This is supposed to be a space for excerpts of works in progress, but heck, I had some thoughts this weekend so I’m writing them up here. Enjoy!
It’s not a spoiler to say that the new Black Panther film (“Wakanda Forever”) engages deeply with the passing of Chadwick Boseman by engaging with the death of the character he played, King T’Challa of Wakanda. A number of grieving responses appear in the movie, and grief is a primary motivator for many of the characters.
In the mythology of the movie, the ancestors who have died are accessible to the living through a dream-state generated by a mystical rare herb, but also, we learn, simply by meditating (although the encounter in that case feels less direct than the portrayals of the dream meetings). It’s a variation on the common saying “the dead live on through us.”
One of the characters forcibly rejects this thought, saying, “But he’s not still with us. He’s dead.” And when I saw the movie this past weekend, this line made me think about how people read books.
When you read one of my books (or any book, but let’s use mine as an example), you experience ideas that I had about a world I made up, but you are also bringing your own experiences to that world. What you feel when reading a book is going to be related to but different from what everybody else feels.
I love hearing people’s thoughts on my characters, because it reveals something about them and their backgrounds. Lee and Dev (the most popular example) have had a lot of struggles in their relationship. I have heard fans tell me that they love one of the characters SO MUCH, and feel for how much aggravation the other one causes him. Sometimes Dev is blameless and Lee the agitator; sometimes Lee is trying his best and Dev is the one screwing everything up. All of those interpretations are real and valid and true. Each one is a unique experience that happens when my book meets a reader. Sometimes people discuss the books and then their experience of it is modified, becoming shared with other people, but the heart of it is still unique to every person.
That’s what happens, on a larger scale, when we meet people. Your experience with the people you’ve known is a unique part of them that remains alive as long as you do, and is different from everyone else’s experience with them—but is no less a part of them. I had one friend in college who managed to piss off most of our mutual friends with drama, to the point that they would ask me, “How can you be friends with him?” But he never behaved that way toward me. I knew what had happened with my other friends, and that was part of my experience of him, but I also knew him as a bright, funny guy who was intensely curious about people. My experience of him was unique in the world. I have seen him only a handful of times since college, but that version of him, the one created in our interactions, still exists.
If I want, I can cast my mind back and imagine what he would think of this essay. It’s not exactly talking to him in a mystical dream-world, but it’s a version of him. In the latter days of the Beatles, Paul and John were reportedly so familiar with each other that Paul would bring a new song in that he’d just written, and John would listen and say, “Oh, I like that part,” and Paul would say, “Right, that’s the part I knew you’d put in so I just did it for you.” They credited all their songs as “McCartney/Lennon” because even if only one of them had put the notes to paper, he’d done so with his memory-experience of the other alongside him. Each of them had changed the other in a way that stayed with them even when the other person was physically absent.
And that is what I think of when I hear “the dead live on through us” (and the related “nobody is truly dead until nobody alive remembers them”). We might not be able to share new experiences with them, but we can remember the old and remember the person they were. Those versions guide us and counsel us and continue to shape our experiences. It may not help the feeling of loss when a loved one disappears from our lives, but hopefully our grief at their passing can be tempered with some joy in the memories of the person they were only for us.
I would personally love to read about the legacy Volle left behind after his passing.