposition of the body.

What powers do these divinities hold outside of their correlation with forces of nature? And are they positive? They do not bring life, but death. They do not love men endlessly yet become bitter, suffer from jealousy and envy, and are taken advantage of because they are vulnerable. They bring destruction in storms so that things may grow anew. They allow anger and bitterness to fruition into new loves and the dead to pass so that life may take its course. In Afro-Cuban mythology and religion, the human body transitions through death through the “hands” of these divine women. The spirit does not journey to an afterworld unknown to living men, yet dwells among the living: family relatives, loved ones, friends and all that they knew while alive. They continually work on earth to better humanity, using their wisdom as older spirits to enlighten the flawed world of men. Oyá, Obbá and Yewá are the keys to this transition into pure spirit, in which we still enjoy the same card games, jokes and rum that we did while alive. In mourning a practitioner might suggest that you pour the favorite drink of the loved one you miss, light a candle and sing along to their favorite tune while it plays on the stereo. And in doing so, you might crack a smile and not dread your own transition into death. Mourning is about narratives and documentation just as much as it is about the unseen, the spirit, the difficult things that are hard to write, to record or even remember. Mourning is about sadness but it is also about ritual celebration as Western Afro-Cuban culture illuminates, where divine energies and the dead are celebrated alike with dance, song, food, drink, smiles and tears continuously throughout our lives. There is a saying among practitioners: “el muerto pare el santo” meaning the dead give birth to the saints or the divine. Without the dead there is no divine, no rebirth, no living. Afro-Cubans and Afro-descendants are survivors of enslavement, injustice, oppression and continued psychological and physical violence; too many tears are shed during life to celebrate death in sadness, and so death is met continually with smiles.

Exclusive Graveyeards

2008-03-27T10:18:00.001-07:00

Exclusive Graveyards: From the Chicago Evening Post, re-published in the New York Times March 17, 1906.

"Everybody will be pleased to know that our excellent fellow-citizens, the union men, are going to have a nice cemetery of their own, where they can be laid away without any fear of contamination from the "scabs." And now that they have acquired this comfort and degree of elegance we venture to hope that they will permit us to enjoy our own cemeteries and proceed thereto at the appointed time without unnecessary impediments or hindrances. If the union hack drivers and the union gravediggers and union casket makers will proffer us the same consideration we are willing to give to them, everything will be lovely, and our various cemeteries will exist in peace and concord."

Jodie Hamilton and Mourning Photography

2008-03-19T10:51:00.001-07:00

There were a number of things that struck a chord with me during our visit at the Museum of Mourning Photography, so many that it is difficult to chose what to write about. Like Evan, I was taken in by the many photos of mothers cradling their deceased children, their eyes fixed on the camera, the secrets of what thoughts occurred in their heads during the minutes required to take the photo now buried as deep as the dead children in their arms.

I was overwhelmed by a photo in one of the Sleeping Beauty books of a young woman seated, eyes open, book in her lap as though she has just been reading, and scrawled along the side of the photo is written "Mother not ready to let go of only daughter--photo taken after dead 9 days." According to the notes in the back of the book she had been put on ice so her mourning mother could delay burial.

Then there was this photo:

This is the Parsons family of Houston, Missouri. They were murdered by Jodie (or Joda, or Jody, depending on which source you are researching) Hamilton on October 12, 1906. It is not clear how exactly they died--or rather, there are several different versions of how they died. First Jodie shot Barney (or Carney) Parsons when he confronted him and his family on a road as they were departing Houston, Missouri. Mr. Parsons had sold his share of crops/land to Hamilton as the family planned to leave town, but apparently there was bad blood and the deal did not run smooth. Parsons and Hamilton did not like each other at all, and Parsons haggled the price until he was satisfied; clearly Hamilton was not. So after the family packed up their things and got on the road out of town, Hamilton decided to follow them and confront Parsons again. It did not go well; Jodie shot Barney Parsons, then beat him with the butt of his rifle until the patriarch of the family was dead. This is were it gets a little murky...he then beat Mrs. Parsons to death with the rifle in some accounts, in others with a pole ax. I've also read that Mrs. Parsons was pregnant. In other accounts, she was not. In some accounts he also beat the children to death, in others he slit their throats with their toy knives. He then loaded the bodies into the wagon and drove them over to Piney Creek where he threw them into the water. Not long afterward fisherman found the bodies after they had traveled some downstream. The bodies were pulled from the water, and the photo above was taken of the whole family. Unlike most mourning photos we have seen, this has details that speak to the violent deaths these people endured. Just as the dehydrated, skeletal children tell of the horrors of cholera, the Parsons family tell a tale of murder.

In this way, this photo represents for me a hybrid of sorts. It is part mourning photo, part evidence without being at the scene of the crime. They are part sleeping, part bloodied. They look at peace, but the marks upon their relaxed faces reveal that they did not know peace in death. No doubt this photo was used to provoke anger and sympathy in that small, midwestern community.

Jodie, Joda, Jody Hamilton eventually confessed to the murders, but tried to claim insanity due to a kick in the head he received from a mule as a child. The law didn't buy it. He was hanged on December 21, 1906. He was hanged twice; apparently the first attempt was unsuccessful, so they had to bring him back up on the gallows, retie the noose and try again. One the second try, he died. He was twenty years old.

The murders were featured in the New York Times. You can read the original article, published on October 15, 1906, here.

On a side note, not at all related to mourning photography but still the dead, there is another old NY Times article I found from August 2, 1902 about a gravedigger's strike that happened in Chicago. Funeral processions already in progress were turned away from the cemetery gates as a result of the strike. You can read the article here.

funeral symbols

2008-03-17T21:18:00.001-07:00

Anthony at the MoMP was quick to point out the meaning of various symbols discovered in his photos. This made me aware of the large amount of symbols used in funerals and burials. I just never thought of it. I looked into it further and found some gems of memorial symbols. (some of which might come in handy in a covert cemetery trip)

Wheat refers to life and the Scythe refers to death. The symbols of wheat and the scythe invokes a previous discussion that we had concerning the Grim Reaper. We discussed the Scythe and to some degree we discussed wheat as as symbol of life. In this context it would make sense that the Reaper would carry a scythe, a tool to cut down the harvest, to cut down a more celestial harvest.

Symbols that refer to the affect on the family are striking to me. Perhaps because it concerns the living. Some tombstones may have a broken column. this refers to the passing of a head of a family. Presumably a Patriarch or Matriarch. A broken ring refers to the family's circle being undone. The death of an only child. The last of a line. Referring to what has not and will not continue. A weeping willow refers to perpetual mourning.

The symbol of an anchor often refers to hope. One website attributed this to Pope Clement who was tied to an anchor and drowned. Apparently the anchor was a common hidden symbol, a disguised cross. Often the chain is broken. An anchor may also be used to mark the grave of a sea faring person. However, some sites disregard this meaning entirely.

There are many references to the resurrection or eternal life. This is understandable considering that these concepts provide much hope for the mourning. An angle flying, birds, crown, a light, a torch, a star, a rooster, a lion, trumpets, bees, shell and crown all refer to the resurrection or eternal life. I am not aware of all of the subtleties between these symbols. To begin with we can make the distinction between the resurrection and eternal life. The rooster, lion and the trumpets no doubt refer to the resurrection. The trumpets and lion refers to the second coming of Christ. The rooster refers to the awakening of the dead. The angle flying, bird, crown, light, star, and torch presumably refer to eternal life as opposed to the resurrection specifically. The crown could refer to God and that the deceased is closer to God and the service of God. I would place the light, star, and torch in a category together; a continued shine of the spirit. I am at a loss as to what to make of the bees and shell.

The Fashion of Mourning

2008-03-11T20:12:00.001-07:00

I was inspired to do a little search on the stages of mourning dress, based on the caption of one of the photos at the mourning museum (something to the effect of "...so in so in the second stages of mourning dress..."). Anyhow - an excerpt from a good, concise website:

"The Fashion to Mourn Publicly:

The complexities of wearing mourning dress took hold as the Victorian era progressed following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. Queen Victoria wore her widow’s weeds for the long remainder of her life until 1901, when the Edwardian era began. Many who saw themselves as high society including those in the lower classes followed her example.

The middle classes in particular, wishing to follow and accept the higher canons of decency of the upper classes, emulated every example she set. They liked to use black edged stationery, envelopes, notepaper and visiting cards. They tied little black or purple ribbons around dressing table bottles and the like and added similar purple or black ribbons even to the clothing of infants.

Prayer books and bibles had to be bound in Black morocco leather and handkerchiefs edged in black. The list was endless, but all touches were intended to convey to the onlooker through a series of signs and symbols visual messages that the deepest feelings of sadness were felt at the loss...

