For as long as we have recorded history, one of humanity’s great projects has been to seek some form of immortality. Religions are oriented toward life eternal and resurrection. Conquerors haven taken to the field in search of a name that would outlive their bodies. Legends speak of wellsprings of everlasting life.

This pull toward immortality seems no less powerful than any of the other elemental survival urges that drive us, encoded in our collective DNA.

I believe it is this pull that drives humankind to create art. Art contains bits of us that live as long as the work survives, which might be long after we’re gone. There are cave paintings that are 32,000 years old. Who knows how old some of the stories we tell are? Maybe it was the first humans who created the archetypes that appear in our stories today.

If I’m being honest, this drive to create something that will outlive me is at the bottom of why I write. I want to make something beautiful that will echo after I’m gone. One of my favorite writers, Jim Harrison, died recently. He once said “death steals everything but our stories.”

I write to make things death can’t steal.

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