Immortalizing the Mortal 2022
The Eye of the Beholder
In Collaboration with the Maude Abbott Medical Museum
Click here to check it out!
It's for you
Jakob Jubert, MDCM '24
He mouths to you as he crushes his cigarette,
Not caring that the ashes seek refuge in his wrinkled cuff folds.
Hello
Did someone die?
Is it another prank number?
I haven’t had a call since last Thursday,
When a stranger asked about my favorite way to forget someone.
Can I come in
I don’t recognize the voice
Sounds like mud-water running through
A wind tunnel made of septic bones
Pleading not to be left alone.
I want to give back your hands
The ones I have right now are perfectly fine
I try to forget about my legs as much as possible,
Engraved with everything I could not keep.
Extremities aren’t my forte
Still working through my traumatophobia—
That there’s no beauty to the color of disease.
I don’t hear you anymore
I haven’t said anything yet,
Unless they can hear my thoughts drowning themselves
Under the weight of massacred elks
Floating as rotten driftwood never to be at peace.
Don’t call here again
My eyes are sweating
Can everyone see my bleeding, punctured wings
My bloodless fingers prevent me from making calls
The phone booth not a museum, but my mausoleum.
Leave me alone
I try to make a sound, any sound
Against the collapsible straw that is my throat.
All my effort—my bursting veins, my clenched teeth,
My herniated insides—
Lead me to make a sound that approximates
A banshee screaming the disconnect tone.
Through our eyes, we perceive Beauty and Ugliness. However, like an old star starting to implode to leave room for a newly settling one, the definition of Beauty is unstable and constantly evolving. In an ocean of stars, the one that shines the brightest for someone might not be the same as somebody else because depending on where they are, it will never appear the same. Thus, Beauty is intangible and hard to define but still, humans always want to find an answer and definition. Is beauty supposed to be perfection? Having perfect symmetry and nothing out of place like the famous French formal gardens. Or on the other hand, can beauty be imperfection? A flourishing nature full of surprise and wonder seen in the English gardens for instance. Both are said to be beautiful in their own ways but when it comes to a person being described as physically beautiful, suddenly, the lack of symmetry and order makes them poles apart from being called beautiful. They are nothing but said to be ugly and the constant stares and judgment from others make them realize how singular they are from this ideal. But these flaws and difference are what makes all of us who we are as individuals and once we are able to go beyond the eyes and judgment of others, stopping comparing ourselves to finally embrace who we are, we might realize that we could be the brightest shining star for someone else and most importantly, for us.
See Me Now
Clare Maguirre, SCSDC '23
Grant me now the dignity
Grant me now the dignity
You can listen if you want
Sit and listen, look away
Maybe you will hear me clearly
If you cannot see my face
And I’ll tell you not to worry
But I got dressed up today
(And I know you’ll worry anyway)
Separate the art from the artist,
Separate the woman from her words
Separate the method from the message,
Separate the seen and the heard
Celebrate the content of my character
And never let me speak
Honour me - posthumously -
Then say I’m finally free
Well, I am carved from earth and stone
And blood and water
I am someone’s favourite person,
Someone’s daughter
And I know you’re just the cashier, someone’s kid
But I saw the way you looked at me, I did
And now it’s my superego against your id
Separate the art from the artist,
Separate the woman from her words
Separate the method from the message,
Separate the seen and the heard
Celebrate the content of my character
And never let me speak
Honour me - posthumously -
Then say I’m finally free
Like it was ever up to me
It was never up to me
It was never up to me
It was never up to me
Grant me now
The dignity I’ll get when I die
Grant me now
The dignity I’ll get when I die
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
See me now,
Oh, won’t you see me now?
When I wrote this song, I began on the theme of facial disfigurement, but it quickly moved into a work about disability in general, and any kind of visible “otherness”. About where our ideas of “difference” and “ugliness” intersect, the value we place on visual aesthetic and physical appearance, and about the way we can discount people and their humanity just because their appearance is not what we expect. The idea that physical appearance is reflective of innate traits, behaviour, or personality is pervasive even today, and sometimes the response is to completely ignore physical differences in order to "see the person within". This is a noble and understandable pursuit, but I would say that physical appearance remains an important part of the way we receive and understand the world, and that "the person within" cannot exist without the outside packaging, as it were. We cannot understand the whole person unless we accept every part of them, and to do this, we have to see them exactly as they are, inside and out. In this work, I am pleading for others to understand this - to see the whole person as they are, right now. This is about disability, disfigurement, body confidence, any kind of othering visible difference, and - as songs are - whatever else you want it to be about.
à fleur de peau
Lucie Dubes, MDCM '24
à fleur de peau
de nouveau-né
à peine sorti
déjà assigné.
à fleur de peau
lisse et marbrée
frissonnant au
vent des marées.
à fleur de peau
de bouche en cœur
de baisers volés
en quelque pleurs.
à fleur de peau
de gorge serrée
d’humiliations
jamais oubliées.
à fleur de peau
d’Âne et d’antan
pas, pas un mot
papa fuyant.
à fleur de peau
d’un corps grandi
devenant étranger
et parfois ennemi.
à fleur de peau
de femme-enfant
affamée d’exister
sans ses parents.
à fleur de peau
trop exposée
au monde qui veut
tant la juger.
à fleur de peau
de ventre gonflé
de viles tentations
de culpabilité.
à fleur de peau
de paupières rougies
par les déceptions
le cœur alourdi.
à fleur de peau
pâle et privilégiée
dont seule la couleur
ouvre des possibilités.
à fleur de peau,
lisse et genrée
dont seule la valeur
change les opportunités.
à fleur de peau
d'un visage cerné
de sommeil manquant
essentiel au succès.
à fleur de peau
marquée de ces traits
que même le temps
ne pourra effacer.
à fleur de peu
vieille et fripée
usée par les maux
blessée par les faits.
à fleur de peau
enfin apaisée.
que plus jamais ces mots
ne pourront révolter.
"For this piece, I decided to focus on the skin as the face of our identity. The skin which also acts as a barrier, physiologically but also figuratively, to the rest of the world. It is the skin that encapsulates and protects us but also exposes us directly to eyesight. The skin that is for the eye to see, and the minds to judge despite what is inside. I based my poem on a French expression I quite identify with. The best translation for it that I could find is “being thin-skinned.” Hopefully this poem conveys, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, what this expression has meant to me."
This piece is about our tendency to nurture stagnant, toxic environments within ourselves when we are insecure about who we are (our personalities, our appearance, etc). It is about how this mindset can lead us to staying in metaphorical “waiting rooms”, waiting for others to determine our fate and our worth, hanging around for someone to decide whether they love us or not, and feeling empty on our own without them. Confronting these feelings is uncomfortable, and though we try to convince ourselves that the growth we’re going through is for the better, it is hard to believe. This piece is about having the hope to let go of the toxic home we have created within ourselves and find a new, brighter place at the surface, a place of self acceptance. It is about believing that whatever happens to us, ultimately, it is for the better.