Kites, Memory and the Hereafter

When I was twenty I usually had my 35 mm Nikon camera with me hanging around my neck like a permanent necktie. When it rained I wrapped it in a plastic bag and hung it around my neck. When it was too hot I wore a wide brimmed hat to give it shade as it hung from my neck. It was always there, I was always ready to shoot my shot and I was always in the way!  One day, it was a beautiful day in Vancouver in Vanier Park but it was completely wasted on me as I cursed the fact that I somehow did not have my camera with me and I was missing all the action.

     In front of me was a display of organized chaos that could have been broken up into a series of clicks! A group of Chinese students were setting up a gigantic dragon box kite on the ground. It took them six attempts of running in unison to get it into the air. When it got there it was an incredible sight of red and gold scales and streamers. It swam around all the other kites in the sky and the wind ruffled loudly through the fabric. I stood for a long time just watching all the mesmerising acrobatics, colourful kites, and the people on the ground yelling through the whipping wind at each other as they were working their kite lines.

     Not having a camera kept me and my main character energy out of the way and I was able to just be in the present moment. My purpose was just to stand in one place and witness their art. I walked away, a different, older person.

     There is my beautiful memory of Vanier Park, the park that taught me to be more present. But I have other memories. Some are sublime, some are ordinary and some I can barely muster the courage to even think about and some I just don't!. Are all memories just life lessons? Am I just recording automatically for survival? Do I need memories for some other reason?

     There are other artists who talk about memory. In Japan there is a type of printmaking known as Gyotaku. It is a traditional art form from the mid-1800s where ink is applied to a fish and then pressed onto paper or fabric to create an exact replica of the catch. Gyotaku serves initially as a fisherman's record or a way to remember the catch but evolving into a detailed art form. Gyotaku is appreciated for its scientific accuracy in capturing marine life and its cultural significance as a fusion of fishing tradition, keeping records of catch and fine art. Gyotaku is also a way of keeping us connected to the natural world and remembering it and our place in it.

    German artist Gerhardt Richter has a body of drawings that are wholly focused on memory and storytelling. In a series of sketchbooks, Diaries in Drawings, Richter has a process of layering ink, pencils, eraser marks, and scrape marks to describe our visceral way of living. We experience pain and then recover. We hold our feelings in or let them out in an unpredictable fashion that is always open to interpretation. To Richter the act of not forgetting is not just record keeping, it is storytelling. Richter always dates his drawings giving them a permanent place in time.

     Hirokazu Kore-eda feels memory is part of our human identity and the act of remembering challenges us to evolve. In his movie, “The Afterlife”, the recently deceased have to choose one memory to take to eternity. Heaven is a grey Industrial building called the Limbo Facility; the deceased have to take numbers and wait in line. At the front of the line they talk to bureaucratic agents and fill out forms about their death and are asked about the memory that they want. Some people decide right away and they are directed to the Warehouse where volunteers rebuild their memory out of scrap materials and send them into the light. Other people get stuck on what memory they want and have to live and work at the Limbo Facility until they can decide what memory that they want to take into the hereafter. Hirokazu Kore-eda wrote“After Life” as a response to his father’s dementia and terminal diagnosis and a belief that memories and how we decide are the core part of who we are.

     I have someone in my life that is terminally ill. There is no cure or turn around, it’s going to happen. Her end of life is going to happen all of a sudden because her doctors won’t sign off on the M.A.I.D paperwork and are even stalling off on a no resuscitation order even though everyone involved wants it. I understand Doctors have a need to always save even if it only extends her life by a couple of days but it is causing her so much anxiety. So, we have to plan. We talk about how it is going to happen to try to kill the anxiety and we talk about picking out her best memory that she can hold onto just before she lets go. We practice thinking of the happiest memories together so she can reach for one automatically if no one is there to hold her hand. I have learned from a past memory to anchor in the present and we are doing it together by laughing a lot and making new memories of whatever time is left. Our memories might be lessons, stories, and records or to build our identity but they are also for our comfort and for joy.