a conversation about death with a stranger over g-mail
# anonymous
3:20 PM (6 hours ago)
to me
dear grant,
i came to your brothers hand mirror show when you played at ‘love don’t pay the rent’ a few months ago, and i liked it very much. i was looking at your new blog the other day, and i have a question for you and i was wondering if you could answer it. are you afraid of dying?
from,
anon.
# grant gronewold
8:40 PM (41 minutes ago)
to anonymous
i will answer your question if you let me post it on my blog, i will leave your name out. deal?
# anonymous
8:51 PM (30 minutes ago)
to me
that sounds wonderful, thank you.
# grant gronewold
9:21 PM (0 minutes ago)
to anonymous
thank you.
i will try to be clear, but even before i start it is difficult to imagine what clarity is under the smog of this question. one thing i have learnt by now is that i don’t entirely feel one way about this thing, or any thing(s) ever.
* i think it’s important to draw lines between dying and it’s effect. i don’t fear the inside of my mind for instance, but i do have a very strong fear of seeing people i love in pain.
* i like pain, i like challenge, i like hardship, i like adapting, i lack respect for my own well being and i can’t imagine what my deaths feeling would be with any precision. these things work in favor of me not fearing my death.
* i hate mom cries, i hate brother cries, i hate mom and brother spend life waiting for the time when crying doesn’t stop, i hate the vaccuum a missing person creates in a life, i hate that i couldn’t carry out the promise to live as alone as possible to avoid ruining the people most perfect to me, i hate friends want, but cannot have me anymore. these things work in favor of me fearing my death.
* i fear the lead up/break down of my life and ability; not being able to sing anymore, having to sleep more than make, taking the time for living away from those that would care for me. making things is what i do to give life back to people who will lose me and to prove to myself that i really have had a life and it wasn’t just dreaming, so i think a long enough period of that would feel like a death to me.
* i think about it everyday all the time, it is my basis thought which all other wonderings hold tether with. that fact itself must prove that i fear it above all.
* i yearn for my death often when i am left alone for long enough, allowed to forget what i mean to others/what they mean to me. so i don’t fear my own end, i don’t think, if that is allowed to exist on a plane of isolation.
* i think the answer to your question is that i fear my deaths effect and not my death itself.
* if you meant my deaths effect to be considered as a part of my death, then the answer is: yes, i am obsessively afraid of dying.
