Dying

It’s a very vulnerable position to be in. It’s a feeling of falling in the water + not being able to get out. You feel that you are surrounded by water + that you are just falling. You cannot do anything about it. You’re a dead body, so to speak.

→ On the one hand, we are made of water. → But then water can also kill you in this sense, if it blocks your lungs and you cannot breathe.

Before I had only seen movies → about survivors. But I had never before felt it in my body – the experience of drowning. →Even though this experience didn’t involve extreme conditions – actually we were very close to the shore and the waters were calm, but that feeling remained.

→ I guess this experience made me feel empathy for people crossing the sea to come to Europe. It made me understand that the ocean is not a kind entity if you are not well prepared for it. If you fall from the boat in the middle of nowhere you are probably going to die there. Now that I know this I can empathize more with other perspectives on this.

E.R.B. The ocean is closely related to death.The experience of death is very present in the ocean. That’s why there exist so many mythologies of the ocean. I think of death not always as something negative. I see it more as a transformation. After death, something else can emerge. It is part of a cycle. It happens in nature all the time and we also experience it in our lives. You let parts of yourself die so that you can evolve and adapt.

I guess it’s more about accepting that death is part of life, it is not easy because in Western society death is a bit of a taboo. Also, before you are born you find yourself in a medium of water (the womb). That’s also a transformation – from being in the wet womb to suddenly breathing air.

What is it like to know it so well? To know exactly where the fish are? Sometimes I think that maybe, for him, there is even the thing of dying there. Of finally surrendering to it.

Everything is falling – the moment of encounter with it is linked to the possibility of death. When I’m next to the ocean, I feel like I am just part of it. I don’t have to organize anything. I sense a hollow feeling in my stomach.

At Byron Bay (in Australia), there is one beach where people drown regularly. I’d often experience a dull pain in my kidneys just before entering the ocean there. Later I found out that this type of pain comes exclusively from fear.

I have a nephew who’s really into surfing and at 14 years of age, he saved the life of a father and his daughter who were being pulled out to sea by the undertow. And who would of very likely drowned had my nephew not brought them to shore on his surfboard. This heroic and mythological deed made the front page of the local newspaper.

On the other hand, I think of it as a place of danger, of drowning, of shark attacks.

When I was a teenager, I almost drowned. while learning to kayak. → My kayak capsized and I couldn’t get out of it. So it left me with a strong swimming anxiety. I could easily panic when in the water.

People leave the island from the age of 12 to go to school. The school in Shetland only has 12 children. Once I met an older man on Fair Isle who told me: “I came back to die here.” – it made sense. People spend their active life off the island and only go back there to die.