We know we will die. The courage and nobility of the human spirit resides in our ability to think beyond our individual lives, or the lives of our generation.
This is a question that first lodged itself in my thoughts during the Cuban missile crisis, standing at the back of the concert hall listening to a teacher from the music school at Wichita State play Bach’s Sonata’s and Partitas for Solo Violin to an almost empty auditorium. The countdown to doomsday had begun.
This is what it comes to… I thought– all the great accomplishments of our species: the art, the music, poetry… nothing. Less than nothing… to those whose only rapture is power and money.
What do we draw on now that we have no future? Now that we know that there will be no posterity to take up the work we have begun?
A question that has become a ghost I cannot exorcise. The ghost that will be all that is left of us. The ghost we have already become.
#86 “…and watered heaven with their tears” 40×20 Acrylic and mixed media
