Here, I call upon the quote you have in mind, the one I hold in mine, and will it into being on this paper. A spell
that should accompany these words, attend to them with love and warmth. Let them form a crack in time, the
here and now we share together. To you – who lingers here, hoping for residual traces of the liminal space
called Death by Landscape, a concert.
But at last, this will only mark the space held for the haunting of the quote, for the echoes of the concert we
attended.

I was invited to write about the experience of witnessing the conjuring of ghosts. A conjuring
of loss – how it mirrors life and distorts it. Puts it in place in a new way. But how do you write
about something marked by absence? How do you assign words to something which cannot
be fixed – for which words will not suffice. I am becoming a witness to how silence creeps in,
to the way what persists but no longer is writes itself in air, in gestures, in the pauses where
words used to be. That is what loss is. It creeps in, slithers into every gap it finds. It enters your
mouth, grows and swells, pushes into your throat, crawls around your vocal cords, down your
spine. Spilling into every nook and cranny.

But loss and absence
make place for a spillage of time,
an expansion outside of the tangible realm of understanding.An embrace that holds place for mourning. A tenderness experienced by staying
in the nooks and crannies. Staying long enough to feel them deepening, growing in the
physical, the emotional, the visual, the sonic, the tactile, the spatial.

It is here that Ujjwal, Paul, Han Gyeol, An, Cécile, Hugo and Alix await us to attend the
landscape of mourning they let settle and resettle in-between themselves. A composition I
was allowed to witness on multiple occasions, and only once every time. A composition always
reassembled, marked but never fixed in time and no claim put upon, it expands, collapses and
unfolds again, never to be the same.
It is here, amidst the lingering quiet, the movie begins to play. A bus appears, suspended on
the screen, yet its integrity begins to fray. Deconstructed. Ripped apart. Opened up. The
metallic edges reverberating through the room, through my body. Ripping me out of stillness,
asking for my attention. Music begins, threading its way through the air. Chopin mingles with
Tamino, their notes weaving together. Lingering accents appear at moments of perforation—
pauses that punctuate the violent ripping apart of the bus, stitching the torn edges with
sound.
In this instant, memories reverberate, lingering on like resonances since I’ve met you, Alix. The
name of your son being my name. Your birthday being 4 days after me, even though years
apart. And how I shared losing my friend to suicide, as you did young love. I remember the
silence we sat in. A silence filled with presence, compassion. Recognizing a familiarity in-
between each other. Or at least that’s how it inscribed into me. How does one capture the
gravity of these memories? How does one find the words?
As the screen drops, the veil lifts. And the inners lay bare. An undoing, an unraveling. And with
it comes an invitation—an embrace, tender yet vast, drawing us in, a pull into an expanse
where mourning dwells. The movie projection continues, shifting and distorting, folding itself
into the texture of this shared space.
The sound of steps emerges, subtle yet profound, tracing silent knowledge. In the stillness,
each step seems to carry its own memory, making us aware of the weight and presence of
every movement. Between them, air fills the space, holding both absence and presence. What
do your fingers find here—do they trace the edges of grief or open crevices to new worlds?
This is not merely a performance but a space of attention—a waiting that stretches time,
opening and expanding awareness.
Attention here oscillates between the particular and the whole, tuning into intimate details
while holding the wider landscape alive. Each gesture, breath, and sound mirrors another—a
delicate act of mending and caring for what is torn. It is not about shutting out but inviting
everything to exist at once, within and beyond the moment.
Attention becomes a slow, deliberate act of care. It’s not just about perceiving, but about
nurturing what we notice. A careful hand following the spine, resting under it before gravity
pulls one to the floor. The weight of a footfall, the slight change in breath, overlapping bodies
and air in between them—each is held tenderly in the moment, woven together into the
broader texture of the space.
Attending is not only about noticing but about nurturing, about tending to the nuances as
they unfold, patiently holding them in place long enough for them to reveal their full presence.
But there is also attendre—waiting. Not a passive waiting, but a staying with. A waiting that is
not about expectation but about endurance. One body balances the other, another leans
against it, folding into each other. A presence that remains while something emerges,
unhurried and unforced. A new creature. There is no rush, no urge to resolve, but simply to
stay in the moment. A finger finds its way into the ear. A chuckle goes through the room.
Humor becomes a facilitator. This act of waiting is a recognition that what is to come cannot
be controlled, only received.
Through these cracks, other worlds flicker briefly into being. The air is charged with
possibilities, and every sound, every movement, feels like a door left slightly ajar. We are here,
present, and yet somewhere else entirely.

How deeply political, in a world that is in a constant rush,
not allowing you to
look too closely
or
feel too deeply.

With love,
Aimée.
November 2024