NTHN KWK

candy chang - before i die…

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since falling in love with her amazing ‘i wish this was…’ project, i’ve been tracking candy chang’s blog with a fervour i reserve for open-bowl burritos and new episodes of community. in its prime, ‘i wish this was…’ focused on voicing civic demand for entrepreneurship in a post-katrina new orleans— ‘before i die…’, in contrast, helps new-orleansians build a public archive for learning the ‘hopes and aspirations of people around us’. cool, nay?

while i love so many things about ‘before i die…’, my favourite aspect stems from the diversity of chang’s community responses. quests as grand as ‘to live off the grid’ and ‘to hike the appalachian trail’ are chalked above ‘teach my grandkids how to garden’. elsewhere, ‘get my wife back’ sits beside ‘meet justin bieber’. ’swim without holding my nose’, is next to ‘abandon all insecurities’ and ‘to meet someone else who wrote on this wall’.

i wonder if ‘before i die’s’ participants will think back in twenty years and remember what they wrote on this wall. do they recall how they felt, pouring themselves onto a chalkboard? was their ‘goal’ actually that important to them, after all? if not, has it change? what’s replaced the old goal, and why?