Why We Write 2

Writing is about filling a need among readers.
But sometimes writing goes beyond the market.
We write for the same reason, if there is a reason, we breathe, eat and procreate.
It is natural. It is part of life.
It is addressing an audience that is eternal.
I am suddenly struck by the idea that the writers and artists who are so dear to us as our definitions of life _ Van Gogh, T.S. Eliot, Chiyo Uno _ are dead.
How could they be dead and be so alive?
Death is so definitive and real, but why is it we cherish their works, their message, the stories of their lives as though we know them still?
When we, the lesser of us, die, we will be gone. This difference makes as little difference as death is certain.
No one writes to attain eternity in the memory of Humankind as a legacy.
We merely write to survive the day to day with all its madness, injustice and horror of the death that awaits.
We write because we live.