The Screaming Clock of Mortality
The idea of Memento Mori, or "remember you will die," is often romanticized as this magical countdown of serene surrender to death. The truth is much different. While I'm not old-old, I'm about to be 53. I just got a memento mori pendant to remind me of this. Not to accept some poetic sweetness of death or revel in time running out, but as an uncompromising reminder to live my life.
Since COVID, we had become practically shut-ins for years. It's so easy to let inertia take over, to sink into the comfortable routine of four walls and convince yourself there will always be an endless stretch of "later" waiting down the road. But this past year, we made the choice to push back against that drift. We’ve been getting out more and going to music concerts, house shows, and art events among other things. It can be hard on us at times with some mobility issues, and the brutal Texas heat never makes anything easy, but I see a lot of people around my age dying suddenly or being taken down by illness. While I am pretty healthy, I want to live while I can actually live.
I created this art piece to capture the unfiltered reality of what that countdown actually feels like.
The Screaming Face: It isn't death itself; it’s the raw shock of realization. It’s the sheer, wide-mouthed panic of looking the countdown straight in the teeth. Once you reach a certain age, that reality sets in quickly, especially when you start losing people around you. You realize that mortality isn't some philosophical theory you ponder from a safe distance—it has teeth, and it's bearing down.
The Floating, Drifting Clocks: Time isn't anchored neatly to a wall or ticking politely on a wrist. In the painting, the clocks trail off like severed organisms drifting into an empty void. As the years pile on, time distorts. Hours drag when you're caught in the daily grind, but entire decades vanish behind you in the blink of an eye. The hands don't stop moving just because you aren't ready to let go.
The Bleeding Eyes: This is the steep cost of true awareness. Modern life is designed to keep us numb, comfortably distracted by endless noise so we don't have to face the void. But once you pull that curtain back, you can't unsee it. The bleeding eyes represent being forced to watch the minutes drain away without blinking, feeling the weight of every second that permanently slips through your fingers.
There is nothing truly anchoring us to this existence when you think about it. The news is always filled with stories of ordinary people who woke up thinking today would be a normal day like any other, only for their life to end in an instant. Some never even knew what hit them.
Stripping away the aesthetic romance leaves only the raw nerve. The horror of running out of time isn't meant to paralyze you or make you freeze in the dark. It’s the jolt to the system meant to snap you awake, burn away the excuses, and force you to actually live inside whatever hours you have left.
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