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Memento Mori
2023, essaySome kind of anticipatory grief clings to my bones, permeating every pore it can seep into. I want to crawl out of my tired, feverish, and nauseated body. The usual hesitancy everyone has in regards to the end of life suddenly became so intimate that it now seems almost tangible. As if to touch my own skin is to touch death itself.
Trying to care for myself, or at least what’s left, has become a chore. I get lucky with a few hours of rest a night; sleep stolen in between waves of numerous anxieties and the shortness of breath that brings about pangs of burning and tightness in my chest. Eating is more work than anything else- everything tastes so bland and rough in my throat. I am torn between letting this depression grip onto my limbs like a weighted jacket, and trying to keep myself as numb as possible so as not to feel anything- as if in some way the act of methodically planning out these remaining years of my life would somehow make them linger just a bit more. Wrestling with the concept of death and dying makes my heart ache in a way that has been unfamiliar until now. I feel this incessant need to try and ‘figure it all out’. ‘It’ being the meaning of life (as if it’s something that can even be quantified), how I want to spend my time, the people I want to be near, do I even want to finish college? I find myself almost reflexively returning to an album that was a foundation of several particularly difficult teenager-y years of change and loss. The melancholic existential lyricism of Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers feeds into my own sadness and simultaneously removes me from it, allowing me to sit in with Bridgers on her own. The dream-like and almost surreal mesh of folk, rock, and soft vocals blanket my restlessness, offering some kind of comforting familiarity. Bridger’s writing on death and suffering feels like a dagger, hurting where I want it to. The topic of dying doesn't appear to be at all taboo in her work. If anything, the presence of loss and inevitable death feel welcomed; they feel okay. My grief is somewhat less isolating when I share it with others; it becomes more digestible when I consume it through art. When I first started to have the difficult conversations with friends in which I had to tell them that I’m dying, I carried so much dread with each word. Yet, each conversation was punctuated by some level of ease and dark humor, which made the weight and fear of it all a little less overwhelming, at least in that moment. “Graceland Too”, a song penned by Bridgers that narratively describes a girl’s reconciling with and the aftermath of an implicit brush with death is described by music critic Lidnsay Zoladz as an “attendant mix of feelings, a kind of tattered, post-traumatic triumph that, in the warm company of another person, gradually blooms into a panoramic hope” (Zoladz 2020). Bridgers looks death in the eye with such unflinching sincerity. There is no escaping death’s encroaching hand, and rather than speak around the topic, she turns to greet it in its entirety. Her album feels haunted, her pensiveness spilling out through the music and crippling your own sense of impending doom, while still managing to offer some silver-lining of being able to be ok in the face of suffering.
Bridgers describes her music as “silly death” (The Method 14:19), alluding to how her work as an artist attempts to diminish the ever-present trepidation of the ways in which we consider and approach loss in and of itself. Throughout her albums and various works, she doesn’t always talk explicitly about death in the traditional sense, but rather about death as means to an end– whether that be about childhood, a relationship, time, place, or on a larger scale: the world as a whole. The value of maintaining levity alongside the sharp pain that marks loss makes it feel more manageable, even when you are so far removed from being able to comprehend your own suffering. Shared sorrow is so often prevalent within how we cope with grief in both a social and personal context. Through an artistic lens, creating and consuming objectively ‘sad’ media allows us to fully immerse ourselves in our discomfort, which can be healing while still giving us the space to deeply experience and reckon with suffering. Of her own process of making art out of such difficult subject matter, Bridgers states: “It’s a mystery to me every time. It feels like I’m reinventing. I just kind of do shit until it becomes something.” (Lai). I feel the same way now as I attempt to navigate what has become of my life and in turn, create something out of it. I move about in a confused daze with only some vague sense of what I actually want to do with my time. It is all a mystery to me; a ceaseless turnover of reinvention both of myself and of my life at large.
The last track on Punisher, “I Know The End”, comprised of a brutal culmination of raw anger and desperation, has remained a constant for me as of late. Bridgers concludes the song with anguished screams reminiscent of heavy metal. Her voice slowly gives way, as she herself (‘her’ being the identity she assumes in the track) dies out. The presence of dread and depression are thematically heavy within the overarching narrative of the piece, which is both about the end of the world and a futile attempt to flee from death. A stanza at the literal end of the song: “I turned around/ There was nothing there/ I guess the end is near” marks Bridgers’ later acceptance of inevitable death. There is, however, an apparent lack of peace with this fate. Instead, it comes across almost as if she is surrendering herself to it. She still holds some level of opposition to ‘the end’. Her tension between these two means of coping with an ending: surrendering vs. running reflects my own relationship with and regard for death as its own entity. The concept of death is strikingly complex. What is death? There is only so much that we can certainly answer. The ways in which we interact and engage with death are also of high complexity and have remained as such for centuries. From community affairs such as funerals to hospice, the very act of dying is met with social engagement. Still, dying is an extremely individual and personal facet of life. Many of us choose to interact with and approach death through art, whether that be creating on our own or consuming media that works with the concept. Bridgers does this brilliantly across the board, working with her own relationship with death in a holistic manner. This personal relationship of hers with the end of life is very much relatable, especially when she writes of her fear. I don’t believe that there is anything that would remove fear from the equation of dying and being able to sit with the said fear and allow it to exist in its own right may make death more approachable. Although fear heightens our desperation to escape from death, it also, in turn, aids in our capacity for empathy when faced with grief, whether with someone who is actively grieving and or with someone who is actively dying. Socialness is inherent to our existence as human, thus, it is also of increasing importance when we are suffering, whether individually or in community.
