Ask not for whom the skull doots… it doots for thee.
– Ali Zagat

Living through the pandemic has left many of us in a fugue state: a series of Groundhog Days in lockdown, all the same, interchangeable, without boundaries that define and underline our experiences – and often with very few experiences at all.

Unwavering, unvarying; a still life.

Over the past months, I have talked with some of my friends about how the years of the pandemic are like a grey fog to me. Work, sleep, survive. All the edges are blurred, and there is so much I can’t seem to remember clearly. A colorless soup, a muddy fog. But there are some moments that stand out like photographs in my mind: clear, frozen, and scream-bright. Snapshots are seared into my memory: watching from the balcony as my child sat through a remote class in our backyard, wiping down boxes with Clorox at the lab, uncontrollably screaming in grief on my couch on one dreadful morning when it all seemed too much. There are also a few snapshots of joy: lying in bed with my daughter while we talked, holding my husband’s hand, a red bowl of rising dough, a fistful of lavender that I harvested from the yard, making Brian look at my Animal Crossing island. All of these things, lovely and horrific, are a series of still lifes in my mind, and I can clearly see that the little joys sustained me and bolstered my flagging hope when all things started to seem lost; they kept me afloat when I was overwhelmed with despair.

It was after one of these conversations that I started playing with the idea of interpreting Vanitas for the Halloween update, but rather than embrace their original bitter function, I want to celebrate the symbols of life – of LIVING – that each of them possess.

Traditionally, a Vanitas is an allegory of mortality and the worthlessness of worldly things; that’s not how I’m presenting it here. Rather, I want us all to take a look at how important the music, literature, and sensual pleasures portrayed in these pieces are. Worldly pleasures help make life – no matter how great or small – worth living, and art enriches us. No joy is trivial.

Let’s look at our mortality through a different lens: that the little joys do matter, sensuality and passion do matter, literature, music and art all matter. While we may not be able to take any of it with us when we die, we must embrace the joys of life as much as possible while we’re here. The onset of the pandemic forced me to embrace Stoicism in order to survive, and 2021 persuaded me to embrace Epicureanism in order to live.

That’s enough navel-gazing for now. Without further ado, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab presents a series of reinterpretations of Vanitas throughout history. May pleasure and joy lead your way out of the thick, grey fog of despair.

(I may have taken some liberties with the names of these pieces.)