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Glass Portrait + USB Cemetery

On the USB Cemetery: 

Echoes: The Danvers State Hospital was meant to be a place of hope, but its history, the lives of those who lived and died there marked it as a site that would be eternally haunted by its past. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House Of The Seven Gables, the way in which a house becomes haunted is through the injustices suffered by those who lived there. To be free of these hauntings, we must destroy our ancestral homes and start anew. Architecture represents the past, and places physical or digital are only haunted because people were there, are gone, and they remain. 

The Danvers State Hospital, or what remains of it, is a testament to the opposite being true. An apartment complex now sits on the grounds where the hospital once stood. All that remains is the brick facade of one of its buildings, and the two cemeteries where patients who died and remained unclaimed or had no one to claim them are buried. 

Aaron Mahnke mentions these cemeteries in his book and podcast, Lore. He describes what the main cemetery looks like better than I ever could.

“There are no tall tombstones, though. Instead each grave is marked by a small square stone with a number engraved on it. 

And there are hundreds of them.

Anyone looking for the cemetery will know they’ve found it when they see a large boulder that marks the entrance. It was placed there in the recent past to explain why all those small square stones are there. 

But it’s the message engraved on it, and not the grave markers themselves that communicates everything we need to know. 

It simply reads, ‘The Echoes They Left Behind’.”

These people, forgotten in life by those they relied on were denied everything but a number and a small plot of earth in death. For a time they were forgotten by all. Died their second deaths possibly even before they died their first.

The cemeteries were overgrown and forgotten until a woman, Pat Deegan, came across them on a walk. She and many volunteers, a number of whom were once patients alongside the deceased,  dedicated themselves to finding the names of those buried there. 

By 2002 the group discovered more than 3/4ths of the names of those buried there. Their names are listed on a plaque at the entrance of the main cemetery. If it could be determined where an individual was buried, they were given a grave marker with their name on it. These people claimed those in this cemetery as family, and loved them when no one else did, or had since their passing. 

Deegan managed to find a former staff member who had a photocopy of a burial record with roughly 150 names on it. The burial record of those buried from 1878 - 1929 had been permanently lost 

Not all of the patients could be identified due to the hospital’s records being lost by the state. 

But 626 individuals were identified and resurrected from their second deaths. 

They say ‘manuscripts don’t burn online.’ Not so much offline. 

Each USB tombstone represents a fragment of data on the internet left behind by an individual as they moved on. Anonymous, like numbered grave markers in a cemetery temporarily forgotten until someone stumbles across them once more.

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TWIWWLEO Bibliography

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The Ways In Which We Love Each Other

9/1/22

I have no idea what I’m doing. But I think I can make something of this. It’s been 2 months since grandpa passed. I have a lot of things I’m processing, and it’s all jumbled, but it’s there. I just need to clear away the excess stuff- not less important, just not strongly tied together. I have a lot of writing to do.

9/6/22 Week 0

Lots of jumbled thoughts still. My writing just feels like rambling, but it’s like I know there’s a thread in there that I can pull and it will untangle all of it. I can’t really gauge how my presentation of my project proposal went- Everyone was so quiet. did I make a mistake in picking this? I just kept talking because I didn’t know what else to do. Does everyone think I’m weird for doing (yet another) project on death? I hope I didn’t. I hope this was a good choice.

9/14/22 Week 1

Got my project schedule laid out. Notes and quotes all organized. Blog set up. More nonsense ramblings. Part of this is identity, and how a person’s impressions of someone else’s identity may be just a snapshot of who they are, and how like... that transfers to the info someone may put online, and how that’s a fragment of who they are, and how long will that memory last. idk. That will double as my glass self portrait project too.

9/21/22 Week 2

I remembered the book Ghostland by Colin Dickey, it  talks about hauntings and story and how that connects to the times these stories originated from and how it all connects. I’ll have to dig that out and reread it. Add it to my research materials. 

Writing version 1: done

it sucks and I hate it. That’s all. Onto #2.

9/28/22 Week 3

Definitely behind schedule. V2: Done.

Next week? idk

I’m overwhelmed. Tired. Working through it. Still a bunch of jumbled thoughts. Slowly getting clearer I think.

10/7/22 Week 4

Glass self portrait due in a week. I’m sandblasting sheets of glass with an image of my face layered so it’ll look kind of ghostly? Gonna call it “here then gone again”

A snapshot of what someone else sees in me, and its impermanence or permanence in someone’s mind. I’m a ghost flickering through their lives. 

10/12/22 Week 5

Had no idea what to show for my studio practice midterm presentation yesterday but I definitely almost cried. Glass critique went so well I almost cried in a good way though. I was smiling when I left Sherman. 

