Title: An Outro for the Blues
Materials:
- Me and my voice (the longer I can keep it up, the better)
- Them and their remains
- The world (as my last audience member)
Abstract: An Outro for the Blues will be a long, slow journey, although I don't know what place will be my furthest destination.
The performance itself is very simple: I will walk out of this grave, this ruined building, and walk into the outside world I have not seen for ages. Following this, I will immediately head east, onward in the direction from which the sun rises. And for every corpse I meet1, I will stop in my tracks and tell him, her, them, or it: "Here's to the vibrant life you lived."
I will continue until this calamity finally takes my life2.
Intent: I know, this isn't cool. I have never been cool. But I want to believe, subjectively, that every last one of them was cooler than me, miserable here — as such, I wish to pay respects to the coolness they once had. After all, I think life is the coolest thing in this world.
Seeking the source of this disaster, or its scale, or when it will all end — it's all pointless, and noisy. What I can believe is that the scale of this disaster far exceeds anything I can think of; it might even encompass the whole world. All signal has been lost, and I can't contact anyone. I can only hide in this cramped basement and quake in fear, sorting out these endless thoughts.
I don't have the courage to leave this place, but I can hear it. I can hear them screaming, crying out in pain.
Is it the end of the world? If it isn't, I should continue thinking about my failure of a life. If it is, things are a lot easier — I might as well just go out there and die.
But I feel scared, sorrowful. Not for myself, I wouldn't pity myself if I died. But what about this blue marble we live on? What about the billions of vibrant lives? My fellows, or the Foundation, might have put up some resistance3, but most of them could only accept their fate.
… As I said before, I think life is the coolest thing in this world (or even this universe). The reason the world has not fallen into eternal silence is precisely that there are myriad spirits walking the sky and the earth. And this made me ask myself a question: "Why did the universe choose to exist and operate through the form of biological life?"
The pain of not knowing the answer drove me insane. In the end, like a blind believer putting his faith in religion, I gave myself an ephemeral answer: it was "God", who gave this universe life. Who this "God" actually is isn't important. The important part is that we should live out this life we have been given to the fullest.
But everyone has their own will — which one is right? To chase after money, or ideals? I feel, as living things, we all have our own desires and wants. And these pure desires are each of our wills, our goals, our futures, our "right paths". We are born with differences; everyone is unique. As billions of paths are weaved together, this creates the complex, brilliant human world. Every life that exists and blossoms is a vivid performance in its own way — even the animals of the natural world, the eagle capturing its prey and the wolf hunting in the wilderness, make this cold, dead world brighter and brighter. I once called our planet "the neverending blues", for all of us are writing a new chapter with our lives.
But now, the neverending blues have come to an end. Those anomalies have crushed them like a chariot rolling through the battlefield, bringing an end to their hopes and dreams.
When you realize that every corpse in that field was a life, and that those lives are now piled up like rubbish on the earth… how I would like to do something for them, how I wish someone would think of the brilliant lives they led — the sad thing is I don't know who they were — and so I would like to see them and respectfully say those words — "Here's to the vibrant life you lived." To give an outro to the last chapter of their lives, to tell them that someone else acknowledged them in death. And besides the world, I cannot find anyone else to be my audience.
I think that we should have a new exhibition this year. I'll write this all down in the form of a project proposal. Maybe this will make up for the fact that I never had the confidence to pitch any of my projects to a curator. If any survivors see this, I would like to say some words to you reading this:
"My story has already come to an end, but you still have hopes to keep going. You have my full support."
I should go now. Wish me luck.