A month of loss and revelation through death, completion and resolve. A dear loved one Danius Pilka has departed and yet, as death seems to do, he is now more present than ever in the fibre of my being. Such complex webs are woven through love, music and friendship. I am blessed to be part of a wonderful creative community who filled his room with love and music in his last week. When worlds collide… i will always cherish the moment when the “specialist” walked into his hospital room to be faced with eight musicians playing, singing and tapping on hospital equipment. The look on her face was priceless. In name, a specialist in cancer she was also a specialist in maintaining the facade that the body is a machine whose every action is preordained by the observations of science. “He is dying” she sharply told us.. ” it is a clinical process”…………………. hmmmmmmm.. It may well be a ‘clinical’ process but our responses to it are, like everything, entirely culturally constructed. How we engage with it and make sense of death is of utmost importance to how we live and understand our place in the world.

Death brings a simplicity to life. The corporeal knowledge of death enables one to more fully appreciate life in the moment .. to know that the beginnings and the ends of things are more akin, than all that goes between. More -that when focussed on the beginnings and ends of things one realizes there is nothing of substance in between. At least nothing worth getting too upset about. I guess this is why life supplies us with love. It is our way of recognising what is and isn’t us. It drives us to a sense of union while making us completely aware we are in the end completely alone. The only love which prepares us for death is that which is not attached to the mirage of another or indeed ourselves. It is beyond the constrictions of any notion we can entertain. Loving another as truly as we can, as a reflection of the love in everything including ourselves is the only love which will not tear us apart with longing. The only love which will allow us to depart the world in peace.

oh and a sneak preview of the lyrics to a new song that has been emerging this week kinda on these themes.

flawed but beautiful
aching with life
flawed but beautiful
fallen in time
fallen with you

we’re in love with eveything
imploding cells
imploding minds
we’re in love with everything
rising through
oozing out
of the constricting notions
which blind our days

and yes the photos are mine… see my flikr site for more