{"id":1422,"date":"2008-12-31T15:38:23","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T20:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2008-12-31T15:38:23","modified_gmt":"2008-12-31T20:38:23","slug":"for-emma-may-16-1985-dec-20-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/12\/31\/for-emma-may-16-1985-dec-20-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"For Emma (May 16, 1985 – Dec. 20, 2008)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I walk into the Plaza Jewish Memorial Chapel this afternoon, steeling myself for the premature funeral of one 23-year old Emma Bernstein\u00e2\u20ac\u201dan incredibly creative, vibrant spirit I met only twice but whose work affected me deeply. Brilliant, impish, mischievously iconoclastic, Emma had been collaborating with writer Nona Willis-Aronowitz on a blog and book called GIRLdrive<\/a>, for which I had been interviewed. Emma had taken my picture. On December 20, Emma took her life.<\/p>\n

I look around the silent chapel and something feels wrong. I ask the attendant if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in the right place. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They all left a while ago,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m three hours late.<\/p>\n

My heart sinks. Nausea swells. An organized person, how could I have misread the time like that? How could I be so off? Anger. Then, selfish despair. I realize how much I had been counting on this funeral. When my friend Courtney first emailed me the news, I had turned numb. And numb I remained. I needed to witness the sadness in others in order to feel it myself. Mourning is best done in community, and sometimes I think this is why. Catharsis. Collective unloading. Something to help transform robotic shock into something more human. Even for someone I hardly knew.<\/p>\n

I collect myself, turn on my heels, and walk back out onto Amsterdam Avenue, where thick snowflakes have begun to fall. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New Year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Eve. Broadway is bussling with people living their lives. But today is the day a 23-year old I knew is being put in the ground. If I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mourn Emma properly, communally, I pledge to go home and write something for her instead. So Emma, this is for you.<\/p>\n

Dear Emma:<\/em>
\n
\nI can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pretend to understand why you ended your life, but I do understand the impulse. I think that most feeling, thinking beings who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve experienced deep suffering, if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re honest with ourselves, can feel at least a tinge of recognition, even if we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand. I can relate to that feeling of wanting to escape, of thinking you will never feel differently than you do.\u00c2\u00a0 In March this year you wrote, <\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153All inner and outer life finds itself eternally irresolvable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d You wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153embrace doom while doom embraces you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But what I think you might have meant by that last one is something almost Buddhist, as you wrote \u00e2\u20ac\u0153don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just live for the moment, or in the moment, be<\/strong> the moment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in that same sentence too. You wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is in this beautiful misery of our condition that we must find the seeds of happiness.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wise words. And yet, tragically, not always enough.<\/em><\/p>\n

I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t claim to know much about the misery in which you ultimately found yourself. But I do know something about the beauty. You were in the middle of a beautiful, and much-needed project\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmany, I am sure, but the one I refer to is the book you were creating with Nona<\/a>. As someone who shares your interest in intergenerational dialogue among feminist thinkers, activists, artists, and on, I remain deeply moved by\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor, more accurately, informed by\u00e2\u20ac\u201dyour work.\u00c2\u00a0 For a panel at the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in March you wrote:<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153[D]ifferent generations of women artists need to choose open communications that commemorate without killing, but that recognize differences and the specificity of historical moments. An attitude adjustment is in order. Mentorship must come without passive aggression. Visible networks of friendly recognition must be initiated. There also needs to be a paradigm shift in our critical framework, so that younger women artists aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t vilified by the hands that feed them. Objectification and glamour must be re-contextualized. The way we understand influence and imitation must be revised. This time the art world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s marketable revolution and glossy politics must be cracked open from the inside and out. Let feminism be an amorphous conceptual cloud that floats over women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ideation and visual experience\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand that brings us together instead of partitions us off from one another.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wise words, and true. You spoke there of mentoring, and I have to say, through your work you mentored, and will continue to mentor, those of us older than you.<\/em><\/p>\n

And so, my friend who I barely had the chance to know, I mourn not only the loss of you but the loss of your future oeuvre\u00e2\u20ac\u201dyour photographs, your insights, your mentoring, your wisdom, your words. I refrain from drawing grand or political conclusions from your death. As Courtney rightly notes,<\/a> there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing romantic in it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tragic. It is a horrible, awful loss. May you find peace where you are. And may your friends and family\u00e2\u20ac\u201dNona, my dear friend Susan Bernstein, your parents, your brother\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmay they eventually find peace and comfort too.<\/em><\/p>\n

I will say Kaddish for you.<\/em><\/p>\n

Love,
\nDeborah<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I walk into the Plaza Jewish Memorial Chapel this afternoon, steeling myself for the premature funeral of one 23-year old Emma Bernstein\u00e2\u20ac\u201dan incredibly creative, vibrant spirit I met only twice but whose work affected me deeply. Brilliant, impish, mischievously iconoclastic, Emma had been collaborating with writer Nona Willis-Aronowitz on a blog and book called GIRLdrive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}