Art and death

For the post mortem amusement of…

30 August 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Poetry

Posted by Vale

Richard Brautigan was a writer and a poet. He died not long ago, which makes this poem very timely. Ed Dorn wrote it ‘for the post mortem amusement of Richard Brautigan’. Let’s hope he is:

A B H O R RE N C E S
November 10, 1984
Death by over-seasoning: Herbicide
Death by annoyance: Pesticide
Death by suffocation: Carbon monoxide
Death by burning: Firecide
Death by falling: Cliffcide
Death by hiking: Trailcide
Death by camping: Campcide
Death by drowning: Rivercide
Lakecide
Oceancide
Death from puking: Curbcide
Death from boredom: Hearthcide
Death at the hands of the medical profession: Dockcide
Death from an overnight stay: Inncide
Death by suprise: Backcide
Death by blow to the head: Upcide
Death from delirious voting: Rightcide
Death from hounding: Leftcide
Death through war: Theircide & Ourcide
Death by penalty: Offcide
Death following a decision: Decide

Ed Dorn wrote the famous Gunslinger. Brautigan is best known for books like The Confederate General from Big Sur and Trout Fishing in America

Thanks to Celebrant Kim Farley for finding the poem.

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Disinherited!

29 August 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Art and death

Posted by Vale

Once in a while, looking around, it dawns on you that getting to the kitchen has become an obstacle course; setting off for the bedroom an orienteering event. It’s the moment you realise that your books have stopped furnishing your rooms and begun – like a literary occupy movement – to take them over. Bitter as it is, it’s the moment you realise that a clear out is needed.

We were tackling a pile or two recently (on the scree slopes in the dining room) when our son came in and cried out ‘but those are my heirlooms!’ It’s a comfort to know that my collection of Mazo de La Roche and Marks and Spencer Cookbooks will be in good hands after I am gone but, I thought, what will he do with the electronic books?

It’s a good question. Libraries (and record collections) can be read and loaned, treasured, split up and shared out – unless they are electronic. The problem is that you never wholly own a Kindle book – you simply purchase a right to read that is at present non-transferable. Equally a music collection bought from Apple cannot be passed on as digital content (legally at least). Nowadays the day you die is the day the music dies too. It’s a queer reversal.  In the past it was you that exited while your possessions lived on in other hands. In the digital world you will live on in a thousand guises, while it is your digital assets that fade away.

It looks as though you might as well be buried with your Nook or  your Kindle, iPods or iPad – new grave goods for the virtual afterlife. After all your books and music will already be safe, stowed away again in their own clouds.

Read more about it here.

New Orleans comes to London

2 August 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Art and death, funeral customs, funeral music

Posted by Vale

Celebrant Kim Farley went to Abram Wilson’s memorial service a week or so ago. He was a young American Jazz Musician who died unexpectedly aged just 38. She writes: ‘There was a procession from the South Bank to St John’s in Waterloo and once inside the relative cool of the packed church, there was more music and singing and readings and a brilliant eulogy by his young widow. I didn’t know him, but she helped everyone get a strong sense of his vibrancy, humour and spirit.

They were together for 3 years. He died at 38. She spoke of how he’d usually be talking to her so happily in the morning that he’d join her on the walk to the tube station when she left for work. And then like as not, stay with her, down to the platform. Where she would miss the first train. And the second. And then usually get the 4th, on which he might just have decided to accompany her anyway. “It’s just a train ride, Baby”.

Here’s Abram himself playing some modern New Orleans Jazz (by Wynton Marsalis)

The Common and the particular

12 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Poetry

Posted by Vale

I like these men and women who have to do with death,
Formal, gentle people whose job it is,
They mind their looks, they use words carefully.

I liked that woman in the sunny room
One after the other receiving such as me
Every working day. She asks the things she must

And thanks me for the answers. Then I don’t mind
Entering your particulars in little boxes,
I like the feeling she has seen it all before.

There is a form, there is a way. But also
That no one come to speak for a shade
Is like the last, I see she knows that too.

I’m glad there is a form to put your details in,
Your dates, the cause. Glad as I am of men
Who’ll make a trestle of their strong embrace

And in a slot between two other slots
Do what they have to every working day:
Carry another weight for someone else.

It is common. You are particular.

The poem is by David Constantine. It was found in Neil Astley’s Anthology Being Human. You can find it here. Hat tip to Sweetpea.

Before I die

11 July 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Death; Good death

Posted by Vale

At the Southbank Deathfest in January one of the best features was the wall that invited people to write down what it was that they wanted to do before they died.

