Memorial: May 23-30 2024
Memorial Day falls this week. Create your own memorial to someone or something. It does not have to (but can, if you wish) have anything to do with the military - it can be anything you wish to commemorate, in any artistic medium you like.
Due May 30 by 7:00 p.m.
The Submissions:
by The Kilsigliere
I wasn’t going to originally accept this challenge, both because I didn’t think I had time, and because I didn’t feel particularly inspired to memorialize anything. But like many of the Artpocalypse prompts, the idea lingered in the back of my mind all week, and a thread has emerged that I’m curious to follow.
I was recently listening to a podcast exploring the question, “Are Millennials the most nostalgic generation?” Broadly, the answer was no, but it can seem that way when any generation is losing the cultural relevance and dominance that it once had. The other realization to grapple with is the role that pop culture in general plays in our formative years (whenever your formative years take place), imprinting certain tastes and tendencies on impressionable young minds. This is why music and movies and books that we consume when we are 10, 15, 21 stay with us far longer and with greater strength than anything we might experience as adults.
Nostalgia is a form of remembrance, a memorial, that often seems static or frozen in time. For example, I heard the “Reading Rainbow” theme song a few days ago and was immediately transported back to 1988, sitting cross-legged on the blue corduroy couch in the house I grew up in. I can so clearly see the girl, this earlier version of myself. Which leads me to another strand I followed this week-
Since she died, I’ve been slowly making my way through Toni Morrison’s canon. I am ashamed to say that prior to that, I hadn’t read any of her work. Now I might say she is my favorite writer. I am (usually) a very fast reader. In a normal year, I average a book and a half a week, humble brag. But with Morrison’s work, I cannot speed through. I’ve been making my way through Jazz for well over four months. Her writing is so rich, nuanced. Her characters are staggering in their aliveness, and each thought they have and action they take seems to be towards some universal truth. To be honest, I get exhausted reading her AND I want the books to go on forever.
In Jazz, one of the main characters, Joe, describes becoming “new” seven times in his life, in a really beautiful passage near the midpoint of the book. It made me think about the ways that we all shed AND memorialize our past selves. How nostalgia can become dangerous when it halts our self-development, when it prevents us from becoming who we are supposed to become, at any stage of our lives. Since this isn’t a book report, I won’t go much further- but suffice it to say that the story was striking, and continues to stay with me.
Finally, while pondering how I wanted to share this muddled brain musing in an Artpocalypse appropriate format, I thought it might be fun to memorialize an earlier version of myself….me at 14, in a coffee shop, reading books that were too complicated but I knew were important, and drinking coffee that was too sweet before I learned to really like coffee. In a nostalgic nod to her, with gratitude for what she would become, here is a picture of my book, and my milky-way latte.
- The Kilsigliere
by Heart of Darkness
Complicated feelings about moving inspired a tiny memorial to a few of the (many) addresses I’ve had through the years.
by Anonymous Frau Redux
Phoning this one in this week (meaning I searched “flag” on my phone pics). Sometimes the flag pics are purposeful, a moment of pause to reflect on an event. Sometimes a flag shows up in a pic of something else, playing a part but noted in hindsight.
Check these out from around the country:
The next set is local. After a tornado ripped through the area. One flag shredded, one flag proudly placed by a neighbor, one flag appearing to be untouched in the front garden. The flags are like the experiences of those who serve in the military- damaged physically after weathering the storms, those who sign up to give to hope to others, and those who proudly but quietly stood up to do a job once upon a time.
by Captain Quillard
Admittedly, a pretty ridiculous submission from me this week, but mine is a memorial to the concept of irony. I used to love irony so much, but every day the news brings us more evidence that irony may now be dead. Or maybe it was killed earlier, by hipster youngsters wearing moustaches and bad clothes from the ‘80s to the point where you couldn’t tell if they were doing it ironically or if it was just somehow in fashion now. [shakes fist at sky] Get off my lawn!
Anyway, my memorial to irony features, ironically, Alanis Morrisette, who ironically has no idea what irony actually is. Don’tcha think?
Next Week’s Assignment:
This is self-serving, since I’m in Rhode Island this week, but let’s see you channel your inner Winslow Homer or Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse and give us your best moody, ocean-themed art. Any medium you like - just make art that represents the ocean in some way. (And you’ll have two weeks, not one, to do it this time.)