Mayhem

The funeral of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren today, for which he requested people observe a moment of mayhem instead of a moment of silence, makes me think of two other funerals. The first is Jim Henson’s memorial in 1990 at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine in Manhattan. The ceremony, where Henson requested no one wear black, and which culminated with a Dixieland jazz band, Harry Belafonte and the Muppets singing, and each mourner in attendance animating the wings of hundreds of multi-colored foam butterflies, had a big impact on how I think about ritual and art.

It was a tremendous leap from the low flame Catholic funeral home ordeals of my youth. Henson, with his body of work, was able to change what people felt comfortable doing and thus how they responded within a tradition. Not just anyone could request and then inspire such a reaction in a church. And yet, a decade later, a friend of my family, a printer and a thinker, who was at many of our previous low flame wakes, died, and left instructions for his own goodbye. There were no butterflies, but the words and songs in the printed program were carefully selected and one last time I got to know Dave better.

There is a guilt to pursuing creative endeavors when you love people, because you could always be spending time with them as opposed to your work. But art helps us discover who we are individually – it makes us more the self we then share with others. We mourn greater those we knew better because they made the attempt to reach out to us with something more unique than the weather report.

So for Dave, Jim and Malcolm, make a little mayhem this afternoon.

Then go be alone and make some mayhem for those who matter to you.