The idea began in New Orleans when artist Candy Chang pasted the first ‘Before I Die’ wall on the side of an empty house.

You can see more about the first wall here.

Although it closed in September buy tadalafil 20mg uk 2011, the idea has spread all over the world including London. Interest has been so great that a website has been set up showing walls from across the world. It includes a kit for people to create their own before I die wall. Why not set one up near you? Something for one of those empty shopfronts on our derelict High Streets?

The kit can be found here.

What Is Left

3 July 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Art and death, Grief

What is Left is a participatory portraiture project being made by Leeds-based artist Ellie Harrison, photographer Roshana Rubin Mayhew and 50 members of the public.

Working with individuals, community groups and bereavement charities, Ellie and Roshana wil generate 50 portraits with corresponding texts in collaboration with participants.

Photographed in their own homes with objects they have inherited from lost loved ones, the project will explore the value we invest in these, both monetary and emotional and the ways in which these objects mediate our relationships with the dead through memory.

PREVIEW EVENT : Leeds Gallery, Munro House, 4th July, 7pm

Ellie and Roshana have been working with participants since April and have created 11 portraits and texts ready to be shared with the public, as well as a group of public, artists, clinicians, bereavement charities and interest groups.

This event is one of two showings in Leeds and Manchester aimed at creating an informal space to view the outcomes of the project so far, feedback thoughts and find out more about the future of What is Left and The Grief Series.

It is part of the Grief Series, a seven-part project by Ellie Harrison. A lot of GFG-ers would give anything to get to Leeds for this.

Find out more here. Leeds Gallery here. 

Picturing Hell – in Lego bricks

1 July 2012
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

We all wonder about what might happen to us when we die. Well, Dante had the lowdown. While the rest of us wander lost in the woods, he described Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in great detail.

The funny thing is that while we might hope for heaven, we all have the sneaking suspicion that Hell might be more interesting. Dante certainly did and you can now enjoy his vision of Hell without reading his book because talented sculptor Mihai Mihu has now rendered all nine levels of the infernal regions in Lego.

The full set can be found here or here.

What I will and wont miss by Norah Ephron

29 June 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Art and death, obituary; epitaph

Posted by Vale

Writer and director Norah Ephron died this week. Called an artist of consolation, she is remembered for comedies like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, but also wrote screenplays for the more serious Silkwood, fiction and a huge number of books, articles and blog posts. In I Remember Nothing she left a list of all the things she would and wouldn’t miss:

What I Won’t Miss

Dry skin
Bad dinners like the one we went to last night
E-mail
Technology in general
My closet
Washing my hair
Bras
Funerals
Illness everywhere
Polls that show that 32 percent of the American people believe in creationism
Polls
Fox TV
The collapse of the dollar
Bar mitzvahs
Mammograms
Dead flowers
The sound of the vacuum cleaner
Bills
E-mail. I know I already said it, but I want to emphasize it.
Small print
Panels on Women in Film
Taking off makeup every night

What I Will Miss

My kids
Nick
Spring
Fall
Waffles
The concept of waffles
Bacon
A walk in the park
The idea of a walk in the park
The park
Shakespeare in the Park
The bed
Reading in bed
Fireworks
Laughs
The view out the window
Twinkle lights
Butter
Dinner at home just the two of us
Dinner with friends
Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives
Paris
Next year in Istanbul
Pride and Prejudice
The Christmas tree
Thanksgiving dinner
One for the table
The dogwood
Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie

You can find the book here.

The list was found over on Lists of Note

Dancing the Macabray

25 June 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Art and death, funeral music

Posted by Vale

In Neil Gaiman’s great children’s book ‘The Graveyard Book,’ Bod, a little boy growing up amongst the dead, dances the ‘Macabray’.

It is Gaiman’s own version of the Danse Macabre where, in this instance, the dead and the living dance together. In the audiobook version every chapter is introduced by this lovely version of the Danse Macabre for banjo and clarinet:

 Rich man, poor man, come away.
Come to dance the Macabray.

Time to work and time to play,
Time to dance the Macabray.

One and all will hears and stay
Come and dance the Macabray.

One to leave and one to stay,
And all to dance the Macabray.

Step and turn, and walk and stay,
Now we dance the Macabray.

Now the Lady on the Grey
Leads us in the Macabray… 

The book can be found here. The audiobook here.

A modern Danse Macabre

25 June 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

The tradition for images of the Danse Macabre is of death alongside all of the different classes and stations in society. The message is clear – he is coming for us all.

Here is a more recent version of the old tradition in a series of terrific woodcuts from the artist Hermann-Paul

(1864-1940).

The full series can be found here.