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1---
2title: The Sixteenth Chapel
3id: sixteenth-chapel
4genre: verse
5
6epigraph:
7 content: "Canadian High School!"
8 attrib: David Letterman
9 link: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk'
10
11dedication: Max
12
13project:
14 title: Stark Raving
15 class: stark
16 order: 17
17 next:
18 - title: Last bastion
19 link: last-bastion
20 - title: Something about all music being performances of _4′33″_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
21 link: music-433
22 prev:
23 - title: Worse looking over
24 link: worse-looking-over
25 - title: Riptide of memory
26 link: riptide_memory
27...
28
29If Justin Bieber isn't going for the sixteenth \
30chapel, I'm not either. I admit he is my role \
31model. He's so current, so fresh and so new, \
32and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated. \
33Where is the love in those old paintings? All \
34I see is [creation][], [judgment][], and [death][]---
35
36and I don't get the preoccupation with death. \
37I'm about life! Ever since my sixteenth \
38birthday, when me and my two sisters all \
39nearly died when the car I was driving rolled \
40into a creek. Even though I've [forgotten the date][], \
41I think it keeps me thinking on the new,
42
43something Biebs would be proud of if he knew. \
44I look at him, and see the [opposite of death][] \
45in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday \
46he may [be a father][], and later host a Sweet Sixteen \
47for his daughter (who I know he'll buy a Rolls), \
48death will never find him. Living will be all
49
50he'll ever do, because it will be all \
51he'll ever need to do. He is the eternal new, \
52the [forever youth:][] this is the simple [role][] \
53of every celebrity, to let us forget death. \
54Bieber didn't make a mistake on the Sistine \
55Chapel's name. He merely showed that someday
56
57all old names must go, that on some day \
58a name must die so that the thing, which is all \
59that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth \
60century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new. \
61In a way, [the name becomes a Christ][], experiencing death \
62so the world doesn't have to. But I am wary of this role
63
64for a name. It seems a name gives meaning, rolls \
65the general idea together with the concrete, daily \
66toil of the mundane. Are not life and death \
67intertwined? Is not everything tied up all \
68with everything? I guess I'm saying the new \
69necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-
70
71year-old has a parent. [Life rolls to death][], and all \
72is tied together. Each day is born of night, and dies so new \
73morning can occur. Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.
74
75[role]: words-meaning.html
76[death]: deathstrumpet.html
77[opposite of death]: death-zone.html
78[creation]: creation-myth.html
79[judgment]: movingsideways.html
80[forgotten the date]: riptide_memory.html
81[be a father]: i-am.html
82[forever youth:]: about-the-author.html
83[the name becomes a Christ]: nothing-is-ever-over.html
84[Life rolls to death]: ouroboros_memory.html