If the sprightliness of Spring is leaving you feeling slightly down, take heart: there's a slew of moribund entertainment cropping up to help lift your spirits back up again.
I'm not exactly sure when Death became such a blockbuster, but like flats, fringes, and Madonna, looks this trend might just end up sticking around for a while. Or should I say for eternity?
I spotted Mary Roach's Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife while browsing through my favorite bookstore, Daunt Books, in Notting Hill. My immediate thought: not exactly the kind of book you'll see lying around hospital waiting rooms. In spite of my cynicism (I judge books by their covers), it seems to have received universally positive reviews, with its author praised as 'one of the best kept secrets in America.' This might be why I haven't heard of her. Why am I always the last one in on a secret? If you end up liking Six Feet Over, you can always move on to Mary's other book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.
If you're in the mood for an exhibit, you can visit the Wellcome Collection to view Life Before Death, made up of '24 sets of photographs taken before and after death.' According to its website, the artists 'asked 24 terminally ill people if they could accompany them during their last weeks and days. From these vigils came a series of insightful descriptions and photographic portraits taken before and after death. Far from being gloomy, these... reveal the preciousness and transience of life, and make us question what we often take for granted.'
Finally, you can buy a pair of cute grim reapers, one male, one female (guess which is which) from designer toy site Vinyl Pulse. Their names? Ciao Ciao and Adios, of course.
2 comments:
the wellcome collection has been on my must-see list for a while now but somehow i never got to go.
yes, gauging from the obsession with cryonics, death and the afterlife will hang around forever.
For eternity... :-)
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