The essay “The Beautiful Sick Man” by Jodie Noel Vinson explores her intimate relationship to pain and suffering as she navigates her own illness and also that of her partner’s. She continually attempts to gain some level of acceptance, or at least understanding, of this entanglement with death through French poet Alphonse Daudet’s collection of published notes titled In The Land of Pain, in which he chronicles his own diseased narrative and its effects on his social relationships. Vinson writes “it makes sense the sick man would bend what creative force he had left toward the shrinking circumference of life encapsulated by illness” (sect. 9). When faced with pain, and the subsequent lack of inherent understanding that follows, we are, by nature, drawn to an effort to glean some kind of peace through art and creation; even if said ‘peace’ is merely fantasized and not in actuality. Our means of coping with the relative proximity to death and the transient nature of life is often handled through relationships with others as well as art that is intended to be shared with others. Of this instinctive habit, Daudet notes his “astonishment and joy at finding others who suffer as you do” (sect. 27). Vinson herself turns to community-based support: “I discover the relief of recognition. Of comradery. [...] I am drunk on companionship, on our collective sorrow.” (sect. 28, 31)
The very end of life is, if anything, the end of self. Being removed from our current state of being simultaneously removes us from who we are, as a subjective being. Our pain and suffering, rather collective or individual, is an essential factor in the experience of being alive and how we define aliveness, or subsequently, a lack thereof; a “contingency of being” (Cox, Thompson 12). Our very understanding of our own existence is centered around our capability to feel pain and our ability to interact with it. Vinson is strangled by both physical and emotional pain and is accompanied by the same suffering of her partner throughout this struggle; “This is so hard, we tell each other. [...] a vise around the back of your head, while it grips me about the ribs– they flare in tandem, as if we are two ships tossed by the same sea” (sect. 14). In a more holistic view of the role of community in regards to death, Death and Dying in Social Context points out the essential need for reduced isolation during this process. “For those who have social support, rather than being isolated, the role of community is basic to managing dying and death, funerals, and body disposal. [...] the development of community has provided a resilient response to death” (pg. 11). Having a support system in place offers a vital attempt “to give meaning and purpose to their last days” (pg. 5). In the specified context of illness, “terminally ill people, while dying, are nevertheless still living their lives. While it is important to prepare the dying for their ultimate death, it is also important that they continue to live as social beings until death occurs.” (pg. 5) In doing so, the ‘victims’ of death are able to gain some level of control over this inevitable fate. Cox and Thompson offer further insight into the place of society and self in the comprehension of death:
Societies define what it means to die with dignity; how to die well; whether the death constitutes a tragedy; how to define the person who died, based upon their socioeconomic status; and so forth. [...] Who you are or at least who people think you are is quite important in determining the meaning of your own mortality. (pg. 15)
Phoebe Bridgers conscientiously weighs her role in her own death in the track “Chinese Satellite”, in which she writes of her lack of faith in a higher power and how desperate she is for some kind of solace. She seeks relief and comfort in repetition as a way to ‘drown out’ her own isolation. As the song draws to a close– a death of its own, Bridgers’ voice seems to grow more panicked; “Because I think when you’re gone it’s forever/ But you know I’d stand on the corner/ Embarrassed with a picket sign/ If it meant I would see you/ When I die.” Her despair about this demise and of her lack of understanding for what comes after is both beautifully personified and also makes a stab at my own eagerness for understanding.
What I find most unsettling about death, as I’m sure any other person does, is the uncertainty and lack of conclusivity about it. What comes after? What will it feel like? And a question beloved by Bridgers that appears often in her work: Is there a god? I'm not sure that having the answers to these questions would make dying any better. If anything, I almost simultaneously find comfort in not knowing. I don’t fear the pain of dying. I don’t fear god either. What I do fear, however, is being so viscerally aware of the fact that I am dying as it happens. I am enclosed by uncertainty and have been desperately trying to regain my footing through whatever control I can have in regards to my own death. Would it be better to not be aware of my end and to just slip away quietly? Or to feel everything deeply– to leave claw marks when I am finally forced into reluctantly relaxing my white-knuckled grasp on being alive?
Works Cited
Cox, Gerry R., and Neil Thompson. “Death and Dying in Social Context.” SpringerLink, Springer International Publishing, 1 Jan. 1970, link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-05559-1_1.
Lai, Gladys. “Phoebe Bridgers Wants to Hear You Scream.” Vogue, 2 Feb. 2023, www.vogue.com.au/culture/features/phoebe-bridgers-interview/news-story/98c9cdbff23ad 93b66307643f0edcaab.
“Phoebe Bridgers on Making ‘Punisher’ & Grammy Nominations | The Method.” YouTube, MTV News, 29 Jan. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl1Xsz43EJg. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Vinson, Jodie Noel. “The Beautiful Sick Man.” Sickmagazine.Org, sickmagazine.org/The-Beautiful-Sick-Man. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.
Zoladz, Lindsay. Phoebe Bridgers Wants to Believe, The New York Times, 19 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/arts/music/phoebe-bridgers-punisher-review.html.