Selfie, Suicide

by Logo Daedalus

  Cairey directs sharp thoughts to the Director of his woes while Ophelia checks the time on her phone. They reach the corner at the end of the auxiliary hall. Down the next corridor is the next exposition, but to the right is an Emergency Exit. It’s the first one Cairey hasn’t wished to take. Instead, they head down the corridor. At its end, they find a wrought iron gate. The top of it reads “Hail, horrors!” The rest of it’s composed of nightmarish figures. Skulls, bats, cryptic runes & all such icons of the halloween gothic. But between these embellishments, Cairey discovers an interwoven scene playing out between six distinct cells. They are divided into two columns of three, one column for each side of the gate. He thinks: “You’ve got something to tell me? Is this how You communicate?” He smirks. It’s all coming together, he thinks. So he inspects the cells, & reads them left to right like a comic strip.

  The first cell contains the face of a beautiful woman. Her eyes are focused into the distance, seeming to look out of her picture & past Cairey, out to something behind him- seeing through him as if he were made of glass. She exudes a pensive air, which is calm, but not assuring. She seems to be nearly on edge, as if she’s questioning if her mind is playing tricks on her, or if there truly is something out there…

  The second cell pulls back from this closeup. She is revealed to be standing on the edge of a lake. Rushes obscure her legs. A wind seems to be blowing her dress to the side. Her body is framed by crosshatched birch trees which lean their arms over the lake. The girl’s face is the same as the first panel, but perhaps more firmly doubtful. Her head is tilted slightly, & she seems to be leaning forward & squinting her eyes, as if she is making sure that whatever she thinks she has seen is truly nothing at all…

  The third cell pulls back even further, showing more of the lake in the foreground. This vantage renders the girl less dicipherable. Her face is no longer depicted in detail. It is a blank empty space. Her left hand has been raised to her brow. The wind has picked up in its force. She clutches her dress with her right hand, taming its whipping in the gale. & as Cairey is about to inspect the next panel, he spots a hidden figure he’d looked over. It had blended in seemlessly with the trees in the background. Leaning out from the trunk of a birch there’s a nearly-human figure with horns growing out of its forehead. Its face is blank but for a wide gaping grin...

  The fourth cell is from the same distance, but slightly higher in its vantage. The lake has fissured & split in half. A crack in it runs from the foreground to the rushes, revealing structures invisible before. A network of crumbling walls appears, looking like an unearthed cross-section of an ancient city’s ruins. A stone pathway emerges running from these walls to the rushes, up the very center of the cell. Above it stands the girl, turned in profile. Her dress billows out to the birches. She seems to be in the midst of a fleeing stride. To her left, more horned figures appear, blocking her escape. & inspecting it more closely, Cairey finds that the edge of her dress is snagged by a hand emerging from the trunk of a birch…

  The fifth cell is from a further distance, & an even higher elevation, as if it were from the perspective of a bird. The girl is being carried into the labyrinth by a gang of horned creatures. Behind them the water reencroaches, erasing the pathway, & sealing the fissure that had opened. The girl is on her back, on the shoulders of these creatures, & she is pointing forward toward whatever she had thought she’d seen before. Her face is blank but for a screaming mouth…

  The sixth cell returns to a lower perspective. A canoe is floating in the lake & in it sits a shadowed human figure wearing the silhouette of a crown. Before him, the lake is nearly calm again. Only a crack remains of the fissure. It interrupts a circle floating in the water, a reflection of a full moon. In the crack, the girl’s hand remains unsubmered. Her finger points directly at the viewer…

  Cairey thinks he understands the message. He thinks quite forcefully: “You’ve become so fucking blatant… Please. This is what You’ve done, not me. These are not my dreams, they’re Yours. None of them were real. They’re spooks You’ve used to make me miserable. Before You might have had me tricked. But they’re nothing to me anymore. I’m done with them, You understand?” This assuages some of the guilt he feels, but not all of it.

  They stand before the gate for a while. Ophelia notices that Cairey is inspecting the gate quite closely. She’s confused by the fact that there’s no one present to escort them inside. There’s no line. There’s no one checking guests for entrance bracelets. There’s only this creepy gate & its weird imagery. Looking through it, there’s nothing to see but darkness. A dry-ice fog curls out from the spiked gap at the gate’s bottom. The only sound in the hall had been the echoes of their footfalls, but these too have ceased. It’s eerily silent now. They both stand there, doing nothing for a while. Ophelia clears her throat. “Should we?” she asks. “Yeah, sorry” Cairey says. He tries to pull the gate open but it doesn’t budge. “Is it closed?” he asks. “It shouldn’t be” Ophelia replies, “This one doesn’t have specific times. It’s open so long as the Museum is open. There must be…” she trails off. Then: “Look” she says, pointing. To the right of the gate there’s a plaque which reads: “(Not) Everybody is a Genius: In Death.” She reads the expository paragraph below this title aloud, tracing the text with her finger.

