ONE IMAGINES it to be a period for reflection, nostalgia, and spiritual self-awareness. For the terminal cancer patient, waiting for death is all these. But it is also the time to buy that grandfather clock you have always wanted, take a spin in a classic car, and taste as many varieties of cheese as your medication will allow.
Or so it is for Ian, one of the stars of Advice to the Living (Radio 4, Sunday), which interviewed people with incurable forms of cancer about their “life lessons”. The result could have been saccharine and sentimental, but such was the honesty of these accounts that the result was one of the most powerful and moving pieces of radio I have experienced for some time.
The programme could hardly have been further from the type of preachy narrative displayed by the recent film The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. The “bucket” of the title refers to the one you kick rather than (as some critics have noted) the one you reach for when you see this movie.
In Hollywood, what you do when you know the shutters are coming down is to climb the tallest mountain, throw yourself out of an aeroplane, and make up with all the people you have been horrible to.
In the case of Frances, who was 32 when she was diagnosed, you slow down, enjoy every pain-free day at your own pace, and abjure responsibility. There is a pressure, she says, about having to feel every day is special. Ignore it. She enjoys telling the double-glazing salesman that she could no longer care less about the state of her windows.
Each bore witness to the heightening of sensation brought about by impending death: a keenness of vision, hearing, and taste. In different ways, they also projected a complementary, though apparently paradoxical, understanding of the permanent transience of the world. A memory, a taste, a piece of music disperses as it is created, but that creation is unceasing. Frances talked of appreciating the artistry of a ballerina not as a virtuoso, but as a “vessel for an art-form which will be handed on”.
Contemplation is something Jude Kelly — theatre director and South Bank Centre supremo — thinks few of us get enough of. In the first of this year’s Lent Talks (Radio 4, Wednesday of last week), she argued for a greater willingness in public discourse to voice doubt rather than certainty: a willingness to risk looking vulnerable rather than always seeking to exude confidence.
In an essay that took us from Rumi to the heavy-metal Grateful Dead, from Tolkien’s Frodo to Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ms Kelly admitted that her own profession seemed to be all about pretending to know the answers. A little time in the wilderness of uncertainty can be instructive, particularly before taking the public stage.
This was all sensible stuff. But when Ms Kelly started drawing lessons from her approach to theatre directing, we entered the world of the luvvy, and I fear her words might well qualify for inclusion in the next Private Eye.
The Lent Talks strand has always been best served by those who are experienced in talking about questions of faith: even a keen intelligence such as Ms Kelly’s tends towards cliché when faced with the challenge. |
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