1 files changed, 86 insertions, 0 deletions

@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+---
+title: The Sixteenth Chapel
+genre: verse
+
+id: sixteenth-chapel
+toc: "The sixteenth chapel"
+
+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 (for whom 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