December 2nd, 2020. In progress

How do we talk about death?

How do we talk about death in a way that is authentic and true to an audience?

I do not think that we can.

To talk about death is to feel death. To remember death. This is something that is inherently painful.

When I talk about the death of my mother it is part of my story. That is why the death resurfaces.

When the screen morphs into the screen that holds the sentence in which I say that during my junior year of high school, my mother died following a fourteen-year battle with stage-four breast cancer I change my voice. I change my voice to better suit the sorrow of this sentence.

I change my voice for the sake of the performance. My story is a performance. I have crafted it in a way to serve a purpose. This does not mean that it is not authentic. It is still my story. But it has been refined and curated. I have practiced it. I understand how to say it so that it delivers my intended message.

But death can never be a performance. There is no way to authentically speak about my mother's death within the objective of delivering my story. Because my story is a performance and death cannot be performed.

Performance draws from reality. Performance takes what is real and morphs it into something else for an intended purpose. That is what happens when I tell my story.