#art of dying

[shirtlesssammy]

The Winchesters 1x06 // Art of Dying

#spnwin #spnwinedit #the winchesters #spn #spnwin spoilers #mary winchester #carlos cervantez #spnwin 1x06 #art of dying #the winchesters season 1

[thebeautyofthewinchesters]

1x06 Art Of Dying

#1x06 #art of dying #the winchesters #thebeautyofthewinchesters #the winchesters aesthetic #john winchester #mary campbell #latika dar #carlos cervantez #lata dar #the core four #Tracy gellar #season 1

[blackswaneuroparedux]

τῷ ὄντι ἄρα, ἔφη, ὦ Σιμμία, οἱ ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφοῦντες ἀποθνῄσκειν μελετῶσι

- Plato

In truth, those who practice philosophy correctly practice dying.

#platon #greek #classical #quote #philosophy #statue #ancient greece #philosopher #socrates #dying #life #death #art of dying

[mrepstein]

George Harrison’s handwritten lyrics for ‘Art of Dying’

‘Art Of Dying’ is believed to have been written by George Harrison in 1966, but was not recorded until 1970.

Harrison’s original handwritten lyrics reveal mentions of Brian Epstein. In the final version, released on Harrison’s 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass, ‘Mr Epstein’ was reborn as ‘Sister Mary.’

#George Harrison #Brian Epstein #Art of Dying #All Things Must Pass

[drsilverfish]

Taking a Closer Look at 1x06 Art of Dying as Dean’s Subconscious (The Winchesters)

This episode feels like a really significant one, so I went and had a re-watch, this time specifically to take a closer look at the set-dressing (hello set-dressing narrative, my old friend).

There’s so much in there which speaks to Narrator-Dean’s subconscious and (significantly, given the episode’s title) to Dean’s own death.

The barn (a barn was, of course, the mise-en-scène of Dean’s death):

The shots of skulls (twice - one in Losy’s van, and the other in the background as Carlos sews up John’s shoulder):

The Soucouyant is a type of vampire, just like the vampires were the monsters at the scene of Dean’s death. But the Soucouyant-vampire here itself is (double?) dead. It’s only animated because it is being possessed by Mac’s vengeful spirit (layers and layers of correspondences and death and spirit symbolism). 

The claw of the Soucouyant and the bloody wound this double-dead vampire makes in John’s shoulder recall (in the way in which, in dreams, objects symbolise other objects) the cursed rebar at the scene of Dean’s own death:

Then there’s the beautiful, slow sequence of Darla’s hunter’s funeral with Judy Collin’s “Joan of Arc” (1971) (written by Leonard Cohen) playing in the background. We don’t know Darla, but the funeral is given great emotional depth. Her body is prepared, and she is wrapped in white and tied with yellow cord. The scene is shot in golden light, with long lingering sorrow. And the song, about Joan of Arc’s death, is couched in the metaphor of a marriage:

"Then fire, make your body cold, I'm going to give you mine to hold," saying this she climbed inside to be his one, to be his only bride. And deep into his fiery heart he took the dust of Joan of Arc, and high above the wedding guests he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.“

And what has Narrator-Dean already explicitly told us? He’s picking the music. 

This funeral really recalls the funeral for Castiel in SPN 13x01 Lost and Found - the way Dean prepared Castiel’s body, wrapping it in white and tying it with the torn yellow curtains. In his heart, it was a funeral for his husband; that’s what The Winchesters’ Narrator-Dean’s song choice here suggests (as if we didn’t already know, Dean):

And oh look, there is a freaking (Soucouyant) hand-print on the barn door to the right of Tracy!

Which of course recalls the significance of Castiel’s own death hand-print on Dean in SPN 15x18 Despair:

And in this episode, Losy is wearing a necklace that says “Love” in 1960s lettering (recalling Cas’ dying “I love you” confession to Dean). But (hello wish-fulfillment for Dean’s subconscious) Carlos manages to get a date with his crush, Anton, (not a funeral):

And is that a statue of Michael and Lucifer locked in combat on the left there by the window?!?! Why, yes, yes it is, Dean’s subconscious:

There’s an Ankh symbol on the chest behind John in the post-possession talk he has with Mary. The Ankh is the Egyptian hieroglyph known as the “key of life” which had enormous significance for the passage of the soul after death to eternal afterlife:

There is also a triquetra symbol in Tracy’s house. The triquetra is a Celtic symbol which is sometimes understood to symbolise the cycle of birth, death and rebirth:

These symbols of life after death, and of life, death and rebirth, fit with my earlier 1x06 meta musing on Narrator-Dean as being in the liminal state between dying and rebirth (known as the Bardo in Tibetan Buddhism).  