Mourning Clothes and Crape

Mourning was an expensive activity and also wasteful, because it also had to be fashionable. Identical in fashion styling to the modes of the day, it used different colours and materials. When more than one death occurred in a family with little space between them, mourning clothes would inevitably be worn for several years non stop. As normal clothes were put away they would often be out of fashion by the time mourning was over so they were sometimes remodelled and often discarded.

Crape (always spelt with an ‘a’ to indicate mourning crape) was the most used fabric for mourning clothes. It was used in such vast quantities in the 1890s that Courtaulds built a textile empire on the sales of the crape cloth alone. Crape was dull looking silk gauze like a crimped and stiff textured material and mostly dyed the deepest of blacks, although white crape was used for the widow's cap.

Black was the chief mourning colour in the immediate months after a death for deepest mourning. Dull surfaced black fabrics such as crape, plain bombazine, paramatta, merino wool and cashmere were also favoured and used depending on income...

Stages of Mourning

A widow would mourn for two and a half years, with the first year and a day in full mourning. During that time pieces of the crape covered just about all of a garment at deepest mourning, but the crape was partially removed to reach the period of secondary mourning which lasted nine months. After that the crape was defunct and a widow could wear fancier lusher fabrics or fabric trims made from black velvets and silk and have them adorned with jet trimming, lace, fringe and ribbons.

In the final six months a period called half mourning began. Ordinary clothes could be worn in acceptable subdued shades of grey, white or purple, violet, pansy, heliotrope, soft mauves and of course black. Every change was subtle and gradual, beginning firstly with trims of these colours being added to the black dresses. These were the transitional mourning dresses from secondary mourning to the final stage of lesser ordinary half mourning where colours like purple and cream rosettes, bows, belts and streamers along with jet stones or buttons were introduced.

Similar rules applied for the wearing of hats or bonnets. As the mourning progressed, so the hats and bonnets became more trimmed and fancy, whilst veils became shorter until they were eventually removed altogether...

The Demise of Excessive Mourning

The fashion for heavy mourning was drastically reduced during the Edwardian era and even more so after the Great War. So many individuals died that just about everyone was in mourning for someone. By 1918 a whole new attitude had developed and this was hastened even further by the Second World War."

I think it's interesting that mourning clothing was inspired by Queen Victoria - that even one who is in the deepest stages of loss has an eye on the Who's Who of Grieving. The last image that I can remember in which fashion and image are united with grieving are shots of Jackie Kennedy...it makes me wonder about "showing" people that you are grieving: is it done because the griever is unsure of the authenticity of their own grief therefore "watch me grieve watch me be sad I swear I loved the deceased and in watching me you wouldn't doubt that at all..." or does conforming to a sort of etiquette help the griever uphold a sense of strength and grace that they feel they've lost? Is custom and tradition in place to help us through the process of grieving?

In Asia the color for grieving is off-white - families will make clothing out of muslin. I remember when I was in seventh grade I wanted to make a kerchief to wear to the Renaissance fair and I fashioned one out of some old muslin I found in the garage. When my mother came home and saw that muslin on my head she 'bout had a heart-attack and started screaming at me. Apparently it was material she had bought for my grandfather's funeral years earlier. It really really spooked her. Yeah. My bad.

http://www.fashion-era.com/mourning_fashion.htm

"How I Held Her"

2008-03-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Examining the extensive collection at the Museum of Mourning Photography it should come as no surprise that those of children were the most striking. The children, often little more than infants and newborns, were poignant in themselves. They were still and shrunken tiny bodies sometimes captured more in death than in their short lives. Yet it was the living that caught my attention time and time again.

On the faces of the numerous grieving parents we saw, there is a seriousness that goes beyond their losses. It might be a sense of duty that they have to future memories of the deceased or a resignation to death's presence. This is not to discount the emotions that we would now most associate with the death of a child - despondency, incomprehension. Those are in the pictures too, in the blankness of a gaze, the heaviness of posture, or the gesture of a mother not just cradling her baby's body, but holding its hand as if to comfort it. Still, I perceived a sense of social obligation in these photographs. I saw (or believe I saw) people stoically determined to put aside the emotions they must have been feeling to capture the moment and their loved ones for posterity, and that is what makes this whole practice so alien.

The title of this post comes from a picture in the book Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement in Memorial Photography - American and European Traditions. The photo was of a family posing outside of their home. A daughter, probably an infant, has recently died, but the remoteness of the home prevented a photographer from reaching them before her body had to be interred. There is some indication that they lived in the hills and the daughter perished during the winter. The family is alternately seated and standing. There is a small table with them, tilted forward. There are words etched onto the photo indicating that this is the table where her body was laid out, and this was how one of the sons sat to hold her.

There is irony that the photo that sticks with me the most is one of the few where the corpse is out of sight. There were certainly others that I could choose, from the grotesque (small children who died from dehydration (likely cholera) that left them as shrunken and skeletal as concentration camp victims) to the touching (a man who climbed into the bed where his wife was laid out just to be beside her one more time). Still, it is the rural family posed to reenact how they mourned that I can't leave behind. Or rather, it is their need to recreate their last farewells for posterity even in the absence of the physical person whose memory they presume to preserve.

Spring and Death

2008-03-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

"There's a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell of either death or of spring--I hope of spring. But don't let me trick you, there is a death in the smell of spring and in the smell of thee as in the smell of me. And if nothing more, invisibility has taught me my nose to classify the stenches of death."

--Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1947)

Alterna-coffins part one

2008-03-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

Hi y'all. Thanks for adding me.

I mentioned that ReadyMade magazine (and, I think, AdBusters) did a feature on designers who did a post-modern-age challenge -- designing products for the 21st century -- and that one of the things was a kind of Fed-ex-envelope-lookin' body bag for burial. I couldn't find that article (I'll chase it down later) but I did find the digital reprint of ANOTHER article in ReadyMade about an artist who's designing alternative urns for burial:

http://www.readymade-digital.com/readymade/20070809/?pg=55

It's made me recall some of the work I did at Lanternhouse in Cumbria - they're way into alternative funerals and other rituals (weddings, baptisms, celebrations of all kinds). In fact, when they were run by Welfare State International, they released some books called the Dead Good Guides, which are handbooks for alternative rituals and ceremonies. I have a copy of the Funeral one if anyone wants to read it.

RC

"So I tattoo instructions on my ass / That say 'don't ever put this body in a casket / burn it and put the ashes in a basket / and throw them in the Puget Sound / I don't ever want to be underground.'" - Kimya Dawson

Antigone and Polyneices

2008-02-28T14:10:00.000-08:00

My first quarter of graduate school I chose Antigone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone as the primary source for my final paper in Intro to Graduate Study. The result is an essay about how Antigone's love for her brother Polyneices drives her to bury him in the ground, thus breaking Kreon's law and ensuring her own death. I argue that it is love and a kinswoman's duty to ensure respectful burial, not a just feminist mentality, that drives Antigone to commit her crime. My research involved burial practices in ancient Greece
http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/ancientnovel/kristina.htm, the origin of Thebes, the myth of Seven Against Thebes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Against_Thebes (also known as the Theban Dead, and also immortalized in a play by Aeschylus). Also Antigone was, by the way, the first play of the Oedipus Cycle penned by Sophocles.

This is from a source article titled, "Sophocles' Antigone and the Funeral Oratory:"

"To create a democratic, this is, public funeral, the demos [a rhetorical term for the population of an ancient Greek state] appropriated rites of aristocratic funerals which its legislation had been continually restricting since Solon. The demos displayed the bones for two days...under a tent in the agora [a place of assembly in ancient Greece]. Here, families mourned their husbands, sona and brothers with whatever customs they wished. The concession to familial loss and grief, loosened from normal curbs on public display, contrasts the first two days with the rituals of the third. On the dawning of this day, no longer are the bones distinguished by the names, identities, and economic and social differences that separated individuals
in life. Now they are 'the dead'...while laws denied the family's right to bring outsiders, slaves, strangers, and paid mourners into its funerals, anyone could join in the public ceremony. Setting forth from the agora, the procession moved solemnly toward the [public ceremony]. It was perhaps escorted by hoplites [infantrymen] in full armor; the high-pitched keening of the women fills the air, soon to be superseded by the orator's sonorous words. When the dead arrive at the public cemetery, the mourners seek renewal through an oration that replaces not only the familial rites of fertility and purification but also the praise and laments sung for
individual heroes by poets."

And interestingly, the role of women in burial rites:

"During the archaic period, women exercised influence upon social and political life through their prominence in burial rites. Beginning in the sixth century, legislation was passed that sought to curb their participation and tone down the extravagance of their lamentations and displays of grief. Private funerals, formerly conducted outside and through the streets, were confined to the household. Lament by women in public was prohibited."

Further: "women were the proper agents of burial...in a traditional funeral women performed fertility rites to assure the dead a quiet rest and to purify the land for the living. Bewailing the dead, women beat their breasts, lacerated their cheeks, and called upon the dead."

