By and large we'll all lead little lives.
The world has probably seen upward of 15 billion of us over the history of human kind and yet only a very small number of us will make it into the history books, usually for something we'd rather not have known by everyone. Only a very tiny fraction will ever qualify or justify any sort of lasting memorial, and yet in our own ways each of us is a whole story.
For some reason I've held onto things, not everything, I'm not a hoarder, but at each move, each purge of possessions some things have been retained for no other reason than because a little voice in the back of my head has whispered, “That'd look good in your museum.” There was never any reason to believe I would have a museum, yet the voice has spoken on select things each time.
And then it hit me. Why shouldn't I have a museum? Why should I accept the idea that just because I've never saved humanity, won a popularity contest that required me to sacrifice and compromise most of my ideals (we call those elections), or became insanely famous for my creativity, that I shouldn't have a museum and legacy?
None of those things really matter, there are many incredible lives in history that have never had a museum. Really when you get right down to it such a thing is the by-product of an idea, a desire, and some money.
So I began to work out what my memorial museum would look like, what it would contain and how it would tell my story.
Originally the idea that instead of a funeral my estate would do a pop-up store style exhibit, a short-term retail lease that would be my museum, a Gary-Seum, because I've been to enough Presidential Museums to realize they're more about the times the person existed in, and how they influenced those around them, than anything else.
So I began to write out the scope of this Museum for a book (which will be available upon my death on my e-book store) and rather than a funeral I'd rather a pop-up museum. It will be temporary, maybe just a few months depending on the availability and costs of a short-term retail lease, but that's okay, because lets face it, no matter how long anything lasts everything is temporary!
In it's way it will be a monument to an extraordinary life, a small life, my life, and rather than rushing to where I lived when I died, to sit in a group and briefly contemplate my existence, my friends can leisurely witness the physical sum of my existence, my influence on their life and those around me, the influence of the times on my life and theirs, and through that maybe learn something. Or maybe they'll walk away thinking, “Man, who does he think he is to have a museum! What an asshole!”
Either way, I'm good with that. Well, I'll be dead so I won't really care, will I?