  “Welcome guests, visitors, friends, to the second part of our latest exposition. We are a bit unsure of it, & we hope that you will forgive us. Ever since the foundation of the Museum of Expressive Humanism, we have been attempting to reorient our visitors’ perspectives on Art. We believe that this exposition is either our greatest triumph to date or our greatest failure yet in this regard. Let us remind you what we’ve said in our mission statement: ‘Every fully embodied moment of humanity’s living self-expression… is an artistic masterpiece.’ In the last exposition, we proved that Life, or the collection of moments which compose an ongoing human life-time, is Art. Here we turn our gaze to a more morbid subject. We believe that Death, the capstone of an individual human life-time, is the truly ultimate work of Art. It is only Death which makes Life, once it’s ceased, comprehensible as a completed work of Art, as without Death there would be no end to the moments which compose the lifetime of living genius. Without Death the artwork of Life is unending. Without Death there is no resolution to the accruing of moments in time. Thus, it is Death which frames Life, & it is the frame of Death which contextualizes the deceased genius of life & elevates it to the status of True Art. This True Art can only be found in the Genius of Death. Unlike with Life, we do not believe that every single human being’s death is equally & uniquely interesting. Perhaps this might shock you, but we could not reveal this truth to you before you understood our perspective on Life in its entirety. You might have noticed the additional word in parentheses affixed to the title of this exposition. This was not a mistake. We believe that Death is like this Parenthetical Not, & it stands before all ongoing sentences. Not every sentence remains True once it has been revealed. We believe that the Genius of Death is reserved to particular deaths in the same way. Not every single human being’s death reveals new meanings in the ongoing patterns of their lives. Some deaths are purely accidental. Some deaths come far too soon, & other deaths come far too late. It is only in an ongoing Life that we can see the universal distribution of genius. But when this Life has ceased, & Death has come, this Genius of Life perishes with it. The last recorded words of the great deceased genius, Albert Einstein, come to mind: “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.” This was a man who understood the Genius of Death. His true last words were whispered in German to a nurse who could not understand him. Their mystery proves eternal, & we can admire here, in his Death, a capstone to his Life which evokes new patterns in its composition. Consider this: What was Einstein if not a man whispering mysterious revelations to onlookers who could not understand him? Have you understood him? We are not so su
re ourselves, but we are sure of the mystery which his works evoked. Although the universality of death is, perhaps, a source of complete equality for us perishable mortals, it is only the ennobling end of life which separates the few Geniuses in Death from the unending parade of Geniuses in Life. This separation has been hinted at from the very onset of human history in what, in less enlightened times, was called ‘the eternality of the soul’ or ‘immortality’ or ‘Life after Death.’ Even now, in our current age, in which every human being, after death, leaves a trail of artifacts, pictures, words, & all sorts of data & metadata of such rich diversity & insight, still we are unable to understand the mysterious criteria required for the Genius of Death. There is no universal curatorial algorithm to determine it. Even though we have achieved a state of technological sophistication so advanced & a state of technological distribution so democratic that we can prove once and for all the existence of this ‘soul’ in Life without retreating into the darkness of unenlightened superstition, religion, or dogma, we are still no closer to knowing what becomes of it after Death. We know, it’s a mouthful, but please don’t despair. We understand that you might be disappointed, but we hope you may come to understand. Do not be afraid. We do not comprehend the Genius of Death any better than you do. We have merely collected some examples that we hope you will find illuminating. Perhaps not all of our selections are True Art. We admit that we may have made some mistakes in our curation, but it’s impossible to know which ones they are. If you wish to brave entrance to this exposition, say this, humbled & grim, ‘(Not) Everybody is a Genius: In Death.’”

  “Not Everybody is a Genius in Death!” Cairey chimes with his first mirthful laugh of the day.

  “Not.. Everybody is a Genius... in Death…” Ophelia laments, her demeanor wilting as it never has before.

  The gates squeak open on their hinges. Shadows loom from out its antechamber. Inside, there is no light. Cairey enters immediately, but Ophelia lags behind. The interior is cold & there seems no end to the depths of its darkness. Cairey trudges on, until he notices that he’s alone. He turns around. “Well?” he calls back to her, “Shall we?” She seems surprised by his words. Her mind is evidently elsewhere. “Sorry” she calls back, “I’m coming in.” She hesitates, but goes into the darkness & into the cold. The gate shuts behind her & she shrieks, seizing Cairey’s hand by instinct. She whispers another apology. Then a light appears far off, intermittently, like a signal on the shores of a stormy sea. Cairey takes the first step toward it, tugging Ophelia along. An ambient loop of mountain winds obscures the sound of their footfalls. “This is just cheap” thinks Cairey, “Your haunted house effects, these amusement park tricks. Are You trying to scare me?”

