 I scored a TEDx Stanford ticket (as usual) through providence last Sunday. It was beautiful: Stanford University & Palo Alto... (all greened up from our recent Northern California rains). But also lovely was the crowd of professors, students, thought leaders...and me and my friends. There was privilege but there was also humility. The Tale of Two Artists...TBD Kelly Vicars entered with enthusiasm (and the wisdom of a child) in the bouncy, athletic body of a 20-something with only the gravitas of a freshly-minted Stanford Anthropological degree to keep her grounded. She virtually overflowed with delight at describing the possibilities of this new toy when she had found it: virtual reality. And wouldn't it be interesting... to explore DEATH... As a hospice chaplain, I see death creeping up on us each day...and the privilege of walking (as I am able...) one of my siblings 'home'. However, I have never had the notion ...nor the courage...to stalk it back. Kelly and two dozen of her friends did this last year in their sold-out Dream Logic San Francisco Show: The Art of Dying.
Not Any Dying, I've Seen... It WAS amazing. It was art. Dying it wasn't (or any that I have seen...). I was caught in judgment between their brave audacity to approach and re-conceive that scary threshold common to every human on the planet—and appalled at their naivete. I bounced between these two extremes for the rest of her presentation. It was not until the second artist came on stage in her 300lb wheelchair a few presentations later, did my appreciation for it resolve...unless you make art out of your MRI scans... which I will save for tomorrow's post Yup... we have an expiry date ....good to remember. The Art of Dying's colorful animations of afterlife arrival and light show reframed our mortal threshold (for those who have ears to hear... and got their judgements put back in the box...ahem). Why not imagine it as lovely? God is love...or life is shit. I agree and compost.
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