Perhaps too overt a title for a silly quote, but on the last page of an article entitled, Terence McKenna’s Last Trip, the author, Erik Davis, asks McKenna about death:

McKenna calls death the black hole of biology. “Once you go over that event horizon, no messages can be passed back. It represents a limit case in the thermodynamics of information. So what is it?”

McKenna chuckles. “The best answer I’ve gotten yet is out of Don DeLillo’s Underworld, where the nun discovers that when you die you become your Web site.”

As I’ve mentioned before, when I die, I want this web site published for all the mourners at my funeral … yeah, both of you. So, in a way, I will become my web site.

While I’m not sure a web site constitutes art, but now that Picasso’s bones are flour, what is Picasso? He paintings? Of course, but his art is a bit more than that… it is a vision… an aim as to where he was going that continues to inspire artists and lay-creature alike.

This death art includes the paintings, poems and symphonies of dead artists, but I think it includes a bit more. Could the rich bastard that leaves behind a huge charitable trust be his art? Could brilliant scientific discoveries, tall skyscrapers, and <gasp> good software engineering count as well?

What about the relationships we have with each other… surely emotional rapport is a type of medium we all use when painting our death art.

Damn this mid-life crisis … it turned a silly little quote into something serious.