Women played a major role in ancient Grecian burial, but so did the state. This was the role death played in society during Sophocles' time, and so he wrote a play the people could identify with. The people of Thebes in his play are strictly forbidden from burying Polyneices because he is considered a traitor. The proper punishment for a dead traitor is also a horrific punishment in terms of displeasing the gods and barring a soul from moving into the underworld. Burial was vital, and Polyneices was left exposed to decay and be feasted upon by animals. "The ancient Greeks had distinct methods of burial, and it was often believed if you were not provided a
proper burial along with the appropriate rituals, you were destined to suffer between worlds until your rites of passage into the underworld were completed." This is from Kristina Bagwell's website on burial rituals and the afterlife in ancient Greece, linked above. Antigone is not just a woman who defies the leader of the state, who happens to be a man. She is a sister ensuring the rightful passage of her departed brother, as is her duty to do. As she argues in the play, the will of the gods be done, not obedience to a law instituted by just one man.

"No suffering will be so terrible/as to die for nothing." --Antigone

"If you must love somebody/go down there and love the dead." --Kreon

Originally Posted by DINA

Love and Death in the Time of Antigone

2008-02-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

So...I wrote a post about Antigone and funeral/burial practices in ancient Greece. But for some reason, whenever I try to post it, a large portion of my text vanishes. But, oddly, you can read the whole thing as a draft under "Edit Posts." So there you go. I'm going to leave it there, sorry for some reason I just can't get this particular post to post in its entirety.

Thanks,
Dina

The Humans Are Dead

2008-02-20T09:01:00.000-08:00

Special thanks to Dana Dardai...a different take on death-inspired music. He. He.

Death Inspired Music

2008-02-19T11:13:00.001-08:00

Several weeks ago a newly released boxed set of murder ballads and disaster songs from the early years of the twentieth century called "People Take Warning!" was reviewed on NPR.

A few of the song titles:

The Fate of Talmadge Osborne
Burning of the Cleveland School
The Death of Floyd Collins
The Little Grave in Georgia
The Murder Of the Lawson Family
Fate of Rhoda Sweeten
Poor Ellen Smith
The Sinking Of The Titanic
The Unfortunate Brakeman
Memphis Flu
Tennessee Tornado

I would love to listen to some of these tracks, to experience how death cultivated art for the ears eighty years ago. They sing of death, and now dead themselves, they are memorialized in this box set and available on Amazon.com. So it goes. People often sing of sorrow, and murder and death still rise to the surface in todays music--for some reason, "Jany's Got a Gun" comes to mind, although I am sure there are stronger contemporary examples out there--but these tunes, just from their titles, speak of an unashamed examination of death. There's no veiled language here, no metaphors, just Death, exactly as he stands. No frills, no fear. Just Death.

Respecting the Dead

2008-02-18T21:01:00.000-08:00

Among the truly stupid things I remember doing in high school was the afternoon that I and a small group of bored, Byron-lite theatre students decided to go visit a mausoleum.

Dressed as vampires.

I said it was stupid.

Some of us only went in black clothing wearing terrible-tasting fangs and crazed expressions. At least one of us went for the full Bela Lugosi effect, with a flowing cape, pale white face paint, large white fangs over individual canines, and that trickle of blood near the corner of his mouth.

And we marched up and down the halls of the mausoleum as if we owned the place, as if the whole thing was some kind of monument to the characters we were playing, ignoring the obvious fact that vampires visiting mausoleums on a bright spring day would doubtless have burst into flames between the parking lot and entrance. Ultimately, one of the attendants chased us down and threw us out, telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves for our lack of respect for the dead.

Think about that phrase: "Respect For The Dead."

It's the idea that simply by finishing your natural term of conscious existence you will have earned a sort of nebulous admiration from those of us who remain living. We are asked to show reverence for one's state of death even though it is in fact nothing special, even though it is the one thing that unites every living creature that has ever existed on this planet. We go to funerals that overflow with silence, because noise would be disrespectful, apparently, to the one person in the room for whom noise no longer means anything.

I'm not excusing the behavior of myself and my youthful pre-goth peers. The mausoleum staff had every right to throw us out for making a nuisance of ourselves. My point is that the attendant wasn't demanding that we show more respect to the dead, he was asking that we show more respect to the living, to the actual grief felt by the people who were there to wade in the memories of their loved ones...as opposed to those who just showed up to clown around in bloodsucker clothing.

That's what he was asking, but he said we should Respect the Dead.

Why? Why is this phrase so prevalent? Why can't we agree that showing some reverence for a living being's emotional turmoil is on its own a reasonable request? Why drag the dead into it?

Is it an attempt to use fear as a disciplinary tactic--to threaten the offenders with retribution by restless spirits--because merely pointing out the pain you cause others isn't as effective a declaration? Is it in fact a personal, internal fear, that the disturbances caused by others will lead to these same spirits going after you?

A number of famous stories and films have been made on the subject of disturbing the sleep of the dead and the consequences thereof. I can't think of even one story as famous in which characters only disturb the grim solace of the bereaved living and suffer as a result.

Buddhist Meditation Part 2

2008-02-18T19:42:00.000-08:00

(The following is the meditation on death from "Transformation and Healing: Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh -)

"Bhikkhus, imagine a sack which can be opened at both ends, containing a variety of grains: brown rice, wild rice, mung beans, kidney beans, sesame seeds, white rice. When someone with good eyesight opens the bag, he will review it like this: 'This is brown rice, this is wild rice, these are mung beans, these are kidney beans, these are sesame seeds, this is white rice.' Just so the practitioner passes in review of the whole of his body from the soles of the feet to the hair on the top of the head, a body enclosed in a layer of skin and full of all the impurities which belong to the body: 'Here is the hair of the head, the hairs on the body, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, bowels, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat tears, grease, saliva, mucus, synovic fluid, urine.'

This is how the practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body; observation of the body from within or from without, or from both within and without. He remains established in the observation of the process of coming-to-be in the body or the process of dissolution in the body or both the process of coming-to-be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact, 'There is a body here,' until understanding and full awareness come about. He remains established in the observation, free, not caught up in any worldly consideration. That is how to practice observation of the body in the body, O bhikkus...

As a skilled butcher or an apprentice butcher, having killed a cow, might sit at the crossroads to divide the cow into many parts, the practitioner passes in review the elements which comprise his very own body: 'Here in this body are the earth element, the water element, the fire element, and the air element.'

This is how the practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body; observation of the body from within or from without, or from both within and without. He remains established in the observation of the process of coming-to-be in the body or the process of dissolution in the body or both the process of coming-to-be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact, 'There is a body here,' until understanding and full awareness come about. He remains established in the observation, free, not caught up in any worldly consideration. That is how to practice observation of the body in the body, O bhikkus.

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground and lying there for one, two, or three days, bloated, blue in color, festering, and he observes, 'This body of mine is of the same nature. It will end up in the same way; there is no way it can avoid that state.'

This is how the practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body; observation of the body from within or from without, or from both within and without. He remains established in the observation of the process of coming-to-be in the body or the process of dissolution in the body or both the process of coming-to-be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact, 'There is a body here,' until understanding and full awareness come about. He remains established in the observation, free, not caught up in any worldly consideration. That is how to practice observation of the body in the body, O bhikkus.

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground, pecked at by crows, eaten by hawks, vultures, and jackals, and infested with maggots and worms, and he observes, 'This body of mine is of the same nature, it will end up in the same way, there is no way it can avoid that state.'

This is how the practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body; observation of the body from within or from without, or from both within and without. He remains established in the observation of the process of coming-to-be in the body or the process of dissolution in the body or both the process of coming-to-be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact, 'There is a body here,' until understanding and full awareness come about. He remains established in the observation, free, not caught up in any worldly consideration. That is how to practice observation of the body in the body, O bhikkus.

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; it is just a skeleton with a little flesh and blood sticking to it, and the bones are held together by the ligaments, and he observes, 'This body of mine is of the same nature. It will end up in the same way. There is no way it can avoid that state.'

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; it is just a skeleton, no longer adhered to by any flesh, but still smeared by a little blood, the bones still held together by the ligaments...

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; it is just a skeleton, no longer adhered to by any flesh nor smeared by any blood, but the bones are still held together by the ligaments...

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; all that is left is a collection of bones scattered here and there; in one place a hand bone, in another a shin bone, a thigh bone, a pelvis, a spinal column, a skull...

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; all that is left is a collection of bleached bones, the color of shells...

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; it has been lying there for more than one year and all that is left is a collection of dried bones...

Further, the practitioner compares his own body with a corpse which he imagines he sees thrown onto a charnel ground; all that is left is the dust which comes from the rotted bones and he observes, 'This body of mine is of the same nature, it will end up in the same way. There is no way it can avoid that state.'

