Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "We flee to beauty to escape the confines of our finite nature." And Henry Miller said, “Art is a stepping stone to reality.” Both of these thoughts really resonate with me. I often talk about art being a catalyst for a larger conversation about the human condition. It’s a powerful way to open the doors to difficult topics. Like life itself, art can be both beautiful and tragic simultaneously. This is what makes it important and meaningful to me.
As artists, how we approach making art is a big deal. Well, it’s a big deal to the maker of the art, I should say. Why are we compelled to spend time, money, and effort to create something? My preoccupation has been centered around human behavior. Specifically, our fear of not existing anymore (dead and forgotten). We use a variety of activities (immortality projects, illusions, heroic transcendence, etc.), what Becker calls “cultural worldviews,” to give us self-esteem. It’s self-esteem that buffers death anxiety. I believe Becker when he said that most human behavior is driven by this anxiety.
The reason I’m reading and writing about death and death anxiety all of the time is to gain a fuller understanding of my work and, in turn, to make pictures that represent these ideas indirectly and abstractly. And I want to share the information with you as well.
I’m not trying to be morbid or to frighten you. And I’m not trying to depress you or bum you out either. In fact, my objectives are completely the opposite of that. My goal is to inspire you, enlighten you, and encourage you to be grateful and humble about your life and what you have every day. If you’re an artist, I think there is even more of a burden to understand these big questions and to share them through your work. That’s what I’m trying to do.
THE STOICS
I like the way that the Stoics addressed death. They didn’t try to scare people about death; they simply encouraged people to be conscious of their lives and tried to inspire them to live each day to the fullest, fully aware that it could be their last.
The story of the Roman warrior coming back from battle is very interesting to me. It’s said that the soldier would be riding in his chariot through the city as the crowds cheered and gave him adulation. There would be a person right behind the soldier chanting in his ear, "memento mori" over and over again. It was to remind the soldier that he was mortal and would die—unlike a god.
The question that story always raises for me is that we now know reminding people of their impending death can cause them to act out—and sometimes in very bad ways. The book, "The Worm at the Core: The Role of Death in Life," has plenty of examples of real studies about people being reminded of their mortality and choosing, albeit mostly unconsciously, to treat people that are different from them very poorly, to make poor choices about the environment, nature, animals, etcetera. So, is it a good thing or a bad thing to remind people of their mortality? I suppose it depends on what illusion they’ve chosen as a death anxiety buffer. If it’s a good illusion, yes, death reminders are good. If it’s a bad illusion, no, the death reminders will cause more damage, carnage, and problems. We have plenty of examples of this in history.
To the Stoics, both the body and the soul end their journey at death. The Stoics viewed death as a permanent return to nature. At death, the body decomposes, and the soul returns to the cosmos or nature.
On the inevitability of death, the Stoics practiced the principle of memento mori. Its goal was not to instill fear of death but to inspire people to live to the fullest every day. And instead of living with the fear of death, memento mori says to apply our best efforts to everything we do. Don't be lukewarm about life, live with everything you have.
Even though Stoicism takes many cues from the Socratic school of ethics, it differs in its concept of death. Socrates, who died by suicide, felt death frees the soul so it returns to its former immortal self. But the Stoics held that death was a final, inevitable, natural event.
Seneca said, "The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely completes the death process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way. " What a wonderful way to remind us that we are on the clock, so to speak.
MODERN THEORIES: ERNEST BECKER
I’m a believer in the modern version (Becker) of how we deal with death denial and death anxiety. In other words, how we behave and why, with the knowledge of our mortality (memento mori.)
My artwork is deeply rooted in these ideas. I try to show through the content of the pictures and the materials I’m using the idea of impermanence, death, and anxiety in my work. I think about all of the genocide, pain and suffering that humans have caused one another because of this. The poor illusions (or heroic transcendence projects) that humans choose to buffer against death anxiety are the problem. If we made better choices on how to keep anxiety at bay, life would be so much better. This project is a death anxiety buffer for me. I’m using these ideas as a tool to relieve my own anxiety about my death. I feel like it’s a better illusion than creating problems and being a liability to society. My point is that we all have death anxiety projects. Be conscious of them and choose the better illusions. Because they are all illusions and mean nothing in the end, but they do affect the way we live today.
As I stated above, I try my best every day to remind myself of how great it is to be alive. To be in awe of life, see the beauty of the world, love my family, and be involved in making my work. I’m grateful to have the time to read, think, write, and make photographs surrounding these ideas and theories. It’s very meaningful and significant to me.
I’m preoccupied with shouting these truths from the proverbial rooftops in hopes that everyone will learn about why they think and behave the way that they do. To be fully aware of their death anxiety. To understand where prejudice and hatred come from and why people are always seeking “the other” to blame their problems on, the answers are easy to find and easy to understand, but so few will seek them out.
Ernest Becker wrote, “There is the type of man who has great contempt for ‘immediacy,’ who tries to cultivate his interiority, base his pride on something deeper and inner, create a distance between himself and the average man. Kierkegaard calls this type of man the ‘introvert.’ He is a little more concerned with what it means to be a person, with individuality and uniqueness. He enjoys solitude and withdraws periodically to reflect, perhaps to nurse ideas about his secret self, what it might be. This, after all is said and done, is the only real problem of life, the only worthwhile occupation preoccupation of man: What is one's true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation? In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself? How can the person take his private inner being, the great mystery that he feels at the heart of himself, his emotions, his yearnings, and use them to live more distinctively, to enrich both himself and mankind with the peculiar quality of his talent? In adolescence, most of us throb with this dilemma, expressing it either with words and thoughts or with simple numb pain and longing. But usually life suck us up into standardized activities. The social hero-system into which we are born marks out paths for our heroism, paths to which we conform, to which we shape ourselves so that we can please others, become what they expect us to be. And instead of working our inner secret we gradually cover it over and forget it, while we become purely external men, playing successfully the standardized hero-game into which we happen to fall by accident, by family connection, by reflex patriotism, or by the simple need to eat and the urge to procreate.” (from “The Denial of Death”).