Existence is nothing more than a collection of days, and days always end. The sinking sun cares nothing for you or your feelings, and it remains as indifferent when it returns again tomorrow, with or without you. Time passes. To be alive is to engage in an endless mortgaging of your very life, a series of bad deals and tough breaks, interspersed intermittently with brief flashes of hope that just might be enough to give you the willpower to continue living for a little longer. Happiness is a myth your parents gave you as a child so you could slide into adulthood believing the succession of days will eventually become easier, or at least a little less painful, but by the time you realize it was all a lie, you’re already in too deep to do anything but continue living. Infinite darkness awaits us all, and there’s that pesky sun, still rising and falling in your absence. It’s not simply that you aren’t the center of the universe, it’s that there is no center to begin with. There never has been a center. Good, bad, it all concludes with a pile of dirt, until every accomplishment and every failure become more of a distant memory, until it’s like nothing ever happened at all. Everything comes to an end. Even “Jeff Koons: A Retrospective” comes to an end.
The Whitney Museum will stay open for 36 hours, from 11 a.m. October 18 through 11 p.m. October 19, to celebrate the closing of “Jeff Koons: A Retrospective.” To say goodbye to “Jeff Koons: A Retrospective” is to stare directly into the mouth of death and spit. How will you make it through 36 hours of straight-up immersing yourself in the work of Jeff Koons? It’s a Koons Endurance Test! Bring snacks! The New York Times reports that Koons “may make an appearance in the dead of night.” Of course he will. It’s a widely known fact that Koons has only ever appeared in the dead of night, quietly fixing the city’s problems before disappearing once more into the shadows. Like Batman. No, reader. Like Koons.