This is how the practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body; observation of the body from within or from without, or from both within and without. He remains established in the observation of the process of coming-to-be in the body or the process of dissolution in the body or both the process of coming-to-be and the process of dissolution. Or he is mindful of the fact, 'There is a body here,' until understanding and full awareness come about. He remains established in the observation, free, not caught up in any worldly consideration. That is how to practice observation of the body in the body, O bhikkus.

- end of meditation

I couldn't believe my luck when I found this meditation on death to follow up on my december blog post. I wasn't even looking for it. Serendipity + death = one happy buddha.

But in all seriousness - when I read through this for the first time, I was struck by the sheer length of it, as well as the detail, and I thought it was incredibly morbid. Good lord. You want me to sit in the lotus position and meditate on charnel ground and ligaments and smeared blood and cows by the side of the road for how long?...but then the repetition, and the tempo of the prose started to do its work and everything fear-based fell away. The thoughts and the details fell away and all that was left was...a little bit of humor, and a realization that THAT is all it is...details.

I also appreciate the awareness of the simultanaiety of the "process of coming-to-be" and the "process of dissolution". This is a theatrically sophisticated meditation.

I remember the conversation we had at the last meeting; I mentioned that I thought all this study on death would have a negative effect on my emotions but that in fact it was taking away my fear. And John said something about studying death to learn to be as present as possible.
So I would like to try this meditation, to sit in my stewy body while someone reads this to me. Anyone interested?

The Lasts of the Lines

2008-02-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

Some deaths clearly represent more than others. Though disruptions to particular lives might be great, most individuals pass without causing anything approaching epochal perturbations to the worlds they leave behind. Conversely, the deceased rarely carry the weight of cultural tradition and continuity into the Beyond. Even the deaths of world political and religious leaders don’t cause societies to cease to function for any real period of time. Certainly nations may mourn, people may intensely reflect, and power struggles may ensue, but daily rituals resume, memories persist, and life goes on. Except when it doesn’t.

One question that has come to mind now and again as part of this project is how to get an audience to move beyond simply the death of an individual (or even large groups of individuals) to experience those rare instances when much more than a body and life goes to the grave. What does it mean when a sizeable piece of supposedly collective memory, a language, or even an entire culture dies with a solitary person? What happens when the things known and experienced by the dead cannot even be comprehended by any other living soul on earth. What does the individual experience when they look forward to see the inevitable and look back and side to side-to-see that they are truly the last of a line? As performers, writers, and researchers is there anything we can do to convey that experience to an audience?

* * * * *

This has nothing whatsoever to do with I Am Legend. I did not see the movie, though I read the book years ago and can imagine it could fit with the theme. The initial inspiration for this post was a story that I remembered coming out of Canada about a year ago. Six hundred sixteen thousand six hundred and thirty-six Canadians fought in the First World War. As of the November 2006, there were three left alive, all over age 105. As the disappearance of this generation approached, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution to hold a state funeral for last surviving veteran. By February '07 Lloyd Clemett died, leaving only two. Percy Wilson died a few months later. This left only John Henry Foster Babcock, 146th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force.

If you think that seemed like a morbid sweepstakes to win, you weren't the only one embracing it. A survey taken in Fall 2006 found that 75% of Canadians were in favor of the state funeral. It seemed a venerable way to commemorate the loss of a direct connection to a significant moment in the nation's history. The problem was that none of the veterans alive at the time of the resolution's approval wanted the honor. The three agreed that bestow the honor on one could not possibly commemorate all of them. The deeds and death of one could not possibly carry the weight of all that history and experience. (To make matters more intriguing, Babcock never saw action and has actually lived in Spokane, WA since the 1920s. He will die an American citizen.)

* * * * *

Two much more dramatic examples of cultural extinction come to mind. The first is that of Dolly Pentreath who died in her home in Mousehole, Cornwall, England in December 1777. Dolly is widely acknowledged as the last native speaker of Cornish on Earth. There were no documented native speakers after her death, though the language has survived in snippets and revival attempts in the centuries following her death. One estimate has the total number of fluent, non-native Cornish speakers at 300.

Much has been mythologized about Dolly Pentreath. Stories abound about the fish-wife (though she never married an actual man) and her cursing, beer drinking, and pipe smoking. Most of all there was her refusal to use anything, but Cornish though she spoke English. Legend has it that her final words were "Me ne vidn cewsel Sawznek!" ("I don't want to speak English!").

Regardless of the specific truths behind Dolly lore, it does seem as if she knew that she may be the last true speaker of her beloved Cornish. This was largely due to her story being recorded in-person by antiquarian Daines Barrington. It is certainly possible that Barrington found her by chance and not because she was the true last speaker. Nevertheless the question remains: how might we convey to an audience the understanding of death by someone facing death not only as a human, but as the carrier of a tradition and culture they hold to so fiercely.

* * * * *

San Nicolas was home to a tribe of Native Americans about whom little is known. They probably spoke a language from the widespread Uto-Aztecan family, but when The Lone Woman of San Nicolas was eventually brought from the island to the mainland at the request of missionaries, none of the local Indian translators were able to communicate with her. The decline of the San Nicolas population probably began shortly after contact with Europeans in the 17th century due to disease and/or resource and trading pressures brought by the settlers. A crisis point was reached between 1810 and the mid-1830s as fleets of Russian and Aleut fur trappers hunting the island's large seal population sparred more frequently with the indigenous population. In 1835, missionaries evacuated everyone from the island, except one 20-something woman who was believed to be missing her child.

The woman was baptized as Juana Maria in the final weeks of her life. For the 18 years prior she lived alone on the island of San Nicolas, about 50 miles off the coast near Los Angeles. She was finally brought from the island by Captain George Nidiver. Because no one was able to communicate with her beyond crude sign language, we do not know what life was like alone on the island or how she reacted to being the last of her people to live any semblance of a traditional life on their ancestral island.

It does appear that she lived reasonably well under the circumstances. She was described as being in good health and eagerly interacted with Capt. Nidiver and his crew. Further, she was said to be "astonished and delighted" by the "civilization" she found on the mainland, perhaps indicating that she may have believed that she would never see people or society again. Sadly, she contracted dysentery shortly after reaching the mainland and never recovered. She would die under the care of Capt. Nidiver's wife, but without any knowledge of the fate of her people and with an unknowable sense of her place in her people's history.

Where in the World is Carmen Santiago's Body

2008-02-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

(Heath Ledger's apartment, NYC)

Here's an little interesting Google Map mash-up of where various celebrities died in NYC.

I remember seeing a similar map mash-up indicating the various cemeteries where celebrities' bodies are located but I have to say that I've never really responded to any of this cemetery stuff. The actual location of a death seems far more intriguing to me than the sites where we sanitize it all with our rituals.

(New Orleans' home, owner unknown)

Lady Bluebeard

2008-02-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday there was a really fascinating article on the front page of the Chicago Tribune about Belle Gunness, also known as "Lady Bluebeard," a serial killer who lived on a farm near La Porte, Indiana in the first years of the twentieth century. The article focuses on a student forensic anthropologist's attempt to uncover whether the body currently buried in Belle Gunness's grave is, in fact, Belle Gunness. This is another side to How the Dead Speak; only this time, the subject is a serial killer.

Gunness was a wealthy Norwegian widow who lured suitors to her quiet farm via charming and explicit love letters, promising marriage. When a suitor arrived at her home, she fed them a hefty old-fashioned Norwegian meal laced with strychnine, waited for them to die, then took them to the cellar where she would then dismember the body and bury the remains in the hog pen.

The world came to know Belle Gunness when her farm burned to the ground in 1908, allegedly killing her and her three children. Her body, however, when discovered, was headless. A relative of one of Belle's many doomed suitors was the one who insisted that authorities search the property for bodies. They did, and they found more than just one body:

They found 11. It is estimated that Belle Gunness killed as many as thirty people during her lifetime. From the article:

Gunness' first husband and two of their children had previously died unexpectedly after suffering from symptoms of poisoning. She collected life insurance on all three. A week after Gunness remarried, her new husband's baby from a previous union was dead, Simmons said. Several months later, her husband died when a sausage grinder allegedly fell on his head. Again, she collected life insurance.

She became a legend, labeled by the nickname "Lady Bluebeard." Rumors swirled for years after the fire that Belle's "body" was someone else's, and she had faked her death. That is what this forensic anthropologist is trying to find out. I can't wait to find out too. Did she fake her death, or did she die? The alleged body of Belle Gunness has been exhumed, and its headless remains are being examined, and DNA pulled to compare to DNA in the saliva Belle left behind on one of her love letters to a victim. He had opened the envelope with a letter opener, thus the preserved DNA.

