Under a coconut tree

Before coconut trees came into the world's consciousness through the viral lighthearted meme of Kamala Harris, they represented something vastly different from equity in education policies.

It is controversial, but being under a coconut tree, I imagine, is an ideal picturesque form of retiring.

Growing up in the Lion City, I understand. She offers far from the pastoral idyll. I dream of being under a coconut tree, regardless. I'd imagine that at some point in time, I'd turn to you, with your book against your face and ask if you'd imagined your life any differently; I think of this as my heart—under the protective influence of fear—tappers it down as if to soften the blow if things turn out horribly wrong.

After losing one of my dearest friends this past August, more hauntingly, she had just turned 28, 2 days before her passing– and having watched my father lose his own the year before, I am reminded of life's fragility and how fiercely it has to be lived.

Death is a pre-condition to life; it's around us, happening each day, every day, surveys up until it returns back to us, reaffirming its absolute supremacy. How else are we to appreciate life's other main constituents: time? Life is brief, as we often lament, but have we ever stopped to appreciate how much we have lived or even alarmingly quantified how much time we have left?

Throughout art history, portrayals of death are pervasive; some allegories impose a deafening silence, a different way of listening, while some demand expansive explanations. It is titles, for example, 'Self Portrait Facing Death' (1972) by Pablo Picasso, an interrogation of mortality. The drawing exemplifies how he, as an artist, is essentially an improviser. This might be a vague quality, but Picasso's expressive renderings are entirely ignorant of the pictorial principle, which makes his body of work so vividly imaginative.

Where Picasso interrogated, Andy Warhol glorified. Created 10 years before, 'Gold Marilyn Monroe' by Andy Warhol continues to put on display his obsession with fame, fashion, and Hollywood and, more specifically, glorifies the suicide of the starlet, the Blonde Bombshell, in her home in Brentwood. The work still sits in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

MoMa brought me to New York City in 2019. Five years later, it's a different manifestation of love, and a renewed energy to live life; we're taking that chance for the dream: under a coconut tree. See you in 19 hours.