Bereavement and Responsibility

Angel of Death (1881) by Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919). Sometimes identified with the angel Azrael, the angel of destruction and renewal. Image Source: Wiki.

To my dear readers, my posts have been thin on the ground since March, when my father went into the hospital for heart surgery. He died on 19 June 2019. I wrote about his thoughts on death in the 2013 post, Zero Scrap Value. Two posts inspired by conversations with my father are A Sad Story and The Banality of Evil. A post with reflections on my father's generation of Angry Young Men is The Silent Generation's Separate Peace. In honour of his love of Bach:

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Performed by the Chimei Symphony Orchestra in Taipei, Taiwan in 2005; conducted by Naoki Tokuoka. Video Source: Youtube.

It has been difficult for me to maintain my regular writing schedule, since I visited my father nearly every day in the intensive care unit for four months. My forthcoming non-fiction collection, Inside the Potemkin Village, will include my reflections on this experience and other essays on how we deal with death and inheritances; these pieces will also build on posts I wrote here, such as The Death Rites of the Toraja.

I am deeply grateful to those who knew what was happening and extended their love and support to me and my family. In the blogosphere, I especially want to thank Dia Sobin of Trans-D Digital Art. In the vlogosphere, I was incredibly touched by a message from Luke Slytalker, who covered the Dark Overlord hack in January 2019. Thank you so much to Luke and his followers for prayers and well wishes. He wrote:

"Larissa is a great researcher and one of the hardest working, most dedicated people I have talked to. She is an example of perseverance, passion, and how to soldier the F up and do what needs to be done, even in the hardest of times. I’ve taken notes. I’m very sorry for your loss. Prepare for silver linings and the universe to open up to you in the most miraculous of ways."

Good vibes and prayers for Larissa (19 June 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

Everyone who works in the alt media can confirm that it can be a lonely experience, akin to staring into a distorted mirror. Blogging and vlogging constitute a new civic responsibility to identify and explain how the world is changing and to maintain creative, critical, and constructive voices inside the technocracy. I am so glad to know Luke and share that responsibility with him.

Members of the alt media are easy targets because we saw the writing on the wall early on, and voluntarily abandoned the established architecture that presides over public opinion. We are now being censored, our work arbitrarily erased by Thoughtcrime bots and programs. We are ridiculed and censured by the mainstream media as sources of disinformation and Fake News. Nonetheless, we labour here so that in the future, no one can say that everyone ignored the signs, and sleepwalked into a global tech-totalitarianism. This is a civic responsibility instilled in me by my father, and my work written in that spirit is dedicated to him.