I haven’t even started filming yet and I have like... 4 weeks left now? It’s... slowly getting there.

10/19/22 Week 6

Way behind- adjusted schedule to “fly by seat of pants.” Will adjust as necessary. I had this visual out of nowhere of a graveyard full of identical numbered tombstones, but as the camera zooms out it shows each tombstone is actually a USB stick plugged into a hub. Each one is a bit of information a person left on the internet, anonymous, left behind as they move on. 

(Danvers State Hospital info)

Need to model some tombstones.

10/23/22 Week 7

 I think I finished the written portion. Think anyway. I went out and filmed and shot at the Grove City and Greenlawn Cemeteries. It was nice to spend an afternoon with the dead.  Peaceful. I also had to take a moment to consider that their participation in my project, but their lack of consent. These were all people once. Their stories aren’t mine to  use. I don’t want to commodify their deaths, nor their family’s grief. I need to consider how I’ll respect their privacy, and their family’s too without disrespecting them.

10/31/22 Week 8

Happy Halloween + Blessed Samhain!

Final edits being made to the written/spoken portion. Going to record on wednesday and finish editing the video by next Monday. 

Tombstones are finished. They’re cute. I accidentally printed them @ 6.8mm instead of 68mm. I have 49 comically tiny tombstone USBs that I have no clue what to do with. Maybe I can have a little dish of them beside my work and offer them to people as take-aways?

Gonna build the tiny cemetery hub tonight!

11/6/22 Week 9

I’m done. 

And I’m

proud and 

tired.

[twiwwleo]

@heavensghost // ? / no choir - florence + the machine / a softer world / ? / Holly Warburton/ @teashoesandhair / ? / Faces in the Crowd - Luiselli (tr. MacSweeney)

[twiwwleo]

A life-size dollhouse by artist Heather Benning, in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Canada.

[twiwwleo]

There is still love here (Ceramic house)

[twiwwleo]

i always picture you with a suitcase in your hand

unknown/richard siken/margarita karapanou/d.j./the national/ocean vuong/richard siken/phoebe bridgers

[twiwwleo]

"I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we’ve returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I’m with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small."

— Callista Buchen, Taking Care

[twiwwleo]

[twiwwleo]

Another reason I love Tolkien is what he does with character death

When characters die (or are perceived as having died) the others characters grieve their loss

When Gandalf falls in Moria once the rest of the fellowship is safe in Lothlorien they take time to mourn and grieve and remember

When Boromir dies Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas stop to give him as good a funeral as they can before going after Pippin and Merry and even that's not the end of his effect on the narrative.

Denethor allows his grief to destroy him (and nearly allows it to kill his other son) Faramir fights with his grief and his guilt for not going to Rivendell instead

And Frodo, who was betrayed by Boromir, is heart broken to hear of his death

The story of the Eo family is one of a family touched deeply by grief and that's why Eowyn and Faramir bonding in the houses of healing is so important

Because they do heal, by sharing their individual grief and carrying that combined pain between them

Because when death happens in LOTR it is always with intent, with purpose, and it allows for mourning. And while grief can be destructive mostly it's not, because it's shared.

(and I know there are a lot more examples these are just the first that came to mind)

Too many times I have read fantasy novels that don't let characters support each other when a character dies. And often if a character dies it's sad in the moment and then the narrative just stops caring

Tolkien's work is a story about grief and healing from it. People are changed by grief but it doesn't have to be a bad thing, it's just something that happens and that love and mutual support can carry you through

"I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil."

This is why I love Tolkien

[twiwwleo]

All my grief says the same thing— this isn't how it's supposed to be. And the world laughs, holds my hope by my throat, says: but this is how it is.

Fortesa Latifi, The Truth About Grief

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— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

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It’s weird grieving someone you’ve never met. It’s an empty ache in your chest you can’t quite get rid of. It feels like I’ve lost a friend but I  know it’s parasocial. It’s not that I feel guilty about it. I’m just confused. I’ve never grieved over someone who I didn’t know in real life personally. And at the same time it’s bringing up old grief from earlier this year. But this feels rawer? With the person who I lost in real life I saw it coming, I was prepared. With this I woke up one morning to see a push notification of Eret tweeting about it. And it aches and aches and it’s confusing me. I didn’t know him but it feels like I lost a friend. And I don’t feel guilty but I’m confused.

I hope other people feel seen by this. I just needed to get it off of my chest.

[twiwwleo]

Francis Forever by Mitski

[twiwwleo]

Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

- Jamie Anderson