If I must die I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms ~ShakespeareΝβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ 
 

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If I must die
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms
~Shakespeare

In this season of gratitude we'd like to extend our thanks to you for joining us on this journey towards a more compassionate world.
 

At the heart of Weijia Ma’s hauntingly beautiful 15-minute animated film, Step Into the River are deep memories of loss that shape the lives of two young girls. One of them was born after the death of a brother; the other was rescued by her adoptive father after her biological parents left her to drown. Both of them find themselves drawn to the water, which Ma builds masterfully as an image and a metaphor in this poetic and poignant film.

You can read a review here and watch Step Into the River here.
 

Courtesy of Playwrights Horizons

Aleshea Harris’s play What to Send Up When It Goes Down mines the depths of theater’s most basic and human roots - that of ritual and ceremony.

Written in 2014 as a response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin, Harris’ play memorializes the deaths of Black people at the hands of the police. Before the play begins, the audience forms a gathering, surrounded by photographs of the dead. Harris insists that her play is a real ritual. The players aren’t pretending to be carrying out a ritual. They are in it. We are sincerely gathered to honor those who’ve been taken too soon.

You can read a powerful review of What to Send Up When It Goes Down here and contribute your own rituals of remembrance on Harris’ living memorial here.
 

Courtesy of Dame Magazine

Rainesford Stauffer asks the question Do we have the space to grieve anymore? in this article for Dame. It is written about twenty and thirty somethings discovering a near total lack of acknowledgement from the outside world of the impact of losing someone important in your life.

The hierarchy of grief that is encoded in our workplaces and social systems seems to value productivity above all else. At long last, we may be seeing some meaningful cultural pushback to a de-humanizing set of assumptions.

You can find the article here.
 

Courtesy of New York Times

The internationally acclaimed artist Christian Boltanski died this past year outside Paris where he lived and worked. His installations were known for their focus on ...themes of memory and forgotten lives, chance and fate, death and the passage of time... and were shown all over the world.

Neil Genzlinger describes them in his obituary as ... open ended in their invitation to the viewer to contemplate the past, what has been lost and what endures.

You can find the New York Times article here.
 

Kerry James Marshall is one of the pre-eminent painters of our time. A MacArthur fellow and internationally acclaimed, his portraits of Black Americans challenge the canon of Western art history, pulling focus to those who have historically been omitted from representation.

His paintings are exuberant and solemn at the same time. His work helps correct what he calls the lack in the image bank of Black Americans, keeping safe what would otherwise be lost.

You can read more and see more of his work here, here, and here. 
 

Food can inspire strong emotions and powerful memories, and sometimes the containers the food comes in can evoke an even stronger response, giving them countless afterlives. Eliciting memories stored away in old cookie tins or jelly jars is a seemingly universal experience that has become part of a quirky cultural discourse.

You can read about this widespread trend in the New York Times here.
 

Spellbinding blues singer Yebba recently released her debut album, produced by legendary producer Mark Ronson.

The album didn’t start out as a reckoning with her mother’s 2016 death from suicide, but it evolved into that through Yebba’s writing process. Dawn, named for both her mother, and the symbol of a new beginning, probes the hurt of being left behind and the release of finding a path forward through music.

You can read a review here and listen to Dawn here.
 

The Smithsonian has turned to art to convey the devastation we are wreaking on the planet we call home. The show is in the National Museum of Natural History through March of 2022 and is subtitled Artists Reflect on the Age of Humans.

Ages begin and they also end begging the question - Will we manage to escape extinction or not?

You can find the Washington Post article on the exhibit here.
 

Monthly Features

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning

This book is a charming, practical, and unsentimental approach to putting a home in order while reflecting on the tiny joys that make up a long life.

Check it out here.

The implications of Artificial Intelligence are already touching all of our lives including the potential of re-defining mortality as we know it today. And this is only the very beginning of what's coming.

Jeanette Winterson takes a look at the coming revolution in these 12 sharp and witty essays in 12 Bytes here.
 

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you feel might benefit from these resources and articles.

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We’d like to issue a call to collaborate in building our online community. Please let us know if you’d like to participate as a guest blogger - you can find us at info@exitstrategyfordying.com
 
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