The 30 | Death
In grad school, I contributed to a single-topic issue of the city's alt-weekly magazine that our team produced. The project represented some of my favorite work from those years -- dissecting a subject with negative connotations by way of interesting and surprising story angles.
I thought about what I'd read and listened to and seen this month, and threads appeared that reminded me how discussions of death need not be morbid. For instance, a eulogy often represents a stereotypical sadness. JFK's tribute to Robert Frost instead illuminates the joyous, yet at times still aspirational, place in American mythology that art occupies.
"I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty," JFK said.
That quote resonated with me as I watched Alexandra Bell's soulful, thought-provoking presentation of her work.
Photographs and art can make death look ugly. Haunting. Beautiful. That's because death, like life, is not a single event. Death is a concept. A simple word we employ to describe the uncountable folds and fissures of life's blossoms.
Death connects the stench of 26,000 beetles, the musical tones of volcanoes, and yes, even Disney World.
We use the same word to talk about both decline -- the death of solitude, perhaps -- and the cessation of cellular processes, celebrated or otherwise.
Sometimes death is a fictional plot point. Or a total misnomer, like the Dead Sea.
Or... just the start.
Poetry this month: honey.