Many of you know that I have spent a fair part of the last 8 years or so making memes and images as a product of my Epicurean study. To be frank, the only reason I had (as a musician and writer) the ability to make cheap, visual designs was because of the professional subscriptions my wife had to the digital tools she required to perform her job as a graphic designer, photo editor, photographer proper, and costume designer.
For many years now, her visual art has evolved toward the genre of neo-Classicism, and she has contributed to our artistic community through portraits of friends, family, and commissioned acquaintances, as a development from her productions as a seamstress and editor. Her approach is eclectic and relies of a variety of material sources, including her own photographic library as a photographer and, as well as her imagination and mouse.
And she nearly died in April.
After years of parallel projects, and collaboration with my musical creations, she has found inspiration in the stories I have shared with her of Epicurus, and my project of providing an Epicurean alternative to Christian and Platonic expressions of art, some of the seeds of our tribe have come to fruition in her mind, and lead to the budding of Epicurean art, in the imaginative, dramatic style of oil-based neo-Classicism, through an analogue hand.
The other two project I shared were quiet experiments she explored, unbeknownst to me. This one is a proper creation in her preferred style. She has been recently inspired by my manic rants about the Epicurean rock against the Deluge of mystical confusion, and based on my recent study, I have contributed some names and narratives to her designs of our Hegemon and the historical events to which her comported.
We imagine, as Epicurus dies, bravely, willfully, boldly, having already lost hist oldest friends, Polyainos and Metrodoros, having lost his parents, and his deeply devoted brothers, and those members of his generation (who would have, proverbially, been enjoying Beatles and the Stones), while they rest were left with the generation of Leonteus' and Themistas, and Leontion, the widow of Metrodoros (who would all have been listening to Pink Floyd and Zeppelin in the name of the classical jams), and the children of his non-Epicurean friends, among his devoted disciples, and slaves (whose lives deserve greater light), including the future publisher and philosopher proper, Mys, a philosopher, teaching, and publishing in his own Right, and, as we imagine, Demetria, the alleged partner of Hermarchus, who is, otherwise, unattested in Epicurus' final two writings, thus, leading to this unique scene where Mys documents the official transition of the Garden from Epicurus' ownership, as documented by his beloved, trusty, philosophical companion, to Amynomachus, who stares, uncomfortably, not an Epicurean, but a grandson of the tradition that raised him beneath the wing of natural confidence and friendship and kindness and forgiving and empowerment, in overwhelming, youthful contemplation, as the wise Demetria, having loved Epicurus, having known him for years, living in the Garden with Hermarchus, though his attention is temporarily elsewhere, having inherited the duties of the Scholarch as the Hegemon ... we witness the Savior suffering from explicit endocrine failure (most likely, days before reaching sepsis and organ failure), an excruciating, untreatable condition that leads to certain death, which was met, fearlessly, with intention and purpose ... we notice Demetria, who looks onward, remembering the Second Kuria Doxa, that her wise friend has only ever guided her to light, herself, making peace with the shadows of the painting: death sucks. She is fighting the tears of losing a healthy part of her life that deserves immortal glory. Perhaps Timocrates sits in the perspective of the viewer of this work. Perhaps Timocrates, as was the case with the inheritors of Epicurus property, were economically bound to their daily jobs as non-Epicureans, yet devoted to the natural friendship that inspires them to honor Hermarkhos and the future ... the Garden of Epicurus is a collection of seeds, planted by faithful compatriates, who will never see them bloom, struggling through the arresting melancholy of the death of friends, fighting, spiritually, to remember of older brother's teachings, that we deserve joy, and that The Dead might bet upon memorial joy. We commemorate The Inheritance as might the Christians' "Annunciation" and "Adoration" and "Ascension".
