Modern Funeral Suggestion
I haven’t been to a funeral in quite a while, so I don’t know how they do them now. I wonder if nowadays people have it where instead of the old jibber-jabbering priest or preacher, people sit around in a room together for maybe a couple of hours, not saying anything to anybody, just listening to the music of the deceased. I hope somebody invites me to a funeral like that. Even if I didn’t know the deceased, wouldn’t that be cool to sit in a room with strangers for a couple of hours, nobody saying anything, just listening to music? I could totally get into it.
And by the “music of the deceased” I mean whatever the person did. I understand some people still even listen to broadcast radio, so if that was their thing, you’d all sit there and listen to lame disc jockeys and political talk shows designed to instill hatred. The dude is dead, right? This is his last chance to fuck with your head, so let him go for it. Afterward, you can look back on it as a time of your last communion, and even if the dude pissed you off in life you can relish your triumph in having lasted out two hours of the pathetic and sometimes vilesome screed in his head, and your head is still together, LOL. He, on the other hand, is vanishing into oblivion forever, fuck you very much.
That’s just one end of the spectrum, of course, just to make the point that it works for everyone. People who were dear to you, listening to their music is going to connect you one last time. You and the people who are there in the room with you, you’ll be connected to each other from then on at that same level, and your deceased friend will be the lynchpin binding you together for the rest of your lives.
Most times it will be a simple matter of rigging up your friend’s phone to an amplifier and then just clicking Pandora or Spotify or whatever app your dead friend had downloaded. Bunch of folding chairs in a circle, maybe a lava lamp in the middle or something, and everybody sits there listening to the music. Coming and going is discouraged, but it’s overlooked if it’s quiet. On the other hand, any kind of talking or trying to communicate with hand signals or even exaggerated lip movements is a major faux pas that will get you disinvited to all the best parties thereafter. Eye contact is permitted, maybe a facial expression, but anything approaching the definite meanings conveyed by words is as taboo as masturbating in front of a classroom of kindergartners, or taking a shit on the floor in the produce section of the supermarket. Most people steer completely clear of the danger area by getting super stoned and looking at the lava lamp while they get off on the way the music has colors that light up the walls with sheets of purple that have paisley patterns moving around.
Unless a person of exceptional interest walks in, in which case the paisley fades away and thoughts take over about arranging face time afterward in such a way that it won’t be perceived as having been planned. Life doesn’t slow down, not for death or paisley.
The time after the “service”, if you can call it that, will be as free-form as ever, ranging from drunken brawls and fornication in planted ferns, to prim, pasty Protestants sipping urn-made industrial coffee and munching potluck dishes up and down tables lined up under cool-white fluorescent lights in a basement reception area. Or sex orgies: isn’t that what they do when “swingers” die?
I should drop in on a few funerals, see if that’s how they’re doing them now. Take a few minutes to look up the dude or dudette on Facebook, memorize some major facts from the profile, and if somebody asks you at the door how you know the deceased you mumble how the two of you went to school together growing up in Sikeston, Missouri. If they start in with the jibber-jabber you can always bail, but if there are any cool ones like I’m talking about it would be terrible to miss them. Especially if they turn into drunken brawls leading to fern fornication or swinger orgies. The coffee and hot dishes and fluorescent lights, you can leave me out of that one.
