<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- AUTOCENTO OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE -->
<!-- vim: fdm=indent
-->
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
<meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
<title>The Sixteenth Chapel | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="trunk/favico.png" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
<script src="trunk/lozenge.js" type="text/javascript"> </script>
<script src="trunk/hylo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script>
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
<![endif]-->
</head>
<body id="sixteenth-chapel" class="stark">
<article class="container">
<header>
<!-- title -->
<h1 class="title">The Sixteenth Chapel</h1>
<div class="header-extra">
<!-- dedication -->
<div class="dedication">Max</div>
<!-- epigraph -->
<div class="epigraph">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk">Canadian High School!</a>
<div class="attrib">David Letterman</div>
</div>
</div>
</header>
<section class="content verse">
<p><span class="line">If Justin Bieber isn’t going for the sixteenth</span><span class="line">chapel, I’m not either. I admit he is my role</span><span class="line">model. He’s so current, so fresh and so new,</span><span class="line">and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated.</span><span class="line">Where is the love in those old paintings? All</span><span class="line">I see is <a href="creation-myth.html">creation</a>, <a href="movingsideways.html">judgment</a>, and <a href="deathstrumpet.html">death</a>—</span></p>
<p><span class="line">and I don’t get the preoccupation with death.</span><span class="line">I’m about life! Ever since my sixteenth</span><span class="line">birthday, when me and my two sisters all</span><span class="line">nearly died when the car I was driving rolled</span><span class="line">into a creek. Even though I’ve <a href="riptide_memory.html">forgotten the date</a>,</span><span class="line">I think it keeps me thinking on the new,</span></p>
<p><span class="line">something Biebs would be proud of if he knew.</span><span class="line">I look at him, and see the <a href="death-zone.html">opposite of death</a></span><span class="line">in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday</span><span class="line">he may <a href="i-am.html">be a father</a>, and later host a Sweet Sixteen</span><span class="line">for his daughter (who I know he’ll buy a Rolls),</span><span class="line">death will never find him. Living will be all</span></p>
<p><span class="line">he’ll ever do, because it will be all</span><span class="line">he’ll ever need to do. He is the eternal new,</span><span class="line">the <a href="about-the-author.html">forever youth:</a> this is the simple <a href="words-meaning.html">role</a></span><span class="line">of every celebrity, to let us forget death.</span><span class="line">Bieber didn’t make a mistake on the Sistine</span><span class="line">Chapel’s name. He merely showed that someday</span></p>
<p><span class="line">all old names must go, that on some day</span><span class="line">a name must die so that the thing, which is all</span><span class="line">that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth</span><span class="line">century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new.</span><span class="line">In a way, <a href="nothing-is-ever-over.html">the name becomes a Christ</a>, experiencing death</span><span class="line">so the world doesn’t have to. But I am wary of this role</span></p>
<p><span class="line">for a name. It seems a name gives meaning, rolls</span><span class="line">the general idea together with the concrete, daily</span><span class="line">toil of the mundane. Are not life and death</span><span class="line">intertwined? Is not everything tied up all</span><span class="line">with everything? I guess I’m saying the new</span><span class="line">necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-</span></p>
<p><span class="line">year-old has a parent. <a href="ouroboros_memory.html">Life rolls to death</a>, and all</span><span class="line">is tied together. Each day is born of night, and dies so new</span><span class="line">morning can occur. Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.</span></p>
</section>
</article>
<nav>
<a class="prevlink" href="worse-looking-over.html"
title="Previous article in Stark Raving">
Worse looking over
</a>
<a class="prevlink" href="riptide_memory.html"
title="Previous article in Stark Raving">
Riptide of memory
</a>
<!-- ANCHORS -->
<div class="anchors">
<a href="index.html" id="cover-link" title="To cover">◊</a>
<a href="#" id="lozenge" title="ERROR">∝</a>
</div>
<a class="nextlink" href="last-bastion.html"
title="Next article in Stark Raving">
Last bastion
</a>
<a class="nextlink" href="music-433.html"
title="Next article in Stark Raving">
Something about all music being performances of <em>4′33″</em> in places where other bands happen to be playing
</a>
</nav>
</body>
</html>