I’ve always wanted to die on a morning in June.
I’ll lay in a comfortable bed, facing a window. Outside, the sun will dapple leaves with shades of green and gold. And I’ll smile and say a prayer of gratitude for the life I got to live, the people I met, the moments I moved through, the things that I made. Then comes the part where I’ll close my eyes and offer all the things that made me to whatever did the making.
I imagine my funeral: the music to be played and the prayers to be prayed and the stories to be told. I enjoy picturing people from disparate corners of my life coming together and asking one another how they knew me. After all, the only guarantee that accompanies death: “the ones who love us will miss us…”
I envision my funeral as an art installation, a space where my work is gathered and displayed. Paintings and collages and drawings hung on white walls. Films and photographs projected for a people passing by. Poems and plays and stories read aloud and shared. Music that scored my life played sequentially as a soundtrack to score the entire scene. Then, eventually, the music stops. The art is stripped from the walls and offered to attendees. The lights are turned off. Everyone goes home.
I suppose this is a way of imagining some part of me goes on after I’m gone. Whether they’re willing to admit it or not, every artist dreams of this. So often, we create to be remembered, to have our names said aloud and our work live on, long after we’ve made our exit.
I often dream the words I’ve bled onto so many pages will be read aloud after I’m gone. And in that way, I hope to go on living and living and living and living as long as there’s someone there to pick up the words and whisper them.
But with floods in the Northeast and extreme heat in the Southwest, it’s hard not to think these dreams of being missed and remembered are foolish. It feels most days like we’re about to witness the end of all things. It seems more and more that we’ll all go at once. As the ocean boils and the landscape burns, maybe there won’t be anyone left to do the remembering.
And with no one to miss us, the eternal question springs forth: why bother?
A friend of mine once defined art as “the intentional manipulation of an aspect of reality for the sake of eliciting a human response.” Perhaps a flawed definition, but one that I’ve always been fond of. This remark, tossed out in the midst of casual conversation, prompted the question, “But who is the object of this response?” My friend was quick to say, “Doesn’t matter. An artist can make art for the sake of creating a response in themself.”
Another friend of mine once told me the pressure of using his art to live forever was too much. “I’d rather just go into my studio and do my work,” he told me. I’m done worrying about whether the things I make sticks around. I’m happy to tinker. That’s enough.”
It’s sentiments like these that make me understand why Buddhist monks paint shapes with water on rocks. By the time the picture is complete, it’s already vanished. The fruit of the labor is inherently transient. Process, not product.
And there lies the answer.
joshua chamberlain 