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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
|
