Death penalty – Music for Deckchairs

In our own hands

Kate Bowles April 30, 2017 3 Comments

To offer consolation is an act of generosity. Arthur Frank, The Renewal of Generosity ANZAC Day: dodging the memorialisation of war by gardening, trying to distribute worm casts without ripping handfuls of living worms to bits. I’m feeling the dirt packed under my fingernails, and suddenly hearing Thom Gunn’s poem that skids to a stop on the matter of our cellular form: when we die and fall into the earth, we become dirt, and there is no intention in this, it just is. This poem ends with…

Death penalty, Narrative practice

Enhancing life

Kate Bowles March 4, 2017 5 Comments

When a person dies, they leave behind, for those who knew them, an emptiness, a space: the space has contours and is different for each person mourned. This space with its contours is the person’s likeness and is what the artist searches for when making a living portrait. A likeness is something left behind invisibly. John Berger, ‘Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible’ It’s been hard to write, evidently. It’s March. This morning I was over on Plashing Vole’s…

Cancer, Death penalty

Never let me go

Kate Bowles July 28, 2016 3 Comments

In an interrogation, blows have only scant criminological significance. They are tacitly practiced and accepted, a normal measure employed against recalcitrant prisoners who are unwilling to confess. Jean Amery, ‘Torture’ The perverse bureaucracy of a well-mannered killing is cranking up so fast in Indonesia. Plastic chairs, fresh paint, name tags to sort out family members from spiritual advisers, coffins. Again. Executions are scheduled for tonight. Fourteen people, their families and loved ones are slowly sinking into this pit. They can’t save themselves from what…

Death penalty

What you cannot accept

Kate Bowles July 27, 2016 1 Comment

So, how can we productively guard space upon terrain where agency is constantly affronted? Sean Michael Morris, ‘The Place of Education‘, Hybrid Pedagogy July 2016 I pray you find the courage to show mercy, as one day you will no longer have the power and will be looking back at your choices and your mistakes and the decisions you have taken. Raji Sukumaran, letter to President Joko Widodo, July 2016 1 Over the last two weeks we’ve turned like sunflowers,…

Death penalty

Faith

Kate Bowles April 29, 2016 5 Comments

I think about the day a person dies, how the morning is just a morning, a meal is just a meal, a song is just a song. It’s not the last morning, or the last meal, or the last song. It’s all very ordinary, and then it’s all very over. The space between life and death is a moment. Stephanie Wittels Wachs, ‘Yahrzeit‘ 1 The internet is curled in on itself with grief, again. Someone loved and admired and puzzled over and copied and with a place…

Death penalty