Above all, it amazes me that I never heard of this story before--that a serial killer was discovered not very far away in La Porte, Indiana (which I have visited), only twenty five or so years after Dr. H. H. Holmes confessed to murdering 27 people, although he may have murdered many more. H.H. Holmes is the subject of Erik Larson's book Devil in the White City. When I think of Holmes and Gunness, I think of how killing must have brought them some form of joy; a pleasure that ordinary life cannot bring, but rather bringing the end of life. Perhaps it brought them peace, as if fulfilling some void that other humans possess naturally. Or maybe it was just power.

Incense and Nakedness

2008-02-12T11:41:00.000-08:00

Though this isn't something I read or watched, it was something that I thought was a fantastic story. My uncle just passed away last week, two days before the Asian New Year. Sunday was his funeral, I was unable to go because it was in California.

Anyhow, my brother was standing outside with my aunt, uncle, and cousin, and this is how that conversation went (P.S. it was a Buddhist funeral):

Brother: Uncle Ted, are you okay?

Uncle Ted: (Wiping eyes) Yeah, I just can't handle the incense. It drives me crazy.

Crazy Aunt: Yeah, I can't stand it in there! Do me a favor, when I die, forget all this fucking chanting. Just throw me a fuckin' party!

Disillusioned Cousin #4058: If I have an open casket, I want to be buried naked. Just let it all hang out...

(sound of gong)

Anyhow - actual post to follow re: some more Buddhist death deliciousness.

When all tomorrows are laid to waste

2008-02-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

What if I said that [the boy i]s a god?

The old man shook his head. I'm past all that now. Have been for years. Where men cant live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone. So I hope that's not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it's not true. Things will be better when everybody's gone.

They will?

Sure they will.

Better for who?

Everybody.

Everybody.

Sure. We'll all be better off. We'll all breathe easier.

That's good to know.

Yes it is. When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: Where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?

- From The Road by Cormac McCarthy (pp. 172-3)

Meeting notes 2-3-08

2008-02-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

FOOL MACHINE COLLECTIVE MEETING NOTES
Meeting Time: 2/3 Super Bowl Sunday, at Konak’s
Attending: John Pierson, Luke, Kurt, Jessica Anne, Tanya, Peter

*The Giants won. We toasted, insincerely, with a “yay.”

-- FIRING SQUADS.
- The latest posting on the blog before this meeting was Kurt’s, about firing squads. Kurt found some information on firing squad statistics and techniques from all over the world, particularly in Thailand, where they set up a canvas screen that one officer shoots through, while the accused is tied with his hands above his head, on a cross.
- John brought up “GUILT” as a possible theme for shows. Specifically, looking at the audience as “judge.” This fits in with Ryan’s idea of giving the audience a task, or journey, that they go through during the performance (“Your task is to ‘survive’ the following experience.”)

*I have written “audience’s experience as separate.” Anyone know what that is in reference to?

-- PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH DEATH.
- John proposed an “action item:” to encourage the comment section on the blog as chances to relate personal, first-hand experiences with death, whereas the post areas are mainly dedicated to factual, read information. (I’d amend that in retrospect, considering Dina’s very excellent posts concerning her friend’s mother’s death, which is a very immediate and complicated story, which does need the space as a main post; more discussion about this later? - Kurt)

-- PHYSICAL STEPS OF DEATH
- Tanya made a connection between the steps of death (decomposition) and the steps towards acceptance when in mourning.
- possible exploration of these steps; “itemizing” the steps, looking at each one as individual inspiration for stage pictures, themes, etc. Also good material for physical workshops? “translating those steps into physical space”

*Note: Tanya has access to a cold, cold, cold roof.

-- PHOTOGRAPHY AND DEATH
- this seems to be a common reoccurrence in discussion. Worth looking into more deeply. John assigned Kurt the task of getting his words together regarding this theme.
- performance idea: create the setting of the death of an audience member
- maybe Peter’s delay camera can be used for this

-- “CLINICAL” ANALYSIS
- Discussion about the “Sterile Room,” a performance idea where individual audience members are analyzed, objectively, as bodies. The staging of this would be “hospital-like”, surgery room-ish, where the performers are in an enclosed (curtained?) space with the lone audience member. This form will continue to be discussed by the collective.

-- DEATH AND MORBIDITY
- Continue to stray away from death as a morbid idea, and look at it in a “positive” light, or at least that which gives meaning/joy/appreciation/whathaveyou to life. Peter comments on Greek mythology, where the gods are jealous of man, because they are able to die, so their life is that much more meaningful (and that’s why the gods fuck with people.)

*performance idea: Book of Death – recording dates of birth for the audience, lining them up and having them record their birth and death in a kind of logbook

-- PREPARATION OF DEATH
- exploring the clean up of death, what is done to “change the room” when there is a death. Luke brings up personal story of his friend (“Eugene sent me a text message that our friend had been eaten by an alligator”)
- Peter comments on a specific industry that cleans up after people who have died alone.

*I have written: “box of last thoughts that you would have before you died”. Anyone know what that is?

*performance idea: eulogies, and living wakes for audience members

*I have written “cheese death” Anyone? Anyone at all?

-- Jessica comments on the box of ashes, and there is some discussion as to what it is that goes into the box, by the time the family gets it (teeth?bone? hair?)

-- AUDIENCE AS DEAD
- Some discussion on the state of the audience as they go through the performance event. “They’re dead from the get-go,” or the idea that the audience members should be going through the experience as an objective body. We should continue to differentiate between “death” and “dying”; the difference between death through the perception of being dead, and death through the perception of being alive

-- NEXT MEETING we should have some carpenters there that can help with making the audience boxes

Emily Dickinson

2008-02-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew not haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his Civility -

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess - in the Ring -
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He passed Us -
The Dews drew quivering and chill -
For only Gossamer, my Gown -
My Tippet - only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground -
The Roof was scarcely visible -
The Cornice - in the Ground -

Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity -

--c. 1863

******

Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen -
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs - between -

For Stranger - Strangers do not mourn -
There be Immortal friends
Whom Death see first - 'tis news of this
That paralyze Ourselves -

Who, vital only to Our Thought -
Such Presence bear away
In dying - 'tis as if Our Souls
Absconded - suddenly -

--c. 1862

And PT Barnum wanted her Leg

2008-02-08T19:12:00.000-08:00

So I am reading a book about the Banquet Years in France. And like it was with Fools where everywhere I look I saw crates, now everywhere I look I see DEATH. That is no surprise, because death IS everywhere, sometimes we just don't want to look too closely. Anyway, this picture is of Sara Bernhardt. Is this a photo of her dead in a coffin, does it belong in the Mourning Museum? No. She is alive! Sarah was given a coffin by a fan while she was in France. Supposedly he said he would buy her anything and she asked for a coffin, and he gave her one. She was said to carry that coffin with her on tours. She wouldn't normally sleep in it, but it sat at the end of her bed until her real death. What I don't know is if she was actually buried in this coffin. I must investigate.

Che Guervara’s corpse and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

2008-02-08T17:05:00.000-08:00

The Last Man to Ever Let You Down

2008-02-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is a wonderful article from last summer published in the Chicago Reader about Wunder's Cemetery and it's current and past caretakers. It is glimpse into a caretaker's world: check it out. Here are some lovely photos from the article:

The 27 Club

2008-02-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

I am posting this on behalf of John Szymanski

There has been a large number of (predominantly rock) musicians over the years that have all died at the age of 27...which, in some circles has been dubbed "The 27 Club". There is even a Wikipedia article on this very subject, as with most other subject of great importance.

The first four musicians in this group all rose to fame in the 1960s, and have achieved quite a good level of, shall we say, immortality!

-Brian Jones, 1941-1969, drowned in his backyard swimming pool
-Jimi Hendrix, 1942-1970, died of asphyxiation of vomit after overdose of sleeping pills
-Janis Joplin, 1943-1970, heroin overdose
-Jim Morrison, 1943-1971, unknown causes, though rumors of heroin and heart failure abound

The list however, also includes:
-Kurt Cobain, 1967-1994, self inflicted gunshot wound
-Robert Johnson (bluesman), 1911-1938, either strychinine poisoning or gunshot
-Alan Wilson (Canned Heat), 1943-1970, overdose
-Pete Ham (Badfinger), 1947-1975, suicide by hanging
-Chris Bell (Big Star), 1951-1978, car accident
-d. boon (Minutemen), 1958-1985, car accident
etc etc.

What is it about the age of 27 that causes or influences so many deaths of musicians? Of course, one could look at it as a major coincidence, and say "hey, there's plenty of musicians who died at any age!", but it's also tempting to thing there's some sort of karmic or other spiritual or devilish spirit at play here. Excuse me while I find my black light and fuzzy Hendrix poster...

Wake

2008-02-05T17:34:00.002-08:00

Last night I attended Nancy's wake. I have not been to a wake in over ten years. I think that makes me a very lucky person. The funeral home was in Homer Glen and the drive there was dank and moist with clouded fog that crowded the road we traveled on. When we began our trek there my mom said from the back seat, almost to herself, "this is what it was like outside when my sister died." We could barely see ten feet ahead of us, like we were shrouded from the rest of the world, or like we had driven away from the world, or the world chose to hide itself from us.

