Get Away From Your Life. Get Away From Your Shadow on the Wall.
Why does the period before birth barely interest us, whereas the period after death excites us enormously? Most people anticipate it by arranging to live as though they are already dead. They anticipate their own disappearance by making themselves increasingly transparent, by making an inventory of the objects which will survive them. Not one of these must move. Everything must be in place for the final photograph.
People are obsessed with their posthumous tranquility rather than with their happiness in this world to a degree that is quite insane. Deploying all their resources to wipe themselves out of their own lives right now. Setting up the backdrop to their absence in order to test out, while still alive, the fact of no longer being there. Carrying out all the daily tasks of a peaceful death. Doubtless, this is because they do not believe in immortality and hope only for a peaceful experience of death.
Get away from your life. Get away from your shadow on the wall.
~Jean Baudrillard
Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1990-1995 ~ (Tr. Emily Agar) ~ London : Verso, 1997 / pg 90
