Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Derek Jarman was the first person I knew very closely and lived alongside tightly who got very ill. First with H.I.V. in 1988, 1989, and then died in ’94. He was the first person that I met who was looking down the barrel and did not look away. I always feel that mortality and immortality are basically the same thing, but what Derek modeled for me was something that has influenced my perspective on the whole charade. There was a sort of exhilaration for him to have the limit of his life made clear. He drove into the curve and he became sort of enlivened. What I witnessed was someone who made his dying alive.

Q: Mortality and immortality, for you, are the same thing? 

None of us are getting out of here alive. It’s so banal to have to say this, but one does have to say it, because there’s so much denial around it. I’ve heard so many people who are living with a cancer that is going to take them away say that there is a vernacular around battle terminology: You’re a winner or you’re a loser. It’s all about fighting. It’s such a red herring, that attitude, because it brings with it the concept that we might win…

The real question is: Who are we and how must we live? I don’t necessarily want to designate one thing as political activism and another as artistic practice and another as living your life. For me, there ain’t no walls between any of them. Does that explain the attitude?’ (from the New York Times)