All of which is to say, that one way we can read The Winchesters is as a dream-like sequence where God-Narrator Dean re-mixes things of deep emotional significance to him. And this episode, read that way, seems to be a re-mix in particular of the scene of Dean’s own death in 15x20, and his painful experiences of Castiel’s deaths in 13x01 and 15x18.

NB: This reading does not promise a Dean/ Cas reunion - this level of The Winchesters’ narrative is subtextual (no surprises there - hello subtext my old friend) and will probably remain there.  

But isn’t it heartbreaking and beautiful?

#Supernatural #The Winchesters #SPNWin 1x06 #The Winchesters meta #Art of Dying #Destiel #Holy Ghost Narrator Dean #Dean in the Bardo #Set dressing narrative #Ouroboros narrative

[memories-beneath-the-skin]

Art of Dying - Best I Can

#art of dying #My music #Youtube

[whispersofthepurplevalley]

Every time I talk about dying, I make a lot of people upset. Some even try to teach me how to live. But, if you don't know how to accept death, how would you accept life truly? Why is everyone so afraid of dying? Death decays a body, not a soul. It's like one is changing clothes to board a new train for a new journey? Why is it so hard to let the natural happen? Since when was love all about keeping? Wasn't it always free?

-Sabina Yesmin

#aesthetic #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #writeblr #writers on tumblr #my words #poem #my writing #quotes #positivity #death of a loved one #healing from grief #dark academia aesthetics #art of dying

[harrisonarchive]

"Art Of Dying" (Harrison) - All Things Must Pass

“Some of them I wrote about three years ago and I kept them hidden because I reckoned they were too far out. One was called ‘The Art of Dying’. But I’m going to record it.” - George Harrison, FLIP, February 1970

“The Art Of Dying. Everybody is worried about dying, but the cause of death (which most can’t figure out unless they are diseased) is birth, so if you don’t want to die you don’t get born! So, the ‘art of dying‘ is when somebody can consciously leave the body at death, as opposed to falling down dying without knowing what’s going on. […] When you’re born, your life (past Karma) is like a piece of string with knots in it and you’ve got to try, before you died, to undo all the knots: but you tie another twenty trying to get one undone. […] You have to practice all your life as you are likely to be in great pain as you are leaving your body — which could be at any moment. I mean I don’t want to be lying there as I’m dying thinking, ‘Oh shit, I forgot to put the cat out,’ or, ‘I didn’t get a Rolls-Royce,’ because then you may have to come right back just to do those things, and then you have got more knots on your piece of string.” - George Harrison, I Me Mine

“Well, spiritual exercises are one thing but, says Dhani, his father’s faith held, from the 1998 cancer diagnosis until the end: ‘He never flinched. He never felt sorry for himself. He never lost his sense of humor. He wasn’t afraid of death, his own mortality, although he was very aware of it. He wasn’t even attached to his body, if you know what I mean. We’d be in the kitchen and he’d say, “Dhan, you know we are not these bodies, don’t you?” ‘And that carried over to the final stage where you have to lose your loved ones. As everyone in the world has to. But the more prepared you are the better. It’s like training for the Olympics. That’s what he did mentally his whole life ... and he pulled it off, happily and in the most exemplary way you ever could.’” - The Times, November 2002 (x)

#George Harrison #quote #quotes by George #quotes about George #Harrison songwriting #Harrisongs #Art Of Dying #All Things Must Pass #Harrison spirituality #George and Dhani #1966 #1970 #fits queue like a glove

[samanddeanwerehere]

The Winchesters 1x06 Art of Dying

Then

Now

Then

Now

Then

Now

1x06 Art of Dying Locations Map

#spnlocations #winchesterslocations #the winchesters #supernatural #tw 1x06 #art of dying #new orleans

[shirtlesssammy]

The Winchesters 1x06: Art of Dying

Elk Falls, Kansas

A woman runs through a dark forest. She is being pursued by something but no matter how many times she looks backwards, she doesn’t see it. She does trip though and hurts her ankle. She staggers into the nearest building. A barn with flickering lights. Littlebabyjesusidonothaveitinmewhatishappening

Well, as women are wont to do on this show, she ends up on the ceiling with blood pouring all over the ground beneath her. 

“Hunting has a way of changing a person. After a while, right, wrong, good, evil, they all start to seem the same. And then it makes you start to wonder. Who’s really the monster here –them, or me?” 

Lata takes over the mantle of being the Dean mirror this week. She is meditating (seriously, she’s the Dean mirror this week), but is interrupted by John and Carlos fighting about what their next step is. John’s intensity is enough for both Lata and Carlos to suggest he seek help for his anger. Mary pops up and gets a call from an old friend/quasi-aunt. 

