Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
Duncan and Sarah’s Wedding Ceremony
Opening
Let's all pop a squat. I'm Houston, eldest Southard of my generation and the undisputed champion of bad influence on my younger cousins and sister, the youngest of which who's chosen for me to facilitate tying the knot between these two beautiful hoosiers.
I'd like to thank everyone for showing up on Jesus's favorite day to witness the processions. Actually, that’s only true for those in the audience that acknowledge the sabbath and subscribe to christianity. For any jewish guests that would’ve been yesterday for Moses’s favorite day for the shabbat. And it would’ve been the day before that for any muslim guests for Muhamamad’s favorite day for Al-Jumah. In any case, God’s OG prophet Abraham made sure almost half the week was a good day to get married.
I'd also like to thank the wedding party for standing up here with me to watch the rest of your now-sober faces as I meander through the rest of this unorthodox ceremony. And I'd like to thank the Mellwood Art Center and it's beautiful Picasso Room for providing a nice place for us all to weather this together.
Body
Some of you might already know this, but a century ago, this hall was actually a meatpacking factory.
That's ironic if you like euphemisms.
This very room is an homage to the man who redefined art by abandoning the single viewpoint perspective in favor of one seen through geometric shapes and interlocking planes.
That'll be ironic later.
A good marriage is a form of art, but it's also a skill. Like bathing, it's recommended that you practice it daily.
Because practice is the foundational key to all success. Picasso said that about his work, but standing in this room, channeling my inner Pablo, I'm sure he meant it about marriage too. -
This is the first in a long time so many of us have been together for a happy occasion, and likely the first many of both families have met for any at all.
With these numbers, we've usually only met to mourn the death of those who would've also loved to be here today. Death is also a celebration of life, just like marriage is, maybe just with slightly less morbid overtones.
If you think about it weddings are kind of a crisis too. Like funerals without the cake. They're both the end of something and the beginning of something else. Both make us congregate and both let us fondly reminisce about who it was that brought us together.
Today that's Duncan and Sarah.
Actually, it took a crisis for me and Sarah to meet.
Me and Duncan and Tyler were going to hike to the Church of Mother Earth in Miami for an ayahuasca ceremony, good influence that I am, but March of 2020 had other plans. Instead, the world shut down and we improvised. We met in downtown Indy, hoteled in some eccentric decathlete's vacant house with our then-girlfriends and drank from massive prop martini glasses while we all got to know each other.
It was a few years before then that I'd considered Duncan my favorite person on this planet. In retrospect we weren't as close growing up as we realized we would've liked to have been, but since he's met Sarah, we've definitely made it a mission to make up for lost time. Duncan knows hard things, hard things that are good to know, and he express a desire to practice learning new hard things every day. Sarah's the same way. They challenge each other, but more than that, together, they challenge others. They listen to people. I think I love that most about them.
Though we didn't grow up the same way or in the same state, me and Duncan both grew up reading comic books, thanks in part to the massive donations from our cousin/uncle Rich.
The comic book is the superior medium of time-based art, the thoughts of the characters superimposed over their visual expressions acted out on the panels. It differs from a painting because there's a beginning and an end that relies on the viewer to finish. The comics we grew up on were these picture book life lessons meant to teach us right and wrong, or maybe it was because of escapism... but as we got older we learned the concept of right and wrong wasn't as black and white as it was on those pages.
No, that concept, like Duncan and Sarah, they're much more nuanced. Both require context, they require patience, they require empathy, and they require the ability to change and take risks. That's what makes me so proud to stand up here with them. They embody that nuance, and nuance is what’s needed to successfully navigate this ever stranger world.
They're not so easily hijacked by clickbait or polarization or the zeitgeist of the day. They're a very thoughtful pair. To each other and those around them.
As much as we all appreciate the seduction of a good story, these two have displayed a vested interest in how stories, stories like how we got here or what the meaning of life is, shouldn't solely come from what gets passed down to us, because perspective shouldn't come from a single viewpoint.
But we do still love our origin stories, and my favorite is the one of Duncan and Sarah.
They met, saw the other in themselves, got cozy, fell in love, made memories, overcame tragedy, became stronger, and have already made quite a life together. They recognize their love for each other is a state, not a trait. A fleeting thing that takes practice to keep it revolving. Because they understand that love is as gritty as it is giddy.
That's one hell of an origin story, one befitting a comic book wedding. And like loss, like love, that story's first page is long gone and its last is a long way away. We're just here at a very special nexus point.
The one that we get to solidify today. Together in an art hall dedicated to a man who thought in circles and around corners, we get to witness the union of these two in a comic book kind of way, half-listening to a monologue while fully-watching as the planes of these two perfect shapes finally interlock.
Because marriage and art go together like Duncan and Sarah. You can't get one without the other. Their origin story, as with everything else, evolves with every revolution of love they give one another. An evolutionary revolution. Or is it a revolutionary evolution. Whichever makes most sense to everyone.
--
As humans, we love to redefine stuff. We love to take something strange and package it in a way that suits us. Change is uncomfortable, so we mold it in a way that puts us at ease. The mind is built to detect and neutralize threats. Selective adaption is as selective adaptation does.
With that said, let's use the power of the revolutionary who this room is named after to redefine the art of love.
--
you're about to make promises to each other that you intend to keep.
You're going to vow to take care of each other, to stand up for one another, and find happiness in the other.
There's a simple premise to each of these promises: you're vowing to be there.
You're teaming up and saying to the other, "Every experience I’ll have, I want you to be a part of."
You fell in love by chance, but you're here today because you're making a choice.
You’re both choosing each other.
You've chosen to be with someone who enhances you, who makes you think, makes you smile. You're going to use the revolution of Picasso's most romantic shape, the circle, as a revolution of love. How we're going to do that is with these wedding bands, these symbols of love forged into a geometrical shape made by drawing a curve that always has the same distance from its center. Because that's what these two are to each other. The other's center. Each other's core. Their lovecore.
Rings
The wedding band is meant to symbolize endless love, because circles, once complete, have no beginning or end.
They’re a portal to the future. The space inside a revolving gateway to the other side, to things both known and unknown, just the way these two seem to like it.
But the rings today did have a beginning.
They were once just raw metal, harvested from the earth, forged into this geometrical shape by a craftsman, and given value according to the market. Value famously assigned by a crafty debeers advertising campaign.
That’s not the marriage of values, that’s the marriage of merchantry and social comparison. Their real value is derived in the power of this moment.
Because what you're about to promise each other is what give these bands power.
You name them as pieces of yourself that you give to the other.
To remind them that you’re always there with them.
Now, you’re about to place these bands on each other’s left ring fingers.
This tradition was passed down from the Romans, oh the romans, the romans who thought that a large vein in the ring finger - the Vena Amoris - was the strongest link to the heart. To the core which love revolves around.
So Duncan, if you’d take the ring from Tyler, and repeat after me.
“Sarah, I give you this ring.” --
“AsIgivetoyouallthatIam”
---
“And accept from you, all that you are”
You may now place your revolving gateway on Sarah's lovecore. Sarah, if you’d take the ring from Sister, and repeat after me. “Duncan, I give you this ring”
--
“AsIgivetoyouallthatIam”
---
“And accept from you, all that you are”
You may now place your revolving gateway on Duncan's lovecore.
Declaration
That's all folks. By the power vested in me by the kentucky bourbon in my belly and the American Marriage Ministries, I pronounce, and it tickles me to be the first to introduce you to, the Southards. Now kiss each other.