Someone Will Remember Us

As a writer and artist beyond the middle of life, I find myself asking: does it matter if I'm remembered?

Ernst Stückelberg, Sappho

“Someone, I tell you,

will remember us,

even in another time.”

Sappho, fragment 147 (trans. Anne Carson, If Not, Winter, 2002)

As you may know, the words above belong to a famous 7th-century BC poet who is among the earliest identified female voices in history.

Sappho wasn’t an average woman and certainly not a conventional poet. First of all, she wrote during a time when typical women didn't write. Secondly, she didn’t write "normally." Instead, she chose to draw her perspective from the first person “I,” while male poets of her time chose to write as conduits to the gods. By writing from her own emotional perspective, Sappho took great risks. She validated her womanhood, her senses, her dreams, her independence— and her basic instincts.

But there’s more. Sappho conveyed the notion that her words would not simply transcend time; they’d flow to the consciousness of others, throughout time.

And they did. They found me. Hopefully, and wonderfully, they connected to you, too.

Here’s another Sappho fragment translated by Anne Carson:

“…fire is racing under skin and in eyes no sight and drumming fills ears…”

Sappho understood that emotions, perceptions, and love— they live in sensory experiences like fires beneath the surface. These elements of us, she implied, carry transcendental qualities that must be expressed from the "I", the first person. Bolder still, she put words to feelings, words that literally live on this page after having wandered for thousands of years.

To me, language and art and all we create— it burns from within, but only for a short time. The act of acknowledging the fire within, this is a sort of second creation, it is the art, the life that flows from us and toward a life eternal.

Like Sappho, then, I want to write, paint, and draw from the fires within, releasing the remains of what I perceive into rivers that stream with the color and texture, with the life and pain and wonder I perceive. I’ll study the past and observe the present, connecting them where possible, trusting something meaningful will flow together, somehow even if it doesn't contain my signature.

Though Sappho seemed to imply that to be remembered matters most, I would argue that even if no fragment of my work (or life) is seen or remembered, or liked, or sold, or loved by any measure I might apply— these acts of creating will carry on, tying me to you and us to one another, to Sappho, to all life held in an ocean we can hardly comprehend.

What river runs in you? Is it a job? A poem? A line, image or object? Please share in the comments below.

If you’d like to keep following, exploring, and maybe also contributing, please subscribe for more discoveries.