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Guy YedwabVictoria Anderson9/29/06Life As ArtSince the beginning of language, many people have attempted to share each other methods of 'living life.' One of the defining aspects of human sentience is the idea that we are capable of considering meaning and purpose; the greatest meaning or purpose being the one which we havealways tried to find in 'life.' We come screaming out of our mothers, live for some time, and then our life ends—it's no wonder that humankind has been searching for something more in life than that. Our language has been stretched to the very limit of sophistication in its attempt to explain what processesare at work. Because the question is complicated, we assume that there is a complicated answer. Muchof art, much of science, much of philosophy, and many other fields have been created to answer thesequestions in the most convoluted way possible.I think it's time to look at the question a little more simply.My personal favorite philosopher is a man named William James. Unlike heavyweights likeKierkegaard, Kant, or Socrates, James didn't want to tell everyone what to think. That's good: he was ateacher, so he didn't have to tell people what to think. All he tried to tell them was how to think. If Iwere to ask William James, “What does life
mean
?” his response would probably be “Whatever helpsyou live it in the way you want to live it.”“Arrogance!” some might say. “Useless!” others might cry. James didn't believe that there wasan absolute truth to discover; just that we need to live life as best as we can.I like James, and I like trying to figure out things the way I think he would. He once said thatthe only time we ever have to question our own assumptions is when we can't figure out what's goingon. If what we know or think we know doesn't match the world around us, we need to find out themistake and change (Certain presidents might do well to listen...).
 
There's one thing which I don't know anything about, and I need to figure out how to understandit. That's death. The problem with death is that we have no realm of experience. As Rosencrantz puts itin Tom Stoppard's
 Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead 
: “It's silly to be depressed by [death]. Imean one thinks of it like being
alive
in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact thatone is
dead 
...” We have spent our entire lives being alive. How can we possibly dream of being dead?Socrates, as Rosencrantz points out, said that if we don't know what death is, we can't be afraidof it. James would tell us to figure out a way of looking at death which helps us figure out how to liveour lives. His conclusion, and I would agree with it, is that believing in a God and Afterlife gives us a positive view of death which not only allows us to continue living, but furthermore gives us a reason tolive a good life. Schopenhauer, another philosopher, agreed... until he lost faith in God and became anihilist, believing in nothing.Here's the bump: I've never believed in God and I can't start believing in him now out of 'convenience.' When a close friend of mine named Garrett committed suicide, I couldn't tell myself,“Oh, well, he's in God's hands now.” It didn't help that Garrett was also an athiest and probablywouldn't be in God's hand's... at any rate, I need some sort of a belief in life to help me continue to livelife without losing faith in it (like Schopenhauer) but without ignoring the fact that I can't believe inGod (aside from my dilemma with regards to death, my observations of the world still support a non-God worldview, which James permits me to believe).Luckily, my blind faith in my effect in the world finally led me to the answer, from anunexpected place.The Tisch Building, where I am slowly crafting my body into an instrument for the artist in mymind, is littered with old production photographs, blown up beyond life-size. They are not intended asworks of art in-and-of themselves, but rather as the memory of past art.One, in particular, stuck out to me the first day I was there, and continues to steal my gaze everytime I pass by. The photograph is of a young girl, beautiful, dressed in some forgotten era's dress with atea-cup lying at her side as she slumps, dead, on a bed. The frame emphasizes her eyes—which are
 
completely black and blank, as I have always imagined the eyes of a corpse to be—but also leads up to pair of men saluting.It has nearly driven me mad, searching for the meaning of the photo, searching for the story behind this girl's death. Surely her death had a story, surely it meant something. Granted, she was never actually alive, but the life which she (as art) has, is just as real for me as any real person. In fact, after death, it is only through art and memory that a person survives—and after those who knew you die, yousurvive only in art.I may never know how her tea came to be poisoned (which was the closest to a real answer Iever came)--whether it is the mysterious man saluting her in the background, or whether they are swornto avenge her. But the fact that I am enraptured by a fictitious girl who died some years ago has givenme another answer.I will live, and then I will die. The only way I will make a mark on this world is if, somehow, Ileave a mark in history.In the great tragedy,
 Hamlet 
, Hamlet gets to die a hero's death, forever immortalized in the beauty that is Shakespeare's masterpiece. Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern eventually get their immortality in
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 
. If I am going to survive, it will only be in theart and the history I leave behind.
 How To Tell A True War Story
is an interesting look at legacy. Any time men die in highnumbers, death becomes a more real and concerning unknown. How can we treat those soldiers whoare dead? How can we continue to fight? The answer which the character Rat appears to arrive at is thatwe have to remember the dead, and share our remembrance of the dead. Tim O'Brien echoes that whenhe sets out to tell us how to tell a true war story. He says to us, “It's not important that the facts arecompletely there, so long as the person's footprint on time remains.” He wants to protect the art of aman's life, without necessarily holding to the truth of it. The man leaves life and becomes art.When I think of death, usually, I think of the last moment of death. I think of what a man doeswhen he knows he's dying, or when he doesn't. I think of the way that fate has of creating a final
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