We are all dying but that’s a bit depressing, but it’s the reality of being which begs the question of what’s it all about. And how to think and worry about it less especially in the face perhaps of our working life – maybe as an oncologist or maybe as we move into lower mobility and retirement. We are here and we will go. The rather crass mantra of what is certain – “death and taxes” – makes little impact on rising anxiety or meaning making.
Last week I led the funeral service for a 46 year old artist friend who died of prostate cancer. One of my sons is 46. This is too young. How do we make sense of this one person who has gone too soon in this time when babies are being killed in the middle east and children are starving to death in Africa? How do we remain in some way outward focussed on the marginalised sisters and brothers while the call of indulgence and entitlement continues via consumer rhetoric and inoculation?
In the previous month another artist friend died of cancer at 51 leaving behind a partner and two teenage children. Damien Kamholtz [ 46] and Cameron Eaton [51] artists, wonderful men, partners and fathers. Making sense is maybe only possible for moments caught in silence. Here is the talk I gave at Damien’s funeral last week that comes out of my own reflections on living and being as demands on life continue and while a deep desire continues to make something of my life that must be completely devoid of “power and greed and corruptible seed.”
In April, 2023 with Damien Kamholtz on my right and his eldest daughter Lilly at White Silence in Brisbane.
Photo Credit: David Kapernick
A L S O
Damien Michael Kamholtz/ Wamud
November 8, 2023
Gympie, Queensland
As we prepare for Damien’s/ Wamud’s committal, here are some words for Rachel, Lily, Jarrah and Esh, Alwyn and Bernie, Chantal and Rebecca …And for us all.
How do we make sense of living, on days like this or on any given day?
ALSO is an acronym I have been using as a kind of personal signpost in attempting to answer this question – how do I make sense of living in these times of unanswerable questions.
Art:
Art is what we are born for.
It was what Damien/Wamud was born and lived for.
We are born for seeing and dreaming.
We are born for mark making and as William Kentridge says – we must make marks because that is what it means to be human.
Finding our way as mark makers is often in the spaces between the obvious, in the bits we have left as junk – drawings left on the table, dance movements we have discarded, steel we have dropped at the dump. But sometimes it’s there that we return to and find that these discarded works have life and with some work and renovation become works that make our souls fly.
In watching Damien/Wamud work he was always looking for the spaces between the obvious along with his masterful work as a painter and draughtsman.
Art making, art conceiving, art embracing is core to being human.
The big question of course is how to make a living as an artist as a performer as a musician as a comedian, as a sculptor.
Too many – maybe all of us here – have been tempted to sell our souls and core creative selves when we haven’t earnt enough to pay the bills.
But if we can feed our hearts and intuitive seeing and nurture our hearts and souls then we will be closer to being fully human and fully alive and will find the spaces between and the path to new work from our souls. And that I think is one reason why we were so drawn to Damien/Wamud.
But I offer no miracle cure for paying the rent.
LOVE
I felt loved every time I met with Damien/Wamud. Many of you here would say the same. It is a sense of being welcomed of almost being part of him.
Love is a feeling of being embraced and valued unconditionally but it is more than a feeling.
I am still learning that love is the never ending decision to love the other, of standing in his shoes, of being present to understand a bit more, to understand what partnering and help really is. And imbedded in love is justice, kindness and humility – the core values of joyful community.
Not aggression, power and ego.
To love is to be present to the other, to the other situation and as Cornel West says love in the public arena is working for justice for the poor and marginalised and standing in solidarity. Even with our enemies. And because as humans we are one with our enemies we can begin to try and understand them by responding to them and their values with our art making in the spaces between.
SPIRITUALITY
My life has been one of inquiring into declarations of spirituality and experiences of spirituality.
I’ve come down on the side of experience because there are too many walls put around the declarations.
My spirituality includes 3 things
- Silence
- Solitude and
- Stillness.
The late Irish Poet John O’Donohue talked about these elements as being the disciplines that bring us into more exposure to and experiences of mystery, life, spirit and insight. And these are the artist’s path to being and making and the framework of White Silence.
ONENESS
When I walk or sit in silence, solitude and stillness in a space free of loud industrial noise and human chatter I begin again to find the flow of oneness with spirit and mystery and people and country. Awareness is born yet again in me. And art ideas are born there.
Today in this moment of remembering, reflection, silence and death we are one in spirit with each other and with Damien/Wamud.
The darkness of our world sometimes overwhelms:
Bob Dylan sings “…power and greed and corruptible seed, seems to be all that there is…”
But there’s another and better way, the ALSO Signpost way, Wamud’s way and as he has flown he is with us as in the words of John O’Donohue:
The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence. This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean that they are not there. Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old formto linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness. When we ourselves enterthe eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny.
Peter Breen ©2023
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