I want to release something when I die. When I die as an eighty year old, like I was told I will, I want it to be both preluded and followed by a release of something mythical, legendary. There is always some sort of significant tone built around a famous mind’s last piece of work. Untouchable wisdom of years, true understanding, complete vulnerability and freedom from fear can produce unseen blends of music or unequaled combinations of words that wouldn’t otherwise be created. I have documents. I have written documents, compositions, sitting on a spinning hard drive of my computer, unseen by any human eyes beside myself. Password protected so that my secrets can’t get out. So that no one will steal my brilliant images and visualizations and capitalize off of my distinct mind. I really hope to finish a piece of literature before I die. The pace I’m setting, as long as I live until eighty I should be alright.

I have given thought to my death and what will happen to these ever important pieces of literature, and how they will probably be deemed as some of the classic written works of our pathetic generation and how famous I could be when I die. How my family could just sit back and collect royalties, money pouring in from the inevitable ‘best seller’ status. Only because I was dead.
But I’ve got sixty plus years of writing ahead of me, and the only thing that will be any good to read, is the three quarters of a book that I write while sitting in a hospital bed being treated for advanced esophagus cancer and colon polyps from overexposure to capsicum. This is all leading up to that. Three or four chronicles of life in quotes that might someday end up as an advertisement on the Metro like Nietzsche, or tampered in a way to be generationally relevant like a t-shirt of Mona Lisa smoking a huge joint. That is all I ask.

I’m (still) reading ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, apparently written three months before Dostoevsky’s death. Johnny Cash’s newest album, ‘American VI: Ain’t No Grave’ was released posthumously this week and has the unique tone same as any production that surrounds the death of the creator. I plan to see ‘The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasus’, Heath Ledger’s last piece of work before suicide, and in my mind it has a certain undertone that allows it to be among the classics.

If I die, The Last Will and Testament of Nicholas Olson:

I own nothing of worth, so split that up between my brothers.
My writings. They can be found on my computer, or on a small external hard drive that is hidden under the hardwood in my room, where the floor begins to give out and rats probably pass by every other day, in a plastic bag, in a sock. Please distribute them to the people to whom they are dedicated, and then sell them as fast as possible.  I’ll tattoo the passwords for each document on the bottom of my left foot. If, when I die, my left foot is severed and missing, it is a sign that my writings should not be released.
My legacy. Can’t be distributed physically. But it can live on through the souls of children, the cynical, the unshowered, and those with chronic heartburn.

Enjoy me when I’m dead.