Mortal Chats with artist Jak Ruiz

Jak Ruiz is a Brooklyn-based artist focusing on abstract and expressionist paintings. I spoke with him as part of my Mortal Chats series, a collection of wide-ranging conversations with people of all stripes about mortality and its corollaries: dying, death, grief, and the possibility of an afterlife.

Jak and I had an interesting chat about a plethora of topics under this umbrella, including how his mortality awareness catalyzes his creativity, the significant role suicide has played in his life, and his intergalactic travel plans if there's life after death. You can see his artwork and connect with him @jakruiz_art on Instagram.

And, as usual, I share my daily mortality mantras with you. I say both to myself every morning, usually during the ice cold shower I take shortly after getting out of bed to help wake my groggy ass up and start the day off right. I hope they help you as much as they help me.

Some things and people mentioned in this episode:

• Agnosticism/atheism, Catholicism, hell
  
• Alternate Endings: Six New Ways To Die In America documentary (HBO)
  
• Andre the Giant, Beetlejuice
• Consciousness
• Creativity
• Cremation, green burial
• Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY; Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France
• Jean-Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness; No Exit
• Kali, the Hindu goddess of death
• Physician-assisted dying, suicide

Connect

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Thanks for listening. Until next time, stay mortality minded.

(Music: Brass Beat by Blake © 2011 licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)