There were a lot of people there, a lot of family, a lot of friends; Nancy's family, however, stood on one side of the room whereas her husband's family stood on the other. There was much tension in the room, but thankfully no arguments. There were pictures of Nancy posted to boards, the boards mounted on easels. The photos spanned her entire life. I also looked through her wedding album. It was 1974 when she got married and she looked so young, and she looked very happy. She was married in the same church her daughter was married in only three months ago and where her funeral was held this morning. At the end of the large room, she lay in an open casket.

Before I even knelt before her I started crying. The grief came very suddenly; looking at her laying there, so still and painted over, seemed incredibly unfair to me. She was such a good woman. When I did kneel before her, I couldn't even pray. I'm not a religious person, but wanted to pray something for her. I wanted to say something to the God I believed in for her. But I started choking and I couldn't think of anything but "sleep."

Then I felt a presence and looked to my right. My best friend's mother-in-law stood there, only a few feet from me, waiting her turn. She was too close, like if only she had been a foot further away I wouldn't have felt like my space had been violated. I don't think she knew, but then I felt rushed and got up. I didn't really give Nancy a good look. I couldn't really. Cancer had whittled her body away to nothing; she wore the red wig she bought after all her hair fell out; she wore her glasses; the dress she wore to both her son and daughters weddings. After I got up, my best friend and I looked at the top of Nancy's red-wigged head and talked about how good she looked. That's what I do remember about funerals, especially all the open casket Catholic funerals I went to as a child. They would say, oh, so and so looks good. They did a good job. So and so looks so peaceful, don't they? It's the nice thing to do. And Nancy did look good, for having died in the condition she was in.

Thankfully, though, my friend said, "her mouth is a little stretched and weird."

I said, "Yeah." I looked at her. "But otherwise..."

"Yeah, otherwise, she looks good."

There were cookies and cakes and chips and dip and sodas and water in the other room. I had a flashback from my grandfather's wake; I was twelve and wandered into the lounge where my father's sisters sat smoking and grieving. I remember hovering at the doorway for a moment, wandering what my place was in the whole situation. I didn't want to intrude on a grief I didn't yet fully understand, let alone feel. I remember being bored, but feeling guilty about the boredom.

After about two hours, we got back in the car and went home. I thought of my friend, and was amazed by how well she was holding up. I knew Nancy for all these years because I am her daughter's best friend, and I could barely keep myself together. Or maybe, it's just that she only lets go when she is by herself.

Death of a father, pt 1.

2008-02-05T00:13:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, at about this time, I received a phone call alerting me that my father was dead. It was not a total surprise – he had been battling multiple myeloma (a rare cancer of the plasma cell) for almost 3 years.

Thirteen hours previous, my sister called my workplace to tell me to get prepared, because he was obviously dying. I prepared by immediately going to my apartment, and booking a one way flight. I wanted to see him before he left us, and I wanted to stay with him until he was gone.

I didn’t make it.

Loosing someone that has always been a fundamental element in ones life… I find it incredibly confusing. My grieving process is a slow and methodical one, avoiding any public displays, and perhaps that puts me at a loss. I’m sitting here wondering how very long it will take for me to reality to settle in. There were years of yo-yo health combined with chemo treatments, broken bones, radiation, stem cell transplants, dialysis, transfusions, medications, medications for the effects of other medications, watching a once strong man become frail. I thought that seeing his body at the wake would give me a sense of finality to all of that. But it didn’t. His septum was crooked, and he was waxy bronze with thick, unnatural make-up. His lower torso disappeared inside of a box like a stage magician trick, his wedding ring was gone, and he was far to still. It obviously was not him.

So I’m confused. I know that something major has changed. I can tell by the way that people gaze at me sympathetically, gently touch my arm, hug me with more meaning, awkwardly look away. And I have to remind myself that they are doing this because the one continuous male presence in my 31 years of life just doesn’t exist anymore. There is only stark, vacant space where he used to be.

The Undertaking

2008-02-04T14:20:00.001-08:00

A lot of my excerpts have been from Thomas Lynch, poet and undertaker, and one of my new favorite writers. This is a short excerpt of a PBS special called "The Undertaking" - which focused on Lynch. I like hearing his voice, and his poetry.

The entire episode can be watched here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/undertaking/

Meyers and Chopra Talk Death

2008-02-04T12:10:00.001-08:00

I was watching Iconoclasts on the Sundance Channel with Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra. They talked about death quite a bit. Three really good stories that I hope I can remember properly.

One was Chopra going to deliver his father's ashes to the River Ganges. A man comes down and asks him questions about his father and his family in order to record them, as is tradition. So, Chopra and the man go inside the building where these records are kept. The man shows him that his father did the same thing for his parents. And, if he wished, Chopra could leave a note for his own children when they did the same for him. He did. Now, when his children go to place his ashes in the Ganges, they can view a message from their father, wishing them love from beyond the grave.

Myers and Chopra were doing an improvised interview and discussion for the show. They stood in a theatre and just talked in front of an audience. Death was brought up. Look behind you and you'll see death following. Look behind you again and he's even closer. Look again. Even closer. And the audience was laughing during this, which was his point. This is how humans deal with the knowledge of our own mortality. We laugh. We can't help it. Which, explains why so much comedy comes out of pain. This quote has been assumed to be taken by a few different comedians, so I won't specify anyone. “Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.”

Myers was always a fan of The Beatles. When George Harrison died, he was devastated. Then, he got a letter. It was the last letter Harrison ever wrote and it was written for him. See, Myers always felt so sad at the end of A Hard Day's Night. Because, when the helicopter flew away at the end, he wanted to be on it. In this letter, Harrison wrote how he was a fan and that he was sorry he had to fly away on the helicopter without him again.

posted by: Shaina Lyn-Waitsman

Obituary

2008-02-04T08:28:00.001-08:00

Nancy Dugan, nee Haase, age 52, of Oak Forest, beloved wife of Gerry, loving mother of Christine (Charles) Weccele, Steven (Linnea) and Patrick; cherished grandmother of Bridget and Hannah; dear daughter of Robert and Joan Haase; fond sister of Robert, Jr. (Kay) Haase; also nieces and nephews. Funeral Tuesday, 8:30 a.m., from Modell Funeral Home, 12641 W. 143rd Street, Homer Glen, to Incarnation Church. Mass 9:30 a.m. Internment Holy Sepulcre Cemetery. Member of Oak Forest Jaycees and Daughters of the American Revolution, Swallow Cliff Chapter. Nancy passed from lung cancer, in her memory she would have liked for one person to Stop Smoking. Visitation Monday, 3 to 9 p.m.

Tonight I attend her wake; tomorrow, her funeral.

Firing squads

2008-02-03T16:27:00.000-08:00

Bilal is correct in verifying Anthony's comment; one shooter is given a blank. This way, everyone in the squad can assume that they were the one with the blank. There is a psychological phenomenon called "diffusion of responsibility" that describes this feeling. Wikipedia article.

I also found this page about modern firing squad rituals from all around the world, including, to my shock and horror, Utah.

Here's a segment from a paragraph on Thailand.

On the day of execution, the prisoner was taken from their cell and photographed and fingerprinted. They were then taken to the execution chamber and handcuffed to a cross like wooden frame with their back to the machine gun, 4 meters behind them. A white cloth blindfold is applied and the hands tied with a sacred Buddhist cord. Flowers are hung from the prisoner’s hands as an offering to Buddha and a canvas screen is pulled between the condemned and the gun. A target is fixed onto the screen level with the prisoner’s heart and the gun aimed at the centre of the target. The executioner takes up his position, watching another member of the execution team who raises a red flag, and on the signal from the prison governor, the flag is dropped and the executioner fires a fully automatic burst of 15 rounds into the victim’s heart.

The picture is of Thailand's last shooting executioner. The country officially moved to lethal injection in 2003. An interview with him is available here.

