Michael Jackson dies, and so does the grand master of India strings, Ali Akbar Khan. He died a few weeks ago but I didn’t know, although I watch the news daily and read the papers. It wasn’t widely reported that – according to Yehudi Menuhin, the greatest musician who ever lived had departed.
The hysteria about Michael Jackson’s death is appalling. The world celebrated him then destroyed him. Elvis Presley and many others suffered the same fate. Who can cope with so much meaningless adulation? Personally I’d rather listen to any street singer in India than our castrato, unmelodious, wildly amplified Western performers. Now we have three days of newspaper hysteria and in the midst of all this, I found a small obituary for Ali Akbar Khan.
The sarod is one of the most difficult instruments. It takes many years of training and practice before one can even be called a sarod player. The painter Asher Bilu is the only Western person I know who plays the sarod well. Ali Akbar Khan said that if you practice the sarod for ten years, you may begin to please yourself. After twenty years, you may become a performer and please the audience. After thirty years, you may even please your guru. But you must practise for many more years before you finally become a true artist – then you may please even God. I feel sorry for Michael Jackson: well meaning, naive and probably very gifted, but the adoration of his public destroyed him before he could really blossom.
Three more days before the final assessment in the hospital. I go to the airport to pick up John Hurt and his wife Anwen. John is such a fine and rare human being. We have a wonderful evening. My son Marius has seen more films with John playing a part than I have, and is most impressed. The next day they fly back to England. Will I ever see them again?
So many years ago, John gave his heart and soul to my film Vincent – the Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh. We spent three days in a small studio in London recording John’s voice as the voice of Vincent. Three crucial days that have kept this film alive as if we made it yesterday. The only words in the film that were not written by Vincent in his letters to his brother Theo are ‘I wish I knew it.’ Overcome by frustrations and emotions, these are the very last words John whispers to himself. They came from his heart and thus were left in the film. They sound true and real. Throughout the years we meet occasionally or exchange emails. Vincent van Gogh somehow sealed a friendship that we’ve never questioned.
Then our visit to the hospital. ‘You must bring your family, otherwise the surgeon will not see you.’ We walk into a deserted waiting room. We are nervous but don’t want to show it. Kyra and Marius sit away from me, looking through women’s magazines. I’m hiding behind my newspaper, and walk to the counter now and then to see if there’s anyone at all hiding in the labyrinth of corridors. Kyra begs me to sit down. Finally one of the coordinators of the test program comes to collect a few chairs, then ushers us into a small office to meet the surgeon. Some wild thoughts go through my mind. ‘A transplant is the only thing that can save me. I’m too old for a transplant! My lungs must be riddled with cancer; my heart must be weak and probably diseased.’ But I also think, ‘Why didn’t they stop the endless testing and the scanning if there is no point in continuing?’ The surgeon starts to talk. I look at his sympathetic face, then at my dear children. I miss Ezra, my eldest son, who’s working in Bangkok and couldn’t be with us.
It slowly dawns on me that the surgeon is telling us that I’m on the transplant list. I’ve been activated! I’ve been given a flutter of hope. A light has appeared above the mountains in the distance. For almost six months there was no hope, no hope at all. We depart with deep gratitude, with endless tears that are bursting to get out. We sit in the cafe downstairs, smiling, laughing, crying – eating fatty cakes and holding hands.
A few days later, Kyra, Arabella and I attend a meeting of the pre-transplant education support group. It’s a special meeting for children of patients on the transplant waiting list, with the family of a liver recipient. There’re also various nurses, dieticians and coordinators introducing themselves. The recipient family is gently asked to talk about their reaction and how they coped. The father, who went through the operation, jokes that it was easy for him because he was asleep and generally felt so sick and drugged that the emotional impact only hit him in retrospect. The mother and the oldest daughter, probably about sixteen, emphasise the strain on the family and what they did to cope.
I think the youngest girl is thirteen or fourteen, rather big for her age. She is asked how she managed. There’s silence. The girl hides her face in her mother’s bosom, and then looks at the circle surrounding her. She looks at each one of us. Then, out of the very depth of her being, a primal scream echoes through the room. It cuts through our hearts, pierces our bones. She screams once more, bewildered by her own sound. The mother weeps with her, and Kyra, who is standing behind me, holds me so tight that it hurts. Nobody speaks for a while. Almost everyone is too overcome. I think we all feel her agony and pain and how much she suffered through her father’s difficult journey. It was all contained in her howl, which found its roots through time and space – embracing many centuries and then caught and trapped her like a caged animal.
Now life has changed a fair bit. I am fully aware of the many pitfalls and problems facing us, but that little flutter of hope has changed something deep inside. Maybe I’m going to live after all. I’m ready for it.
I sleep badly in the next few days. Don’t know why. I now have time to go and see old friends whom I haven’t seen for years or occasionally met in passing. It’s a whole new experience after years of concentration on my work and the children. Now I don’t have to rush back to the editing room, or research something related to the film I’m making. I will always have the time now for everything. Every day given to me is a bonus. We all live on borrowed time. There is no other time.