  The source of the light is a hanging lantern caged in a spinning mirror. It replicates in swift succesion the lunar month’s procession- its waxing revelation & its waning dispossesion. Below it is a curtain which opens as they approach, revealing a strong brightness which spills a slivered path of light before them. It swells to the width of a sidewalk as the tread toward the chamber’s end. Simultaneously, the darkness of the surroundings brightens from all around, revealing that their pathway is in tunnel. The curved walls around them begin twinkling with artificial constellations emerging from a stark blue background. They are treading on a path of light inside a tube of simulated midnight. Its end beyond the curtain glows so brightly that nothing can be seen beyond it but light. Ophelia loosens up, awestruck by the transformation. “Wow” she says, letting go of Cairey’s hand. She traces her fingers across the starlit wall she hadn’t known was there. She retrieves her phone to take a picture of it, but the lighting is too strange for it to capture. The contrast of the dark against the light is too severe. It comes out oversaturated, with a ghostly shadow of Cairey in its center, his edges frayed in the purity of the light. He passes the threshold without her.

  The next room is so much larger in scale as to be staggering. It is the size of the Exhibition, but lacking any of the towers which provided a constant reference, scaling it to human proportions. Rather, it is like an enclosed football stadium or an empty warehouse in the scope of vacuity between its floor & ceiling. Every surface is painted a uniform white, which gives its expanse an illusion of infinite depth like looking out into a cloudless sky. It is so bright as to be blinding. It takes nearly a minute for Cairey’s vision to refocus. When it does, he sees groups of visitors inspecting various tableaus encaged in transparent glass cubes. Many seem to be taking part in them, posing, & having their pictures taken from outside. The scenes are arranged in two rows, stretching all the way to the distant end of the exposition room. There is equal & ample space between the cubes. Each one is the same size. The first he sees clearly is the closest one in the row to his right. It appears like a frozen block of time & space. Within it, there is a patch of yellowed grass. At its center, some of the grass is bloodsoaked. A male figure is frozen above it. His face is twisted in agony. His hands are on the sides of his head. He’s dressed in a tunic of animal hide. At his feet rests a bloodstained club. A guest enters this cube & lays with his head over the stain. He poses dead. His companion snaps pictures from several angles. He gets up to inspect them, & then they switch places.

  “Wow” Ophelia says again as she emerges into the Second Exposition, “This is absolutely wild.”

  Cairey turns to face her. She’s rubbing her eyes & blinking forcefully, adjusting to the brightness.

  “It’s almost unbelievable” he says sarcastically.

  Ophelia squints at the cube to their right. “Wow,” she says, “it looks so real.” She approaches it, leaving Cairey behind.

  He decides to look to his left. This cube is bereft of living visitors. In it, there are two stone pillars in a state of imminent collapse. Their fragments barely stick together. They are frozen in mid air. Their topmost pieces are converging on the center between them, while the pieces in the middle are pushed to oposing extremes. At the other end of the cube, Cairey sees several figures in priestly adornments gaping their mouths, framed by the shattering pillars. One’s arm is outstretched & pointing towards the collapse. It appears to be an ancient scene. It reminds him of Greece or Rome perhaps, but he doesn’t know what time it depicts. He can only tell that it is ancient in some way. “What are you trying to tell me?” he asks in his mind.

  He turns back to the curtain that they’d entered through, which is closing slowly now, automatically, by some automated mechanism. The curtain is dark maroon, which he hadn’t realized when entering. Inside the tunnel it had appeared black. On each side of the curtain a word is writtern on the white wall. They are written in three-dimensional block lettering, & appear to be floating in a white void. To the Left he reads “MURDER” & to the Right he reads “SUICIDE.” They seem to correspond to the opposite rows when he turns around. The cube Ophelia is now inspecting closely, her hands pressed against the glass, is the first in the row of Murders & the one with the pillars, he deduces, is the first in the row of Suicides. “Is this the choice you’re offering me?” he asks in his mind.

  “Cairey! Come here! Come on!” Ophelia hollers over to him.

  He heads toward her. She holds her phone out for him to take.

  “Could you get me? Please?” she asks him.

  He nods & mumbles “Sure.”

  Her phone’s screen is cracked. As she rushes into the cube to pose, it vibrates in Cairey’s hand. A new message pops up, from a contact named Abigail surrounded with heart emojiis. The message says: “I figured it out,” then it vibrates again, “I can’t wait to tell you omg” & again “I’m sorry to interrupt your excursion again lol” & again “but you’re gonna love it when I explain it to you like omg” & again “I won’t spoil it now but omg omg.” Cairey’s dumbfounded by this. “You’re pulling out all the stops huh?” he asks in his mind, “this is just cheap now. I told you. I know your tricks. I know what you’re up to. I told you I’m done with it.”

  Ophelia knocks on the glass from t
he inside. Cairey looks up from her phone. She pantomimes a camera, holding an invisible rectangle infront of her eye, & clicking her pointer finger like a trigger. Cairey nods & readies to take her photo as she’s requested. She lays down on the bloody field. She rests her head over the murder patch below the wailing shepherd. She splays her arms out wildly. She sticks her tongue out & rolls her eyes back. A melodramatic stage-death. Cairey takes seven pictures in quick succession. She gets up & leaves the cube to inspect them. She smiles at them.