Memento mori is a Latin phrase that may be freely translated as "Remember that you are mortal," "Remember you will die," or "Remember your death". It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose, which is to remind people of their own mortality.
A showstopper, eh?
Memento Mori embraces art from the classical times to today...with some of the highlights for me being the wonderful woodcuts of skeletons and skulls engaged in all sorts of high jinx that their former selves engaged in. Others include the high victorian use of skulls, winged skeletons, the hourglass to suggest that "time's a wasting.." Wiki refers to public clocks as a venue to suggest that death is to be remembered:
Timepieces were formerly an apt reminder that your time on earth grows shorter with each passing minute. Public clocks would be decorated with mottos such as ultima forsan ("perhaps the last" [hour]) or vulnerant omnes, ultima necat ("they all wound, and the last kills"). Even today, clocks often carry the motto tempus fugit, "time flies." Old striking clocks often sported automata who would appear and strike the hour; some of the celebrated automaton clocks from Augsburg, Germany had Death striking the hour. The several computerized "death clocks" revive this old idea. Private people carried smaller reminders of their own mortality. Mary Queen of Scots owned a large watch carved in the form of a silver skull, embellished with the lines of Horace.
We are talking day of the dead, puritan paintings and gravestones,Holbein and victoriana...even the Masons and secret societies use this hook as part of their art or activities. It feels right for the now of our failing country, our dying and wounded soldiers, the crisis of man in emergencies, the daily reminders of cancer and AIDS--giving it a tongue, a language somehow makes sense to me.
I think this may be the hook for the skull book--it has real legs.
Tried to figure out the whole Lulu book deliverable with their website and still feel a bit fuzzy about the bleeds and gutters, spreads in the books or single pages>> Today I think a phone call is merited.
Need to work on holiday cards today. Count down to fabulousness.