Russell Davies

Semi-retiring
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If you're reading this, please compost me when I die

Headline shamelessly stolen from a fantastic substack post by Cass Marketos.

"Human composting works as all other composting does, although (smartly) it often happens inside specially designed facilities that are meant to accomodate the emotional experiences of the living. Bodies are prepared with biodegradable gowns. They’re laid to rest in an elegant vessel containing a mixture of alfafa, woodchips, and straw. Decomposition is allowed to happen. Some facilities will pump oxygen into the vessel to expedite decay. Others will rotate the vessel occasionally. After about two months, what remains of the body is about a cubic yard of fluffy and nutritious soil. This product is returned to the family use as they please, although some facilities offer options to donate."

October 05, 2022 in death | Permalink

We couldn't find the language

"What’s the last thing you’re going to think about?

I think the last thing will be tears. Tears of just being fortunate enough to have lived the life I’ve lived. Tears that I’ve brought sadness to certain people. And not being able to convert that to joy.  Sadness that I’ve done some things and been part of some things — even with you, it took us years to get to where we are now. I have sadness over those lost years. But that’s what life is. We couldn’t find the language. What’s most important is that we’ve come together now. When I’m gone, you don’t have to worry about what we could have done. We did it. That’s the most important. Those tears will turn to joy."

From Nature Has Its Way of Ending Life. I’m Changing the Manner and the Time

October 05, 2022 in death | Permalink

Anyone who has a friend

(A kind correspondent sent me this in an email. I'm hoping it's OK of me to reproduce it. Last time he sent something, and I asked him, he said it was OK. This time I'm trying not to bother him. But he'll probably get this via RSS and let me know if I've done wrong.)
 
The Sasha Frere-Jones quote about Godard reminded me of this, from The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula LeGuin:
 
(context: Selver, an alien who until recently didn't really have a conception of murder or violence, has started leading a guerilla movement that is fighting back against their human colonizers; in a recent action, the man Lyubov - Selver's only real human friend, who treated him like a person - has been killed):
 
“Lyubov’s too, you know. He’s dead—your ‘friend Lyubov’.” Selver did not understand the idiom. He had learned murder, but of guilt he knew little beyond the name. As his gaze locked for a moment with Gosse’s pale, resentful stare, he felt afraid. A sickness rose up in him, a mortal chill. He tried to put it away from him, shutting his eyes a moment. At last he said, “Lyubov is my friend, and so not dead.”

which is less profound than SFJ, but perhaps more accessible to anyone who has had a friend.

September 30, 2022 in death | Permalink

Death notes

Speaking of notes. For various reasons, some of which are obvious, I've been thinking about death and mourning recently. Don't worry. Not my death. This is not that kind of thinking.

So I've been compiling notes. Some will follow. Again, apologies to the RSSers.

JLG death registers in that space where death does not lead to grief because his ways of thinking and prioritizing have so affected my own that he is no more dead today than he was yesterday I did not know him as a person all I ever had was his work and I have that still

— Sasha Frere-Jones (@sashafrerejones) September 13, 2022

(JGL = Godard)

This is from Laurie Penny's GQ piece about the queue:

"Maybe it’s a coincidence, but almost everyone I speak to turns out to have recently lost someone, or something important. Pam nursed her mother for five years of Alzheimers, but could not be with her when she died at the start of the Pandemic. She never got to say goodbye. Nor Jason and Carson, who buried their father two years ago. Jason has a ponytail, John Lennon glasses and a musical Scouse accent. In a previous life, before the Queue, he managed software that coordinates timetables and ticketing between different train lines. They came here today “Because why not? It’s amazing. You just have to be part of it.” He downs his beer. Then he remembers to add. “And, um, obviously. The Queen.

There’s Joe, who is tall and thin and quiet and lives in Devon and was born in Hong Kong and fled with his family and will never go back. He associates the Queen, and the idea of British rule, with a place he remembers, a place that has changed forever. He explains this shyly to Hillary, the fish wholesaler, who seems consumed by an urge to protect everyone she knows from anyone she doesn’t, which includes most foreigners. Hillary decides we’ve got to look after Joe. She knows what it’s like to arrive at a funeral too late. We are all here to mourn, and to have that mourning matter."

Which, if we’re honest, can be liberating as well as upsetting. https://t.co/anV1ulSX6S

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) September 19, 2022

September 23, 2022 in death | Permalink