The Dead are Among Us

The dead are among us . . .



We believe we see the dead, hear the dead, and that we can talk to the dead. This belief is no less than the hope that when we die, we too will be seen and heard through the thin veil that separates life from death. While death is a fact of life, it is also the greatest metaphor for a state of being (or, a nothingness) against which we test our aliveness. Death is a mirror of sorts – if I am not dead, I must be alive.


People, alive and dead, also provide that mirror for us, reflecting our selves back to us. And when we can’t find people to do the job, we create mirrors through our creative output, projecting our selves on to another surface in order to see our reflection. Integral to our creative expression is the idea of an audience: the people who see and hear us – our witnesses.

In A General Theory of Love, the authors, three neuroscientists, argue that the people in our lives are not just mirrors, but the very lifeblood of our existence. Through connection, we actually regulate each others’ emotional well-being physiologically. The authours site the mortality rate in orphanages in which children’s needs for shelter and nourishment are met, but not their need for love -- death rates range between 70 – 100%. Whereas in orphanages with poor hygiene protocols and a dearth of other (basic) amenities, but in which the children are held and loved, the mortality rates are almost zero.

The same way women regulate each others’ menstrual cycles through proximity, humans regulate each others’ emotional well being through connection. And I can’t stress this enough: it’s not psychological, it’s physiological. We have a physical impact on each other, and we are required for each other's survival. That's why when the person regulating our emotional centre leaves or dies, we feel as if we’ve lost half of ourselves, and, for a while, we no longer really know who we are, or even if we are. In other words, the other is not just a mirroring element in our lives, but the other is us. You are me and vice versa.



Since arriving home from Berlin, everyone has asked me the same question, “how was Berlin?” followed up with the same statement, “I read your blog and sounds like you had a blast!”

The first words on my lips, which I have suppressed until now, are, “blogs lie.”

A few years ago, a mutual friend told me something similar when I told her I suspected my partner was having an affair. I had found photographs of him on someone else's website; the photographer had captured my partner exchanging meaningful gazes with the girl I suspected (she was barely a woman). My friend tried to reassure me that my partner would never have an affair, asserting that “pictures lie.” But she was wrong. He was having an affair. And with that girl. And I when I found out, I thought I was going to die. And for a while, I was the walking dead.

But I knew what my friend had meant. We get so much and so little information from images. They capture a moment, but, like porn, they cannot convey the meat of the matter: sounds, smells, touch, thoughts and feelings, all the nuance and physical data that makes an encounter truly erotic, truly satisfying and truly life affirming.

Writing lies as well. Like images, text represents what we choose to show, leaving out what we are afraid to say, what we can’t bring ourselves to say, what we wish to hide so that we can project something more desirable, something that will make us more likeable, more acceptable. Whether writing or image making, what we are doing is telling a story. And our storytelling not only affirms our existence, but it also becomes our magnet, drawing someone else into the vicinity of love.

I wrote about this phenomenon, as I see it, in my ficto-memoir:

The following observation is not new, but I think it bears repeating: a story does not pretend to tell the truth. A story acknowledges its own fictional nature, happily disseminating beautiful lies. A painting is essentially no different, except in this one fundamental way: paintings tell the whole story all at once. You see the beginning, middle, and end at the same time, but it’s not always obvious which is which. Time is not linear in a painting. And the painter does not lead you down the garden path the same way a writer does. That’s why painting shows are called exhibitions, because everything you need to know is exposed, like a tree carving clearly trumpeting its truth: I love you so much I carved your name into this tree, making my love tangible, and for all to see. But a painting is more than that; whereas a tree carving expresses a moment of someone’s love, a painting seeks approval for that moment. The tree carver does not care if anyone thinks the carving is well executed, while a painting does more than say, “I loved this person” or even “I was here,” it also (and always) asks, “am I good enough?”

If I could just remember that a story is a version and not a truth, and that it does not have to be good to be told, I might find I could paint with less anxiety. I would not ask if my paintings were good, or if they solved world hunger. I’d just accept them the way I accept the nose on my face. I would not try to defend myself, saying, “no, these are not copies of Chuck Close’s 1968 self-portrait. They are a series of adaptations of Chuck Close’s 1968 self-portrait.” Instead, I would turn on my interrogators and ask them instead, “What’s it to you?”

Still, the question persists. The question someone asks when they look at my versions of Chuck Close’s 1968 self-portrait, or the question they ask at the video store when I suggest which movie to rent, or when I give someone my favourite novel to read and they inevitably ask, “yes, but is it good?” The tone implies that unless they get some kind of guarantee of liking it, they will not risk it. But I don’t know what else to tell them. All I can do is paint a picture.

Lest you think I’ve been stringing you along, my blog is not a total lie. I did have a blast in Berlin. But there were also times I lay in my bed when the sun was shining, and instead of making hay I cried. I overate in Berlin. I experienced loss in Berlin. I hurt a friend in Berlin. I was rude in Berlin. I did not go to enough galleries, or ride my bike through the Tiergarten, or do further research about my grandparents. I did not live the life I felt sure my mirrors wanted me to live: I did not have the adventures my married friends imagined, or see mind-blowing shows my artist friends imagined, or travel outside the city the way my stay-put friends imagined. Sometimes I was flying high, and sometimes I watched myself, as if from a bird's eye view, come crashing to earth.




In Berlin, I made irrational choices in every moment based on my mood, and my mood was also altered by the choices I made, for better and for worse. I had no great insights. I have no idea what’s next for me. I do not suddenly have prospects for an incredible painting or writing career in Berlin, or even here in Toronto. I hoped for a lighting bolt of insight in Berlin, but it never came.



No one likes to sit through someone else’s vacation slides, no matter how good they are, because you were not there, so the pictures can only convey so much of the experience. While I don’t think I started the blog to share my Berlin experience, per se, I am not quite clear why I started my blog except perhaps to have someone to talk to, to project a reader against which to test my aliveness. And in my darkest moments, when I doubted I even had a reader, the blog became a place where I could, at least, talk to the dead.

What really happened in Berlin is mundane. And then I came home. I booked my return flight so that I could attend Nuit Blanche, thinking the event would reconnect me to the art world and a specific community to which I once, peripherally, belonged. But what really happened was I failed to see a very close friend’s art piece because I started at the wrong end of town and was beyond tired by midnight and had to go home (blame jet lag, blame Berlin). But I did manage capture an exceptional photograph of a Zombie hugging my friend, Kim, early on in the evening.

This is the kind of picture I’d see one someone else’s blog and think they must have had a blast at Nuit Blanche. I must admit, this moment was pretty sweet, and I do feel lucky I was able to capture it.