2008-02-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

Fools Collective Meeting
1/27/08 @ The Edgewater
Attending: John, Luke, Evan, Ryan, Kurt, Jessica, Anthony, Chloe
Minutes taken by Luke

****
Possibility of a trip to the Museum of Mourning Photograhy (http://mourningphotography.com/) was discussed. John is coordinating a trip (or multiple trips) via email.
Possibility of a cemetery tour was discussed. Specifically mentioned was Bachelor’s Grove, though its unclear whether they give tours or we would need to sneak in.
In order to schedule some physical workshops for the Collective, Anthony is going to email John some available 3Pear dates which have come open. John will then use those to determine the best times to have workshops.
One-off performance ideas are needed. Specifically, the Collective should be thinking of ideas for spaces in which to do these performances. Basements, theaters, alleys, public places, etc.
We talked about using a wiki to track some of our ideas/collaborations, but it was brought up that a wiki is more of a central repository of information. If the blog is insufficient for our purposes, we should consider moving to a message board-style format.
Questions were raised about how to be notified when comments are posted on the blog. Evan has since discovered that this feature exists in the blog settings. Up to ten email addresses can be added.
Kurt and Peter talked a bit about using video and images in our work. Specifically mentioned were Resurrection Mary (a popular Chicago ghost), death photography (and the idea that trying to preserve something kills it), and investigating the history of cremation.
I was told to write down “witches don’t have souls.” I drew a little scale with a witch on one side and a duck on the other.
Anthony brought up the fact that when firing squads would perform executions, only one member of the squad would be given a real bullet. No one knew who this person was. This served to relieve the conscience of the firing squad members. It is an example of a disconnect between intention and act.
One-off shows:
How does the audience enter? How do we treat them?
Perhaps there should be a death survey: How do you want to die? Would you like to have the real bullet or the fake bullet?
We need to drum up a test audience for our audience boxes.
We should look into French horror theater, aka Grand-Guignol.

The audience boxes should limit perspective. Perhaps we can incorporate a video delay so the audience member sees what happened to the box just before they got in, or what happened to the previous person in the box. We could take a photo of the audience member and their friends all standing around the box, like a mourning photo. We could have these available as the audience leaves.
The boxes should be built and then given to the Fools to design. Lee Valley Hardware was mentioned as a potential resource for materials/plans.
Death is not a unique experience, perhaps we should survey the audience and somehow use that information. A death mad lib?
The tech for the boxes should include sound. Perhaps we can work it out so that each box its own sound system. Ideas: convey the impression of being buried alive, someone speaking to you through dirt and wood. Have claw/nail marks inside the boxes.
Images that were brought up: refrigerator filled with a person, emerging from the boxes at the start of the show, having different light sources for each coffin.
We should somehow acknowledge the fact that we are directly above a funeral home.
We had some meta-discussion about how to make the show itself more accessible to the audience. We need to be considerate of how we frame the experience, i.e. what happens before our section should somehow clue the audience in to what they are getting ready to experience.
Death is a visceral topic and there are many social taboos around it. The taboo against “morbidness” would be an interesting thing to explore through our one-off shows and then incorporate into the final.
We can also deal with how those left behind deal with death. The traditions are too numerous to mention. Is it celebration, mourning, etc? How do people meld and mix together all the emotions surrounding death into a cultural tradition?
Maybe the goal for the audience is to survive.
Is there a narrative through which we explore all of this? A mission? “Resurrect the dead girl?” Can we have an “audience corpse”? Perhaps the audience is the manipulator of the show.
Action Item: think about box types for different audience types.
Should the Fool Collective propose a show for film fest? A really bad horror film? A silent film?
***

Bury Me Standing, Post 1

2008-02-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

"Gypsies everywhere went to unusual extremes to prevent death. Not just the death of loved ones, but of any known ones. It went beyond compassion into the more exigent realm of the superstitious. The more diligent would try to scare death away, perhaps literally by screaming at it, or by raising their skirts and flashing at it. They may try to trick death by changing the name of a sick person to that of someone they hated - a known thief, or a policeman - with the idea that no one, not even death, could want to inhabit that soul. Others would try to fob the bad luck off onto some other creature. In Britain in the 1940s, Brian Vesey-FitzGerald recorded how Gypsies suffering from pulmonary disease attempted a symbolic transference by breathing three times into the mouth of a live fish, and then throwing it back into the stream from which it had been fetched. The hope was that, confused, death would go for the fish."

- Isabel Fonseca, Bury Me Standing, p.248

Greatest Fears

2008-02-01T07:23:00.000-08:00

So I was inspired by both Peter and Ryan's last blogs, about death dreams and ear spiders, respectively. Ryan, thank you for triggering my gag reflex. Anyhow, my first reaction was "Wow. Spiders in my ear. That's like, my greatest fear." And then I vetoed that thought because my greatest fear, ever since I was about four years old, is being crushed by a piano.

Needless to say when we were moving the pianos up the back stairs for Fluxus I 'bout done had a heart attack as I stood on the landing squeezing my intestines and feeling my jaw petrify from bone into stone.

I don't know whether this fear came from the fact that I was forced to play the piano when I was a child; I knew instinctively that it wasn't my forte and I was afraid I wasn't going to be quite good enough at it. Or whether I just hated practicing and thoughts of death by piano was actually a rebellious fantasy. All I know is that I would often stare at our beautiful antique stand-up piano and imagine myself under it, being pressed, contained, suffocated, more afraid of being conscious while it was happening than of the pain itself.

I also had a recurring dream of infinity, where I would be forced into some repetitive act in the afterlife, and again, the fear of being conscious during this endless afterlife overrode any fear of pain. The first dream that I can remember, again when I was four years old, was that I was stuck in a piano key, a miniature me, forever and ever conscious of the white ivory walls as I was played, pressed, contained, suffocated. Only you can't suffocate when you are dead, can you?

I wasn't an overly-morbid four-year old. But what are the images that we initially associate with when we first become conscious of death? Why? And are we interested in the why, or more interested in the physical reactions to these images? The what. I like the what, because I often feel like it's not my job to ask why. You could ask why for eternity, and never find the answer. And that would be suffocating.

dreams

2008-01-30T10:32:00.001-08:00

At least twice in the last week I have been shaken awake by a dream of dying. In both cases it occurred as a falling. In one case I fell into darkness. In another, I fell into a fog. Then the world that I was in turned into nothing and I began to fall harder. I began to have a visceral feeling of falling that I sometimes have in sleep. The kind that causes an involuntary kick of the leg which usually jars me awake, confused. However, this time it didn’t jar me awake. It was as if kicked me in another direction, away from waking, and for a moment I became nothing. It was this momentary lapse of self that scared me awake.

After dreaming these dreams I would lay awake and wait for my heart to slow down. I remembered a conversation I had many years earlier at a slumber party. My best friend Ben told me that if you die, or get injured, in your dreams the same thing would happen in real life. Ben knew many things.

“My uncle” he told us “dreamt he got punched in the gut, and when he woke up he had to go to the hospital for an appendicitis”. I thought that was amazing. I never heard such a thing. Ben didn’t actually know anyone who dreamt of dying and then woke up dead, but his dad did.

Despite the flaws in his story I kind of believed him. I think I wanted to believe him. Perhaps, I liked the idea that the dream-world could have a consequential effect on the waking-world. Or perhaps, I simply liked Nightmare on Elm Street movies and I wanted to be scared. Regardless, up until now I heeded the warning to wake up if I thought I might die in a dream.

How the Dead Speak

2008-01-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

On Monday I read an article in the Chicago Tribune about the successful identification of the previously unknown body of a teenage girl who was found dead in a large appliance box a little over a year ago. Her badly beaten, decomposed body made it difficult, if not impossible, to uncover her identity. They couldn't even get a good impression of prints from her fingertips. As we all know, though, the dead have the power to speak, and their stories can be heard through forensic science. "Lucy," a primitive human estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago, is just one case, and an extreme one at that; she is more the product of anthropology than forensic science, but her age and presence give her a voice nonetheless. Marlaina "Niki" Reed, the teenager from the appliance box, was identified through her dental records and facial reconstruction. The link to the Tribune article unfortunately does not show the photo of Reed compared to the photo of the facial reconstruction built from her skull, but trust me, it was eerie how accurate the forensic scientists were in their work.

Forensic facial reconstruction was probably most famously (and controversially) used in the case of King Tutankhamun:

"In 2005, three teams of scientists (Egyptian, French, and American), in partnership with the National Geographic Society, developed a new facial likeness of Tutankhamun. The Egyptian team worked from 1,700 three-dimensional CT scans of the pharaoh's skull. The French and American teams worked plastic moulds created from these—but the Americans were never told who the subject of the reconstruction was. All three teams created silicone busts of their interpretation of what the young monarch looked like...Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy based on CT data from his mummy, correctly determining his skin tone is impossible. The problem is not a lack of skill on the part of Ancient Egyptians. Egyptian artisans distinguished quite accurately among different ethnicities...[although] Sometimes they depicted their subjects in totally unreal colors, the purposes for which aren't completely understood. The colours may have had ritual significance. There is no consensus on King Tut's skin tone. Terry Garcia, National Geographic' s executive vice president for mission programs, said, in response to some protesters of the King Tut reconstruction—'The big variable is skin tone. North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones, from light to dark. In this case, we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front, 'This is midrange.' We will never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the colour of his eyes with 100% certainty. ... Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion.'"

