What connects Wagner’s operas, a stock trader in Manhattan, ecological militias in the Indonesian forests, a Hollywood party, and the funeral of a Jewish writer in Queens?
Forever – which encompasses two linked novellas, Lord of the Forest and What Lies Beyond – offers an answer both simple and boundless: life. Not simply singular life, but natural life, the multifarious life forms that populate, shape and transform every element of our planet beyond the borders of our comprehension and of our morals.
Human societies deny equal rights to life forms different from their own. However, as with us humans, every organism only seeks the opportunity to live to the best of its abilities. Then other questions become compelling. And as in Gauguin’s famous painting, Forever asks us, with urgency: where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?