Reflections from February 2025 Beyond the Clock with Nancy X. Valentine
Long, Happy Life
Beyond the Clock Resident Artist Reflection, Written by Eliza Blue
Two years ago almost exactly I started getting sick and then sicker. I’d spent most of my life relatively healthy. I had no tools to deal with or understand what was happening, and it was terrifying. Eventually my symptoms reached something like a plateau, and I began to claw my way back to a “new normal.” Part of that new normal was dealing with the uncertainty inherent in having a finite body, something that I had been able to avoid truly embracing until illness made it impossible to ignore.
Most days I try not to dwell too much on all this, but somehow it all came flooding back as I listened to Nancy X. Valentine speak about the title of her art show, which found its origin in a blessing from her grandfather to live a “Long, Happy Life.”
“That’s what I want too,” I thought as I heard her speak the words. They felt like an exhale. It’s what most of us want, isn’t it? For ourselves and our loved ones?
Well, Nancy’s stories for Beyond the Clock provide a pretty good roadmap for what a long, happy life looks like, and though it is simple, it is not easy. Let people love you. Let yourself love them back. Familiarity breeds affinity. Capacity builds reciprocity. Nancy’s work reminds us to celebrate our diversity AND our shared humanity. Resting in that paradox is where true community flourishes.
But, for me, that phrase ‘Long, Happy Life’ also brought up something unexpected. I have spent too much of my life not letting myself want what I want. Moreover, the most intense periods of my illness revealed to me that “being scared to die,” even before getting sick, had been an animating feature of my life. And here’s the thing: Being scared to die is not the same thing as being unafraid to live–the distance between those two ideas is actually vast. But the blessing: ‘May you live a long, happy life,’ (and all the stories Nancy shared for Beyond the Clock) offer us beauty, expansiveness, and a call to embrace our wild, perfectly-imperfect incarnations. So, I’m letting myself want that–a long, happy life. And I extend the blessing to you as well: May you love and be loved. May you move fully and truly. May you live a long, happy life.
First CHORUS:
A long happy life,
is what I will have
On the day I love myself enough
to let you love me back,
to let you love me back.
Second CHORUS:
A long happy life,
is what I will have
On the day I love myself enough
to feel you love me back,
to feel you love me back.
Eliza Blue is the 2025 Beyond the Clock Resident Artist. Eliza will be attending each Beyond the Clock event and compiling an album of songs based on the conversations, which will be released at the end of 2025. The lyrics shared above is a preview of the song to come.