Fayed Not

March 2015

. . . the artist is the one who arrests the spectacle in which most men take part without really seeing it and who makes it visible to the most ‘human’ among them . . . Merleau–Ponty

I hate death.  I hate how it steals, kills, destroys; a legacy of grief leaving those lost to claw their way back from the abyss in search of light.  I fear the fading of memory and struggle to grieve because I don’t want to let go.  Fade not, I screech in moments of silence.  Stay, I beg in the night.

My friend and colleague battled to stay present in this life, until her last breath at the end of last year.  Faye was known for her courage and tenacity: for her grip on all things living and the hope that holds firm to faith.  She fought the good fight and rallied against things unjust… and did so as an artist who made visible things that we should not miss.

We taught together as part of a team of idealistic academics; she a theatre practitioner amongst a quirky faculty of dancers, musicians and dramatists in a performing arts department.  Faye was fierce and held on in the times I did not.  She fought for her students and challenged them to be fully human in their creative pursuits.  They are part of her legacy.

They have also scattered, these students.  I wonder if they know what gifts reside within them, nurtured by the woman with curly hair and large wise eyes.  I wonder if they have taken hold of the insight and knowledge she shared freely, in bursts of laughter and gestures poignant with wisdom.  What are these talented artists, trained by one of best, up to now?  How are they using all that lies dormant within them?

I hope they are making stuff up.  I suspect that would please Faye.  I hope they are fierce and tenacious: full of hope and courage and humility.  I hope they honour her legacy and take risks and fight for what is real in the spectacle of the absurd.  I hope they lead and teach and allow all that Faye was and is and always will be, to grow within their own practice . . . to arrest the fading away of that which is true and good.  I hope they remember her, and live it out.

Mother Children Sculpture 003 Mother Children Sculpture 018 Mother Children Sculpture 019 copy
     

Sculpture by Sophie Edhouse, Photography by Dianne Bodein © 2015, reprinted with permission

To read a tribute poem by Dianne Bodein written for Faye, December 2014: click here.