by Sean Murphy.
Remember when you’d read the obituaries and it was a decision,
meaning you had to go and find that specific section of the paper?
You didn’t do that? Me neither, but bear with me, I’m making
a point. That news—the news—was easier to ignore in an analog
era, when we picked and chose what sources we let inform us,
nuggets of insight like the toys in cereal boxes, crammed in between
colorful ads, some of them promoting unhealthy activities endorsed
by athletes and actors, and the types of unbelievable faces fabricated
in a laboratory called Hollywood. The thing is, not much has changed,
but now everyone can make news and the rest of us have no choice
except to navigate through this stream, each of us alone in boats being
drawn irresistibly away from the reality we once depended on, the way
our ancestors, in ancient times, knew if they sang the appropriate songs
and made sacrifices in necessary numbers, The Sun would welcome each
new day, celestial clockwork scientists were burned for construing, their
non-obituaries an official statement that said Don’t do this, or You know
all you need to know; the world already too full of noise and knowledge
for anyone to contend with, and the one thing—the only thing—we knew
was that all of us would be gone sooner than we’d like, wherever it was(n’t)
we were headed—after—and it was entirely up to the ages to observe, if it cared
to commemorate lives lost like revenue in outmoded business models. Which
brings us back to obituaries and how we keep an account in this disconnected age,
where everything is right there in front of us, in real time, news that’s impossible
to contend with, even as some of us die trying. And when you scroll down the page—
looking for anything but insight (not everything is fit to print, and who prints anything
anymore?): updates on the new faces being manufactured, bought and sold as proof
of progress; sports scores, or what the latest sort-of scientists have to say about however
the moon is moving the tides during your birth month—it’s all but impossible to avoid
that list of famous names who did enough to earn precious digital inches in the public
record, and in these uncertain times where we know exactly what we can count on
and, worse, what’s coming down the runway: an unregulated plane with faulty parts
taking out everything in its path (but please know it’s not personal; this is just business
as usual). Thus, it’s difficult to deny an acknowledgment, the way popes finally stopped
pretending a flat earth revolved around the sun; if more newsworthy names are added
to the daily toll, it means many more than we can bear are piling up behind the scenes,
like pieces of dead trees used to crucify the prophets—those who dared to understand
the types of cause and effect not explained by the stars or the sun or our gods, or even
those with the power to legislate which casualties get cataloged for the public record.