The gang hits the road to find Tracy Gellar, an old friend of Mary’s mom. She’s retired, so it was a shock that she found Darla, an old hunter buddy, in her barn. Apparently there’s a werewolf on the loose. 

They meet up with Tracy and inspect the body. John and Mary discuss getting out of the life. Carlos finds a claw! Lata doesn’t think they’re dealing with a werewolf after all. 

*Hunter Funeral Alert*

After the funeral, the gang sits around trying to find more information on the claw. John ponders if maybe it’s another unicorn monster the Akrida summoned to Lawrence. Mary and Lata point out that even if that’s true and they’re able capture it and use it to lure the Akrida to them, they don’t know how to kill the Akrida. John gets testy. Lata has someone that can help so she and Carlos head out to meet him. On the road, Lata voices her fears that she’s not much of a hunter and she might be a liability for them. 

They get to their destination, which turns out to be a taxidermy shop (well, that’s just the front). Carlos is not impressed, until he sees Lata’s friend, Anton.

Back at the house, Mary and Tracy talk. Mary fills her in on her father, her missing mother, their whole messy marriage. Tracy tells Mary that there’s always going to be a monster. She needs to start “looking out for number one.” Mary asks Tracy if she regrets leaving the life. Nope. 

Anton tries some small talk with Carlos, but our resident disaster bisexual is more of a disaster than usual. He’s all tongue-tied and flustered. And it’s all good because Anton figured out the claw! It’s a soucouyant! A vampire witch! Tracy is overwhelmed by the news. Her last hunt was a soucouyant. 

She and a group of other hunters killed off all but one, but then Mac, another hunter, and that last soucouyant died in a cave-in. Or so she thought. 

Just then the vampire ghost busts through the front door. 

She has fire hands! John uses a fire extinguisher as his weapon of choice, and props, dude. He also takes after the monster before Mary can grab her machete, but she soon catches up to him whaling on the thing. It almost gets the upper hand on him before Mary chops off her arm. The monster darts off into the woods. 

Back at the clubhouse, Carlos stitches John back up while thinking of Anton the whole time. Tracy thinks that the soucouyant is picking off all her hunter buds and now is going after her. 

The stitches are barely tied off in John’s shoulder before he’s bouncing up and ready to kill. Mary needs to take things down a bit. They need to think. Lata thinks there’s some weird things going on with the situation. John bolts out of the room in full dick mode. 

Outside, John angrily hits a punching bag while Mary tries to get him to open up. She brings up the incident with Mars Neto. John brings up Darla’s cremation. He refuses to do the same for Mary, so that means he’s gotta work EXTRA hard and TWICE as emotionally to make sure she survives. Mary calls him on that pile of bull - Millie told her about his tendency to race headlong into danger. 

Lata interrupts - she needs to show them their discovery. At the autopsy table, Lata shows Mary, Carlos, and Tracy the arm. She tells them that the arm was already dead. Like, MEGA dead. The soucouyant was possessed by a g-g-g-ghost! Tracy falls back at the words “vengeful spirit” and we dig to the heart of the matter. Tracy tells them that she and the rest of her now-dead hunting team killed their old partner Mac - and not accidentally.

Tracy fills in the gaps. Mac had a difficult childhood and became a hunter to try to deal with his pain. When hunting didn’t fill the gaps in his soul, he glommed onto dark magic. The pain didn’t go away, but he got more dangerous instead. The soucouyant hunt was the last straw. Mac was violent and paranoid, and the rest of the hunting team decided to take him out. When he went into the cave after the monster, they blew it in with C-4. Tracy insists that they didn’t have a choice. “Violence is always a choice,” Lata interjects. YAAAS. The Scooby gang starts to draw parallels between Mac and John, when Mary realizes something. John isn’t there! 

Cut to John, stalking into Tracy’s barn on his own. (Can’t stop hunting, full of rage.) The soucouyant, or rather, the haunted soucouyant, gets the jump on him. The ghost zips out of the monster and into John. The monster’s body conveniently dissolves into dust. 

The team arrives a LITTLE bit too late. John stands ominously in the barn and when he turns around, ghosty mist swirls in his eyes. Mac uses his ghost mojo to slam shut the barn doors and chuck Carlos across the barn. He smirks at Tracy, hurls Mary out of his way, and then starts to choke Tracy against a barn post. Mary intervenes and they fight. Mary is desperate to avoid hurting John but the Mac-infected John isn’t holding back at all. 

