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+---
+title: The Sixteenth Chapel
+id: sixteenth-chapel
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+    content: "Canadian High School!"
+    attrib: David Letterman
+    link: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk'
+
+dedication: Max
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    class: stark
+    order: 17
+    next:
+    - title: Last bastion
+      link: last-bastion
+    - title: Something about all music being performances of _4′33″_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
+      link: music-433
+    prev:
+    - title: Worse looking over
+      link: worse-looking-over
+    - title: Riptide of memory
+      link: riptide_memory
+...
+
+If Justin Bieber isn't going for the sixteenth \
+chapel, I'm not either.  I admit he is my role \
+model.  He's so current, so fresh and so new, \
+and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated.  \
+Where is the love in those old paintings?  All \
+I see is [creation][], [judgment][], and [death][]---
+
+and I don't get the preoccupation with death.  \
+I'm about life!  Ever since my sixteenth \
+birthday, when me and my two sisters all \
+nearly died when the car I was driving rolled \
+into a creek.  Even though I've [forgotten the date][], \
+I think it keeps me thinking on the new,
+
+something Biebs would be proud of if he knew.  \
+I look at him, and see the [opposite of death][] \
+in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday \
+he may [be a father][], and later host a Sweet Sixteen \
+for his daughter (who I know he'll buy a Rolls), \
+death will never find him.  Living will be all
+
+he'll ever do, because it will be all \
+he'll ever need to do.  He is the eternal new, \
+the [forever youth:][] this is the simple [role][] \
+of every celebrity, to let us forget death.  \
+Bieber didn't make a mistake on the Sistine \
+Chapel's name.  He merely showed that someday
+
+all old names must go, that on some day \
+a name must die so that the thing, which is all \
+that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth \
+century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new.  \
+In a way, [the name becomes a Christ][], experiencing death \
+so the world doesn't have to.  But I am wary of this role
+
+for a name.  It seems a name gives meaning, rolls \
+the general idea together with the concrete, daily \
+toil of the mundane.  Are not life and death \
+intertwined?  Is not everything tied up all \
+with everything?  I guess I'm saying the new \
+necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-
+
+year-old has a parent.  [Life rolls to death][], and all \
+is tied together.  Each day is born of night, and dies so new \
+morning can occur.  Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.
+
+[role]: words-meaning.html
+[death]: deathstrumpet.html
+[opposite of death]: death-zone.html
+[creation]: creation-myth.html
+[judgment]: movingsideways.html
+[forgotten the date]: riptide_memory.html
+[be a father]: i-am.html
+[forever youth:]: about-the-author.html
+[the name becomes a Christ]: nothing-is-ever-over.html
+[Life rolls to death]: ouroboros_memory.html