1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
|
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
<html>
<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">
<!-- more meta tags here -->
<title>The Sixteenth Chapel | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/_common.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/verse.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/stark.css">
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
<![endif]-->
<script src="js/lozenge.js"> </script>
<!-- <script src="js/external.js"> </script> -->
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<header>
<!-- title -->
<h1 class="title">The Sixteenth Chapel</h1>
<!-- 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>
<div class="epigraph-attrib">David Letterman</div>
</header>
<section class="thing verse">
<p>If Justin Bieber isn’t going for the sixteenth<br />chapel, I’m not either. I admit he is my role<br />model. He’s so current, so fresh and so new,<br />and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated.<br />Where is the love in those old paintings? All<br />I see is <a href="creation-myth.html">creation</a>, <a href="movingsideways.html">judgment</a>, and <a href="deathstrumpet.html">death</a>—</p>
<p>and I don’t get the preoccupation with death.<br />I’m about life! Ever since my sixteenth<br />birthday, when me and my two sisters all<br />nearly died when the car I was driving rolled<br />into a creek. Even though I’ve <a href="riptide_memory.html">forgotten the date</a>,<br />I think it keeps me thinking on the new,</p>
<p>something Biebs would be proud of if he knew.<br />I look at him, and see the <a href="death-zone.html">opposite of death</a><br />in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday<br />he may <a href="i-am.html">be a father</a>, and later host a Sweet Sixteen<br />for his daughter (who I know he’ll buy a Rolls),<br />death will never find him. Living will be all</p>
<p>he’ll ever do, because it will be all<br />he’ll ever need to do. He is the eternal new,<br />the <a href="about-the-author.html">forever youth:</a> this is the simple <a href="words-meaning.html">role</a><br />of every celebrity, to let us forget death.<br />Bieber didn’t make a mistake on the Sistine<br />Chapel’s name. He merely showed that someday</p>
<p>all old names must go, that on some day<br />a name must die so that the thing, which is all<br />that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth<br />century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new.<br />In a way, <a href="nothing-is-ever-over.html">the name becomes a Christ</a>, experiencing death<br />so the world doesn’t have to. But I am wary of this role</p>
<p>for a name. It seems a name gives meaning, rolls<br />the general idea together with the concrete, daily<br />toil of the mundane. Are not life and death<br />intertwined? Is not everything tied up all<br />with everything? I guess I’m saying the new<br />necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-</p>
<p>year-old has a parent. <a href="ouroboros_memory.html">Life rolls to death</a>, and all<br />is tied together. Each day is born of night, and dies so new<br />morning can occur. Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.</p>
</section>
<nav>
<a class="prevlink" href="worse-looking-over.html">
Worse looking over
</a>
<a class="prevlink" href="riptide_memory.html">
Riptide of memory
</a>
<a href="#" id="lozenge" title="Random page"> ◊ </a>
<a class="nextlink" href="last-bastion.html">
Last bastion
</a>
<a class="nextlink" href="music-433.html">
<p>Something about all music being performances of <em>4'33"</em> in places where other bands happen to be playing</p>
</a>
</nav>
</div>
</body>
</html>
|