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Mar. 12th, 2022 01:02 pmare "last words" a real thing?
which is to say: obviously people die and if you have spoken at all some words must be your last. in that sense obviously last words are a real thing. but the phenomenon when you quote someone's last words and they're deeply meaningful or darkly ironic or whatever... are any of those real, or is it just one more variation in the game where you make up some phrase and attribute it to a famous person, where the act of dying gives them extra meaning? I mean, obviously most of them are fake, that's just how these things are, but how most is most?
Famous quotes are often made up but sometimes real, and some of those are easy to verify because they were written down in a book, or said at a speech where lots of people were present, or recorded on television, etc. But people who are dying are not writing down their words, and usually dying is a very private affair, with rarely more than a few people there. Which leads to the question of, like, even if we have some last words as recorded by a doctor or close friend or whatever who was actually there, do we trust them? or should we expect them to have, y'know, made something up that sounded nice because the real last words were "pass me that pillow" or incoherent babbling from pain or whatever.
which is to say: obviously people die and if you have spoken at all some words must be your last. in that sense obviously last words are a real thing. but the phenomenon when you quote someone's last words and they're deeply meaningful or darkly ironic or whatever... are any of those real, or is it just one more variation in the game where you make up some phrase and attribute it to a famous person, where the act of dying gives them extra meaning? I mean, obviously most of them are fake, that's just how these things are, but how most is most?
Famous quotes are often made up but sometimes real, and some of those are easy to verify because they were written down in a book, or said at a speech where lots of people were present, or recorded on television, etc. But people who are dying are not writing down their words, and usually dying is a very private affair, with rarely more than a few people there. Which leads to the question of, like, even if we have some last words as recorded by a doctor or close friend or whatever who was actually there, do we trust them? or should we expect them to have, y'know, made something up that sounded nice because the real last words were "pass me that pillow" or incoherent babbling from pain or whatever.
