Some people think I’m morbid, that the interest I show about death is insane…
I think the way they deal with death is insane… ignoring it, pretending they will live forever; taking tomorrow for granted is very delusional…
Death goes hand in hand with life… shunning it from one’s life is shunning life itself…
Death is part of the deal… it is painful… it hurts… especially when you lose loved ones… but do you really lose them?
In the middle Ages, death was very much part of life… People were dying at home, surrounded by their loved ones and it looked more like a celebration than anything else… People were ready for death… they knew it was coming and they welcomed it like a new beginning… Cemeteries were not far away… they were right in the middle of the village… in the church yard… and the church yard was a lively place, with merchants selling their goods and children playing… Then… as the centuries passed, cemeteries were pushed away… hygiene they said… which was not really untrue… but still… death became a sad thing….people grew scared of it… one more day please, I’m not ready… And now… it’s even worse… we hide death, we ignore it… and when we see it on TV, we act like it’s no big deal… 50 000 dead… just a number to us… but to someone, there are loved ones in this number… Death is anonymous now… the only people in our western countries to deal with it on a day to day basis are doctors and nurses… because people don’t die at home anymore… for the most part… they die in hospital… between white sheets, inside anonymous walls…it’s clean, it’s barren, it’s hygienic… and when they’re dead…they’re rushed into funeral homes…then buried or scattered… and forgotten for most people… and their loved ones… they hide their sorrow… they can’t share it… because the other people feel uneasy about death… they don’t want to hear about it… “Just get on with your life”…you don’t have the right to grieve past “the selling date”…
If I like so much “primitive” or “tribal” art it’s because of the way they deal with death ( by the way, there is no such thing called “art” in their societies..which is fine by me… I’ll write another post about it later)… To a Westerner, they are rather cruel and creepy… I mean… scrapping off the skin from the bones of their ancestors and things like that… but nonetheless they have, to my opinion, a much saner approach to death than the one we have…
