“UNDeath” EXPLAINED
Getting married is saying I will love you until you die…or I die…
or we both die.
#Romeo+Juliet
#Diego+Frida
#Ben+Leslie
#Johnny+June
#Shah+Mumtaz
#Wesley+Buttercup
Many of our ancestors expected the institution of marriage to serve two core functions: to consolidate property, and to produce children. And we aren't planning on doing much of either. So why are we getting married? “True wuvv?" Yes, “True love!” you might say, to which the response would be "fair enough." But you don't need marriage to celebrate true love. So what do we think marriage adds?
What marriage adds to love is…DEATH.
Getting married is saying I will love you until you die, or I die, or we both die. It is saying that in spite of all the ways this could, can, + will go wrong, that you will be together — and still in love -- in, at, + beyond the end. It is contradictory in that it requires commitment to one another forever, in full knowledge that our time on earth is all too short.
But can we finite humans express INFINITE love?
One perspective says yes, + simply builds the afterlife into the concept of marriage. On this view, the marriage union supposedly binds people even after they die. That means that marriage commits you to love up to + including death, + whatever comes after. So choose your partner well! You'll be kicking around eternity with them for the next...WELL...eternity.
Other perspectives say no, + deny that anything mystical is going on. Much like your right to drive, your ability to vote, + your responsibility to pay taxes, whatever union marriage expresses is dissolved by death, the great annihilator. Many people’s wedding vows refer to this idea directly: “til death do us part.”
So are you committing ‘til death’…or TIL AFTER DEATH?
Is this a marriage of infinite souls or finite bodies? Is it a legal contract that expires upon your expiring or is it something that transcends death, time, and space? Honestly, we don't know. Hell, we're not even sure if other, smarter humans know. We're with the great American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) when he describes the human position in the cosmos: "We live on a placid isle of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, + it was not meant that we should voyage far."
Yet at the same time horror stories provide us with another way of thinking about finite beings expressing infinite love. Horror thrives in the liminal space between life + death. Frankenstein's monster, the Monkey's Paw, Pinhead, Pennywise, Freddy Krueger-- these are beings anchored both to the world of flesh + what is beyond flesh. They are not alive, yet they wrack the world of the living. They are not dead, yet they revel in death + its trappings. Like infinite love expressed by finite beings, they are an impossibility, + yet they nevertheless exist.
That’s why we think the best symbol of for our marriage is not the life of the immortal soul nor the death of the finite human, but the UNDEATH of the zombie. Our marriage shall be one of the living + dead, sewn together + re-animated by a Promethean hubris detested by the gods! It shall live! It shall...create infinite love on a finite plane! MUAA-HA-HA-HAHAHAA!
We found ZOMBODIE to love
And so, in love + gratitude, we would like to welcome you all to our wedding. It is with the full recognition of the ways in which you all make our lives worth living, + of the joys, sorrows, humors, + horrors of life, death, + love, that we sincerely say to you: we will eat YOUR BRAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNSSSSSSSS!!!!!