One more time with feeling

Warning, this is a post about death and grief and creation

LET'S GO DANCING I DO BELIEVE WE"RE ONLY PASSING THROUGH

I wrote the above scrawlings in January when my Grandma died. I didn't even like Ben Howard but this song was helpful for feeling the sadness. I didn't think i'd show anyone, but then I remembered - what's the point in making art and creating things and having something to say if it's not about something universal and personal and real. Which death and grief and sadness is.

So I scanned it this morning after watching a film last night.

I watched Tracks last night, a film about the true story of Robyn Davidson walking 2000 miles from Central Australia to the West Coast.

It was extremely intense and personally emotional for me, least of all because a friend of mine died in the Outback and we had spent some of my best days out there.

I didn’t think making notes about it would work as it was too powerful a viewing experience to put into words, but I had a go.

The Outback became a lifespan – a temporal emotion.

She walked in the dust bath, swarming with a hot lack of civilisation and wild mercy.

Everything she had lost appeared and accompanied her.

Her dead mother. Her old dead dog.

When Diggity swallowed poison she had to shoot him. She had to shoot a charging bull camel. Nature and its autonomous occurrences took no prisoners of her feelings.

When she reached the Indian Ocean, it was as though she was meeting the salvation of death; a rent in the dust of earth living.

She was Grandma entering the water.

Grandpa was waiting for all the while.