Also, is has been determined by some scientists that King Tut was murdered: "X-rays of this mummy, which were taken previously, in 1968, had revealed a dense spot at the lower back of the skull. This had been interpreted as a subdural hematoma, which would have been caused by a blow. Such an injury could have been the result of an accident, but it also had been suggested that the young pharaoh was murdered. A trauma specialist from Long Island University insisted that this injury could not have been from a natural cause. The specialist stated that the blow was to a protected area at the back of the head which is not easily injured in an accident. This means someone would have had to sneak up from behind. If this were the case, there are a number of theories as to who is responsible. One popular candidate is his immediate successor Ay and other candidates includes his wife and chariot-driver. Interestingly, there seem to be signs of calcification within the supposed injury, which if true, meant Tutankhamun lived for a fairly extensive period of time (on the order of several months) after the injury was inflicted."

Marlaina "Niki" Reed died from a combination of strangulation and the severe beating she endured. Now she an King Tut have something in common. But whereas her skull was used to reveal her identity, King Tut's was reconstructed out of sheer curiosity.

Forensic science is at the forefront these days; anyone who watches CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, Bones, NCIS, etc. etc. knows that. I found this bit of interesting trivia in Wikipedia as well:

"Casdon Toys has produced a line of at-home facial reconstruction toys featuring Julius Caesar, King Tut, Queen Nefertiti, and Neanderthal Man. The popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation television show has also produced an at-home facial reconstruction kit."

Death and Non-NeoFuturism

2008-01-29T18:14:00.000-08:00

A couple people have mentioned that there is something about the Chaos of Death project that is not particularly NeoFuturist. Near as I can tell, I am the only member of the collective who has never been in a NeoFuturist production (unless you count that one time I was brought on stage to take a citizenship test during TML), so I may not have the most honed NF-dar. Still, I had this vague sense that death loomed large in non-NeoFuturism (i.e, the Italian variety). That might be worth a look, right? I figured, why not check it out.

FT Marinetti and Friends

Mostly these feeling I had came from this story stuck in my head, though I think may be apocryphal. The story was relayed to me by a friend who was astounded by the lengths that Italian futurists would go to show that art had to be violent. He swore certain Italian futurist performances would heighten the energy and danger of shows by playing Russian roulette. I couldn’t find anything to corroborate this story, but the trope of death certainly had a big role in the movement's charter.

The terms of the Manifesto of Futurism itself is in the form of a first will and testament. This is an interesting inversion as compared to the usual last wills and testaments of the dying. I think that it might be interpreted that Marinetti and the Founders of Futurism have killed off their former selves and have been born anew. In the Manifesto, Marinetti goes on a drive that leads to his Futurist epiphany, but upon first reaching the car he describes himself as being “like a corpse on a bier.” Marinetti's former self dies and leaves behind a world of dead souls making dead art. He is reborn to see the world's first sunrise.

Futher, Marinetti invokes death to specifically critique the state of art and Italian society at large:

"Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?"

OK, given that Marinetti condemned museum-going as, at best, "solace for the ills of the moribund, the sickly, the prisoner," he may not have been to keen on our focus on texts, archives, and artifacts. Still, if fear is going to be a fundamental component in several of our planned performances, I think we can make kinship claim (if that really mattered). We death fools inhabiting the Fucked Up Island might just be a bastard children of those Futurists after all.

The Sound of Death

2008-01-29T09:15:00.000-08:00

The link is to a npr show called RadioLab, they create one hour documentaries about science and many different topics.

The topic for this one is The Sound of Death.

Blurb:
Imagine that you're a composer. Imagine getting this commission: “Please write us a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one…” Well, composer David Lang had to do just that when a hospital in Garches, France, asked him to write music for their morgue, or "Salle Des Departs."
Listen:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/01/29

Wanted to post a picture with the RadioLab link and searched for Death Ear and found this article:

Spiders Found In Oregon Boy's Ear

9-Year-Old Complained Of Earache, Doctors Find Pair Of Spiders Nested In Ear Canal

ALBANY, Ore., May. 7, 2007

(AP) These guys were not exactly Snap, Crackle and Pop.

What began as a faint popping in a 9-year-old boy's ear — "like Rice Krispies" — ended up as an earache, and the doctor's diagnosis was that a pair of spiders made a home in the ear.

"They were walking on my eardrums," Jesse Courtney said.

One of the spiders was still alive after the doctor flushed the fourth-grader's left ear canal. His mother, Diane Courtney, said her son insisted he kept hearing a faint popping in his ear — "like Rice Krispies."

Dr. David Irvine said it looked like the boy had something in his ear when he examined him.

When he irrigated the ear, the first spider came out, dead. The other spider took a second dousing before it emerged, still alive. Both were about the size of a pencil eraser.

Jesse was given the spiders — now both dead — as a souvenir. He has taken them to school and his mother has taken them to work.

Real Death

2008-01-29T08:30:00.001-08:00

On Sunday morning a woman I have known for more than fifteen years died. She died in a foreign country with her notoriously insensitive and foolish husband by her side, along with his family members. I am sure that if she had been coherent, if she had not been blanketed in the haze that pain medication creates, she would have really liked for her parents to be there, her siblings, her children, but unfortunately she didn't really know what was going on when her notoriously insensitive and foolish husband put her frail and jaundiced body onto a plane bound for Germany in an 11th hour attempt to cure her stage 3 cancer. If she hadn't been so ill, or on morphine for the pain, she might have said, "You know what? It's too late. Germany sounds great, though. I'll visit it in the next life, okay?" Or perhaps if he had thought to take her there for the unique treatment available months ago when there was still a sliver of a chance, it would have been fine. It might have even worked. That's not how it played out though. He put her on a plane and in his notoriously insensitive and foolish way chose not to invite her parents, or her siblings, or her children. Above all her children.

When her daughter discovered this plot, it was via the drugged lips of her mother.

"I'm going to to Germany!"

"What Mom? When are you going to Germany?"

"Tomorrow!"

"She doesn't know what she's talking about, " the notorious one said. After much prying though, he gave in and divulged the plot, but demanded that no on else know, especially his wife's parents, a couple of devout Catholics in their 80's whose own bodies have toiled in witness to their daughter's impending death. Why? I don't know. I asked the same question. Why, when they love her so much, were they kept in the dark? These people who treat me like their own granddaughter, adopted through friendship, long and loving so that now we are family.

The next day I got a text message from my best friend: "My mom is going to Germany today for one last try. She'll be gone for ten days. I think this was the last time I'll see her alive."

Two days later I got another text: "I'm going to Germany today. I leave shortly."

I immediately called her and asked what had happened. Apparently when her mother arrived in Germany the doctors, upon examining her and taking some tests, discovered that all her organs were failing. They hooked her up to machines while a phone call was made to my best friend. She has forty-eight hours to live. Hurry.

I talked to her while she was on her way to the airport. Her anger resonated through the airwaves but was controlled, calm. She was determined to make it on time.

My best friend's plane arrived in Frankfurt at 11:30 a.m. German time. Her mother passed at approximately 9 a.m. Her name was Nancy.

Her body is resting currently in a chilled locker in Frankfurt until the necessary paperwork to bring her home is submitted and approved. Apparently they don't do embalming in Germany.

I had to write about this because I'm dealing with it; it's incredibly upsetting. Nancy and I planned my best friend's baby shower together, before she got sick, before she died. I remember getting exasperated with her a couple of times. Mothers are good at that. Now I feel bad for ever feeling that way. I titled this post "Real Death" because there is a big difference between just writing about death and experiencing it in real life. That goes without saying, but I felt I should explain myself. Now I have to go to a funeral. Now I have to hold my best friend up, hold her hand. Now we mourn. And the notoriously insensitive and foolish one? My best friend swears she will never speak to him again.

Yet another meeting

2008-01-28T16:51:00.000-08:00

So there was some confusion with the meeting last night, Sunday the 27th. I canceled it and then rescheduled it for a later time in the night. So... many people missed it, but we still had a productive meeting. I am still going to hold a meeting on Sunday February 3rd (Superbowl Sunday I'm told). We can just meet at the theater at 9pm. And perhaps we will stay there and have some cheap drinks that we can buy at the corner liquor store. This meeting will be for anybody who wants to attend but specifically for people who missed the last meeting. We will be reviewing what we went over last sunday and hopefully this will lead to new conversations. Please rsvp in the comments if you want to attend.

Thanks

Classic Sesame Street: I'm Gonna Miss You, Mr. Hooper!

2008-01-27T23:58:00.001-08:00

I don't remember this as a child but I was introduced to it by a friend. I think it is one of the best ways any show or movie has ever dealt with the subject of death

Meeting Cancelation

2008-01-26T13:31:00.000-08:00

Hey Death Squad, we had to cancel the meeting this Sunday the 27th because it conflicted with a neo-futurist company meeting. I am trying to reschedule for next weekend, but I have just been told that that is Superbowl Sunday, so we will probably lose Evan because he is having a party at his house. So...