“All I’ve ever known are clenched fists,” Mac muses as he starts to beat Mary down. “There is nothing you can do to me that I haven’t already survived.” Tracy moves in with her shotgun trained on John. Mary pleads for John’s life, but Tracy won’t back down. 

In the end, it’s Lata who makes the fateful move. She throws herself between the shotgun and John. “More violence isn’t the answer. Not when you’ve spent a lifetime with it. When it’s touched everything you ever had.” She confesses that her father was a soldier in the India-Pakistan war (presumably?) and when he came back, he was full of rage and violence - like the war “infected” him. She used to try to hide from him, but eventually she grew angry. She had a deep well of anger but one day she hurt someone. That’s when she chose peace. 

Mac tells Lata that he chose his team, but they gave up on him and betrayed him. Tracy confesses that she was scared. She tells him that she’s sorry. “It’s not too late, Mac,” Lata tells him. “You can still break the cycle.” After a long moment, Mac releases Mary, and then ditches the weapon, and finally, ditches John. Mac leaves, and John collapses (alive but unconscious) onto the barn door. 

Afterward, they load up the still passed-out John in the back of the van. Tracy tells Mary that she’s going to take over Darla’s last werewolf case. It’s her kind of penance. Mary listens to this bleakly and wonders if the lesson is that there is no escape from hunting. “It’s not that you can’t escape the life, Cricket,” Tracy tells her. “You just can’t escape the decisions you make in that life.” Tracy still believes that Mary can leave hunting, and do it the right way (not soaked in regrets). 

At the lab, Carlos sadly moves the soucouyant’s arm to the blast furnace. He’s obsessed with the last thing Anton touched in the lab! Lata’s amused, and Carlos turns her attention on its head. He tells her that he’s proud of what she did. She isn’t a hunter like Mary, John, or himself. She helped Mac instead and that’s (to put words in his mouth) extraordinary. (Me: YES! YES! That’s what I’ve been saying!!!!!! For fifteen seasons!)

Lata rewards that bit of touching attention by pulling out a little card for Carlos. It’s from Anton! OooOOOOoooo! He asks Carlos on a DATE! Carlos and Lata run off to go have a clothing makeover montage (sadly, off camera). 

John wakes up in the Clubhouse. Mary greets him with “Morning, sunshine” which caused a minor Tumblr explosion this week. John brings it back to the serious place. He tells her that he struggled with anger his whole life, and the Neto fight dredged it up in a way he wasn’t prepared to deal with. He’s been using hunting as an excuse - he doesn’t know how to stop it.

Mary tells him that she wants to leave hunting but she won’t do it at John’s expense either. 

Later, John interrupts while Lata is meditating. He thanks her for her intervention and then asks her for help to discover how to live without anger and violence. She tells him that she started with mediation, trying to keep herself in positive mental loops. He asks her for help and she starts to walk him through meditation. I honestly do not know how this fits in with future!John. If the mysterious letter-bearer was from the future, trying to get John involved in the Akrida hunt by getting him involved in the “family business,” then how do these attempts at self-betterment affect future!John (and more importantly, his children)? If canon is…canon…then it’s either amnesia (boring) or a tangled tragedy of lies (interesting, but sad). Yes?

Carlos and Mary burst in, interrupting meditation YET AGAIN. There’s no time for apologies! They haul out the map. They’ve got the Akrida pinned down! They found the radio tower.

__

Quotes Leads to Hate, and Hate Leads to Suffering:

Mellow out, amor

So I embellished for dramatic effect. Are we really gonna act surprised by that now?

She thought all of this was past and now it’s splattered all over her walls

I will not be the person to wrap you in a white cloth, put a knife in your hand, and send you off in a blaze of glory

Violence is always a choice

I’m sorry. Tall, dark, and angry can’t come to the phone right now

Hunting sure knows how to make a gal question her morals

Can a girl get ANY zen around here?

__

 Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spnwin #spnwin spoilers #spnwin recap #the winchesters #spn #mary campbell #john winchester #carlos cervantez #latika desai #the winchesters season 1 #spnwin 1x06 #art of dying

[thebeautyofthewinchesters]

1x06 Art Of Dying

#1x06 #art of dying #the winchesters #thebeautyofthewinchesters #the winchesters aesthetic #john winchester #mary campbell #carlos cervantez #season 1

[incarnateirony]

CALL FOR HELP – Mary (Meg Donnelly) gets a call from an old family friend who’s looking for some help but when the team arrives, they learn that some crucial details were left out.  While Latika (Nida Khurshid) struggles with being a Hunter and questions her future with it, John’s (Drake Rodger) eagerness, and commitment to the Hunt worries Mary. Carlos (JoJo Fleites) finds himself in a situation he’s never experienced before and doesn’t know what to do with himself. Geary McLeod directed the episode written by Jess Kardos (#106).

