The art & craft of dying
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 5:07 amContinuing the morbid themes…
Seen recently in the local newspaper, a 3-hour craft workshop: Make and Decorate Your Own Coffin.
With only three hours to complete the coffin, it would have to be a plywood job. Of course, for the decoratively inclined, plywood is a good option — pale and easy to draw on.
I daydreamed about how I would decorate mine. Maybe figures from the Commedia dell’Arte, to portray the idea that all the world’s a stage, and because it would be an excuse to indulge my fetish for masked characters; or porn, to amuse, mystify, scandalise or bore future archaeologists; or decoupage photos of some bodacious siren, so that people will think that was me; or a whole lot of sudoku squares, to give me something to do in the afterlife.
So, how would you decorate yours?
May 5th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Artwork with lots of different styles and details (some imagined), to confuse archaeologists trying to decipher the nature of my culture.
May 5th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I don’t know about decorations, but I would have a false bottom with some treasure maps or some hilarious conspiracy documents.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Treasure maps and forged conspiracy documents seem like a splendid idea.
I think I would bring heaps of little dolls and animal sculptures to serve me in the afterlife. Two coins over my eyes, just in case I end up in the wrong afterlife… and a sarcophagus from white marble with bunnies and mice carved all over. Take that, future archeologists.
On a side note, I’m in love with Shaun Tan.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:19 am
A huge, hollowed out, undecorated block of basalt with a matching cap, filled to the brim with Hendricks gin.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
How about the Tibetan Book of the Dead plus CD of chanting playing for 40 days or whatever’s recommended?
in re coffins, I once saw one shaped and painted like a peapod that I’d have loved to go out in.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Ok, I’m booking in a future life as an archaeologist so that I can dig all those coffins up and enjoy puzzling over them. I think puzzles make for happiness, because they give focus and structure to the unavoidable bewilderment of living. In fact, out of kindness to future generations, perhaps we should leave as many puzzles, false documents and red herrings behind us as we can. Maybe that was what the Egyptians did when they built the Pyramids and the Sphinx…
D – Shaun Tan is most awesomely awesome!