the default setting for an afterlife doesn't sit well with me. I'd much prefer some eternal unrest, to continue to agitate, to be productive in one way or another, a possibility not necessarily excluded by all theologies. At the very least, I could follow Cummings' Uncle Sol and start a worm farm, or better still, have my ashes placed in an hourglass (so that my wife won't have suffer me get out of working too easily), or best of all, there'll be a big gate to Heaven, at which you're handed your harp and your parts to the official canon of heavenly sheet music, and a second gate just next to Heaven, at which you're handed a pen that never runs dry and an eternal supply of blank manuscript paper. This Next-To-But-Not-Quite-Heaven, with its canon in the making rather than a canon alreadymade, seems like an infinitely more interesting place than Heaven itself.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Restless
Pliable, of On an Overgrown Path, has a pair of posts (here and here) about contemporary Requiem settings. Personally, I can't imagine writing a Requiem and I certainly don't want a Requiem sung when I exit this plane. The idea of eternal rest as the default setting for an afterlife doesn't sit well with me. I'd much prefer some eternal unrest, to continue to agitate, to be productive in one way or another, a possibility not necessarily excluded by all theologies. At the very least, I could follow Cummings' Uncle Sol and start a worm farm, or better still, have my ashes placed in an hourglass (so that my wife won't have suffer me get out of working too easily), or best of all, there'll be a big gate to Heaven, at which you're handed your harp and your parts to the official canon of heavenly sheet music, and a second gate just next to Heaven, at which you're handed a pen that never runs dry and an eternal supply of blank manuscript paper. This Next-To-But-Not-Quite-Heaven, with its canon in the making rather than a canon alreadymade, seems like an infinitely more interesting place than Heaven itself.
the default setting for an afterlife doesn't sit well with me. I'd much prefer some eternal unrest, to continue to agitate, to be productive in one way or another, a possibility not necessarily excluded by all theologies. At the very least, I could follow Cummings' Uncle Sol and start a worm farm, or better still, have my ashes placed in an hourglass (so that my wife won't have suffer me get out of working too easily), or best of all, there'll be a big gate to Heaven, at which you're handed your harp and your parts to the official canon of heavenly sheet music, and a second gate just next to Heaven, at which you're handed a pen that never runs dry and an eternal supply of blank manuscript paper. This Next-To-But-Not-Quite-Heaven, with its canon in the making rather than a canon alreadymade, seems like an infinitely more interesting place than Heaven itself.
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