YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO BE HUMAN.
We make art and share meaningful stories to remind you of just that.PROJECTS
A traveling, pop up phone booth installation to talk to people who are no longer around.
What does it mean to live? What does it mean to die? A podcast exploring what it means to be human.
Connecting mother's who've lost a child and people who've lost a mom to call each other on Mother's Day.
DEATH IS NOT
A DIRTY WORD
Hi, I'm Morgan, Founder of Death Dialogue.
In 2012 I got a call from my dad saying my mom, whom I had seen just two days prior, was dead. With nothing to lose, I packed up my things and traveled the world. I was looking for an escape, but what I found was connection. In every country I visited, I found stories of people who had lost loved ones and were questioning their mortality. I returned from that trip dedicated to telling those stories, and to talking about death and dying in a world that doesn’t.![•3 of 3• only recently, after I powered forward and then burned out so terribly did I realize the crow's omen was true. But not death in the heart stops beating, loose 21 grams kind of way. This way different.⠀
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it was more simple that that. and more complicated. It was a death to my way of being. I saw in those 10 days in silence at the artist retreat — with no where to go and no where to be — how deeply I craved a pause. And when that pause came, I couldn't return to the person I was. The person who had just a few weeks earlier done shit like fly to Hawaii, then Portland, then to my dad's house, then to LA for an interview, then back to my dad's house, then to the bay area, and then back to LA for less than 24 hours, and then back to my dad's house — all within 3 weeks, without a car, and thinking it was NORMAL. I've always been a slow moving creature. I think of myself, lovingly, as a sloth. My family calls me "the bear", but somehow, I'd been living life like a roadrunner. A really tired roadrunner.⠀
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so when a friend recently asked "how has it been doing nothing" I didn't know how to respond. NOTHING? it's been far from nothing. Because this pause has taken my full strength. In a world that says go faster, hustle harder, just keep going, I chose the quiet. I chose the listening. I chose the silence. but just because I didn't have a checklist of "doing and being" for the world to keep track of, definitely didn't mean I was doing nothing.⠀
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because to me, if anything, i was doing everything. Because of the pause, I know more of who I am and what I want. Because of the pause i'm ok with silence, and not distracting myself with "i'm just so busy things". Because of the pause, I feel more confident in my art, my words, my visual expression, and my place in the world. ⠀
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because of the pause I can breathe again. Because of the pause, I feel safe to emerge.⠀
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[shot on 120mm film]](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/564bf9a5e4b0b3fd8c6c8f4c/5c9a57e5e5f7d15cea683fe0/5cae71c987d42210ed0a08eb/1554936267596/)
![•2 of 3• A week before I left for Sweden I was sitting at the kitchen table in the house I grew up in. It's markedly different now than the days when we lived there as a family of 5. They say when someone dies that they lose 21 grams, and so it's thought that a person's soul weights that much. The day my mom was killed, I think that house lost 21 grams, too. That's the only way I know how to describe it — a house that had lots of life and warmth, now totally deflated. It had kind of become a home base over my traveling years, a place to come back to when I didn't know where to go. And on that day, I found myself travel planning at a chair that looked out onto the backyard. ⠀
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I've never been super woo woo. I'd like to think of myself as woo-adjacent. I've never been to a sound healing and I've never done Ayahuasca. I don't really like yoga, but sure, I'd do 10 minutes a day of @headspace. This is all important for the next part, because as I was sitting in the chair overlooking the backyard, I saw a crow land on the basketball hoop that sat outside. I watched it quietly as it hopped around a bit. Then it turned towards me and crowed loudly a handful of times. Maybe I was in a particularly vulnerable place, but its crows reached me in places I didn't know I had, the places that maybe believed omens were real and that this was a warning. And I panicked. I texted two of my closest friends — both a few steps closer into the world of woo — "what does it mean?"⠀
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In the world of omens it's pretty clear: death.⠀
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Was it because my best friend's dad had just died? Was it a sign that I should cancel my flight? Was terrible news on my horizon? I decided to go to Europe anyway, but can you imagine my inner turmoil when there was constant turbulence for *the entire flight*. More than once I thought "fuck! i should have listened to the crow." I realize how ridiculous that sounds.⠀
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[shot on 120mm film]⠀
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![•1 of 3 • The last year felt a little like this — alive and stirring, but mostly hiding. ⠀
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around this time last year, Bessie broke. I cancelled my tour with Conversations I Wish I Had, but was determined to keep moving forward. I moved into a duffle bag, slept on people's couches, took amtrak and busses everywhere.⠀
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I cleansed all of my things, letting go of things I was holding onto for the memories they held. And then I jumped into spring with 3 back-to-back installations, then hosted A Different Kind of Mother's Day (where I connect moms who've lost a child with people who've lost a mom to chat on Mother's Day), and then spiraled into some whirlwind travel to collect stories for the podcast I was working and had been invited to an artist residency in Sweden to produce. A friend had warned month's earlier as she saw all of it start to unravel that I was going to burn out. I told her I didn't know what to cut out, so I pushed forward, duffle bag, exhaustion, and all. ⠀
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And then I burned out. I made it the artist residency, worked for 10 days and then halted — everything. I took my website down, my instagram, and stopped checking my email. I had no well from which to give.⠀
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Years prior, only a year after my mom's death, I spent Christmas in Denmark with family. My dad joined us, and in a night of drunkenness, he stumbled out of the house and towards the North Sea. I followed. He made his way towards the water as my sister and i pulled him back towards the dunes. He couldn't stand, we couldn't carry him, and we all collapsed into the soft sand as he cried "I just don't want to do this anymore".⠀
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I don't know exactly how to explain how done I was this summer, but it resembled something like that.⠀
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[shot on 120mm film]](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/564bf9a5e4b0b3fd8c6c8f4c/5c9a57e5e5f7d15cea683fe0/5cae71c987d42210ed0a08ed/1554936270568/)