Wayward mortal, ponder death’s key heavily/death’s key weighs heavily; but should you seek this dark art, this door is the way.

There'll come a time when all of us must leave here Then nothing sister Mary can do Will keep me here with you As nothing in this life that I've been trying Could equal or surpass the art of dying Do you believe me?

There'll come a time when all your hopes are fading When things that seemed so very plain Become an awful pain Searching for the truth among the lying And answered when you've learned the art of dying

But you're still with me But if you want it Then you must find it But when you have it There'll be no need for it

There'll come a time when most of us return here Brought back by our desire to be A perfect entity Living through a million years of crying Until you've realized the Art of Dying Do you believe me?

#art of dying #winchesters codex #occultum #art #death #1x6 #Youtube

[sweet--creature]

to be honest, my love, you could drown and I'd still drink from the very same river you took your last breath in. i don't give a damn.

~aquamarine(me)

#get over him #fuck off #fuck you #over you #dead or alive #aureate #loveislove #love notes to no one #love is dead #killing myself #kill yourselves #kill your friends #dying alone #art of dying #poem #dark acadamia aesthetic #dark academia #poems and quotes #poetry #poets on tumblr #poetscommunity #poetic #dark academism #feelingsoftheday

[drsilverfish]

The Winchesters 1x06

I can’t stop thinking about the fact Narrator-Dean, who explicitly told us he was picking the music, picked Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc” for the funeral in 1x06 Art of Dying.

Joan of Arc, the historical character, claimed to have been inspired by visions from the Archangel Michael (Dean of course having been “designed” as Michael’s vessel):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc#/media/File:Joan_of_Arc_miniature_graded.jpg 

And there’s a Michael fighting Lucifer statue in the set-dressing narrative of the episode!

This beautiful Cohen song is about a warrior who didn’t get to hold a lover before she was burned at the stake.

I mean, for anyone who felt that way about Dean’s death (and I did, in both senses, the lover part and the burning at the stake part)... 

I just have this feeling that Robbie Thompson has decided to permeate The Winchesters, in every way, including the golden light frequently used in the cinematography, with the deepest sense of nostalgia, longing and regret, yet somehow, also infused with a profound feelng of Dean’s loving sacred heart, in his role as Holy Ghost Narrator.

It took me a while to open my own heart to The Winchesters, because of the pain of the Supernatural ending, but it feels like a gift, as if Robbie is on his knees in the subtext, like Dean in Beren’s episode SPN 15x09 The Trap, praying, “I hope you can hear me, I hope you can hear me.” 

#Supernatural #The Winchesters #The Winchesters meta #SPNWin 1x06 #Art of Dying #spnwin meta #Robbie Thompson #Holy Ghost Narrator Dean #dean in the bardo

[supernatural-rewatch-3]

So I wanted to talk about the hunter funerals in Supernatural. I think I talked them before, but after the Art of Dying, I felt the need to bring it up again.

Now through Supernatural we didn’t have an abundance of hunter funerals, despite the number of people who died. And honestly the ones that hit hardest where because we loved the characters so much but not so much the scene itself. In fact the most heartbreaking funeral was was a tie between Charlie’s and Cas’. Charlie’s was because of the music and the actual set up of making the pyer. For Cas’, it was Dean physically preparing Cas’ body to be burned.

A saw a few point out how heartbreaking Darla’s funeral was, and they were right! We didn’t even really see anything with the character and watching the funeral for her, how carefully Tracy prepared the body, how she prepared the funeral was heart wrenching.

With the exception of Mary Winchester and Asa Fox, every hunter’s funeral in the series has been a small event with only a few select people involved. Honestly I liked those better then the big massive wakes we saw because they felt a lot more intimate. That they were being burned by just the people who were closest to them, and Darla’s funeral was definitely the most intimate one next to the two aforementioned funerals.

I like what the Winchesters did, because not only where we the viewers pulled in by it, so where the characters. Only Tracy and Mary knew the dead hunter. Carlos and Lata heard of her but never met and John had never even heard of her; but everyone felt that loss

#the Winchesters #art of dying #spnwin 1x06

[postercollector1975]

Transformers Dark Of The Moon The Album 2 Panel Poster

2011 Best Buy Promotional Posters

#poster collector 1975 #transformers #transformers dark of the moon #promotional posters #best buy #linkin park #paramore #my chemical romance #taking back sunday #staind #art of dying #goo goo dolls #theory of a deadman #black veil brides #skillet #mastodon