Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Interdivisional Programs and Concentrations

Project Advisor 1

Tania El-Khoury

Abstract/Artist's Statement

After she died, the ecstatic and the mundane collided and exposed each other. The dead live in the place of stories. Those who survive gather the scattered remains of a life, cohere them into forms so they may be remembered. But in making this story, we so often sacrifice raw, visceral experience –

But every once in a while, caught off guard, the ecstatic comes. Something animal like a moan or wail overrides sense and sensation overrides story and there you are as you were in life: singular and without reference, indescribable and so utterly here.

My mother wasn’t buried in a coffin. I leaned into the grave and placed branches over her shrouded body so that it would soften the sound of rocks and mud falling.

She wasn’t buried in a coffin — I held her forehead, her cheek. I clenched my jaw and would not let them lower her. The mundanity of this touch, made ecstatic in death. A body cold, a chest still.

And a wail—shredding everything to shards of color and heat and sound spilling—a broken window exploded across the asphalt.

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