‘I think that Cox saw Nijinsky, not as a madman, but as a man too inspired to be sane,’ says Roger Ebert in an appreciation he wrote as an introduction to a small retrospective of my films in Melbourne. It’s a brilliant way of describing the agony and the ecstasy of a true artist. Only another true artist could put it this way. And Roger, known as a film critic, is a great artist. After some horrendous cancer operations he lost his voice, the ability to use his neck, and needs to be fed through a tube in his stomach. A blow that would kill an ordinary man cannot kill the artist. Roger now writes with more insight, vision, poetry and wit, and raises his pen with fury against any exploitation in the film world. A lesser artist would’ve surrendered to the cancerous demons that invaded his body. Roger survived all that because he has something to say, something to give. When he heard that I had joined the cancer ward, he and his wife, Chaz, gave me enormous comfort and warmth with the exchange of emails and favourite DVDs. He offered me a lifeline.
This morning, another scan of lungs and liver. Don’t want these scans any more. Can’t be good for the body, and I’m a little afraid that they might find something else that could put my transplant on hold or they might have to cancel it. Still functioning reasonably well. Get tired and don’t sleep. Wake up with headaches and a dizziness that comes and goes during the day. Have always refused to let anyone look after me. Now I want to be looked after, but there isn’t really anyone there. That is not really true – they’re plenty of good and fine people who would go out of their way to look after me, but I’m probably not ready yet to call upon them. My dear friend from London would sacrifice everything to help and keep me. I know her love for me and feel it, but she’s so much younger and has a young child who needs her. Also she lives on the other side of the world and has her own career and family to cope with.
This morning I dream that a new liver, heart and lungs had been put into me while I was sleeping. ‘Why not tell me?’ I ask. ‘Besides, I only need a new liver.’ The nurse tells me they didn’t tell me because I haven’t washed my hands. Then I notice that on the bed poles, taps have been fitted with hot and cold water. They want me to wash my hands right through the day because future transplants would have to be done by me as they didn’t have enough surgeons and staff to look after everyone. ‘But I’ve got a new liver – don’t need another one, and the other organs you’ve transplanted I’d like to give back to you!’ ‘Wish it were that simple,’ says the nurse. She starts to put gaffer tape on my chest and stomach. ‘We’ve got this from your office,’ says the nurse. I protest. Gaffer tape, which is used often in film production, is pretty vicious stuff and very hard to remove. I used it once on a slate roof and the roof didn’t leak for over ten years. In fact, I fixed the roof with this very tape. ‘But why didn’t you use normal tape – the tape you use here for after an operation?’ ‘You’re a filmmaker and we’ve found that these people are difficult to keep together. The stronger the tape, the better it is for you.’ Meanwhile I start to pull some of the tape away from my stomach. It hurts like mad – hair and skin comes off – then the stomach opens and small organs, like little planets, have attached themselves to the tape. The nurse screams, forces the tape back and puts another layer of thick black tape on top. I’m now completely tied down to the bed with gaffer tape.
Another night of no sleep. My pulse suddenly goes up and I have difficulty breathing. So very tired, yet no sleep comes my way. Even though I have been thrown a lifeline, I’m now more uncertain, vulnerable and physically weak. I was doing so well and felt strong. I remember the young girl who howled when asked how her father’s transplant had affected her. I can still feel her pain. It settled somehow in my bones and in my heart. I could’ve been gone by now, but I’m still alive. I wanted to live and here I am – coping and loving and even making plans. Why then am I disturbed and my body refuses to lie down and rest? Is something else brewing inside or going to happen? No, nothing can happen. I will not give way to negative thought. I must be stronger than that. I must inspire life within me, and around me.
Today I’m going back to the hospital for more blood tests and to talk to the surgeon. He tells me that I’m doing well – that the chemo worked and the cancer has retreated for a while. From a doomed species with no future at all, I’ve almost become complete enough to join the human race again. Now I have some space and time to wait for a liver donor. Australia has the lowest rate of organ donation in the Western world. It seems to come from a lack of public education, different cultural attitudes to the disposal of bodies, superstition, and a reluctance to address the prospect that one day we will all die. In Australia, organ donation works on an ‘opt in’ system, whereby everyone who has not given consent is not a donor. People here die or get too weak before a new liver is found. The same with other organs. Spain, on the other hand, has the highest rate. Their system is ‘opt out’, or ‘presumed consent’, by which everyone who has not refused is a donor.
In my view, too many disagreements occur because of various religious convictions. I don’t understand what difference it makes whether one is buried or burned, with the liver, heart, lungs in place or without them. I wonder what happens if a Seventh Day Adventist minister, a rabbi, imam, Catholic priest or strict Protestant vicar needs a transplant or one of their children can only be saved through a transplant. Would they decide to let their child die rather than try to save them through a transplant?
Now, for almost a full month, I’ve lived the life of a potential recipient. Quite a surreal experience. Although it can take years before a donor is found – you have to be available twenty-four hours a day. Every time the phone rings, the heart jumps and one wonders. Now I’m getting used to it and pick up the phone without thinking about the hospital. Ezra, my son from the East, arrives from Bangkok. When Marius returns from his short holiday in Brisbane, I’ll have my three children together. This is only the fourth time for this to happen. I’m proud of them. They’re fine, upstanding human beings who have survived a most unorthodox upbringing remarkably well.
The days are crisp and sunny, with much blue in the sky. I walk down to the bay and stare across the waters. Cargo boats wait in line to get into port. The bay is quite rough. In spite of the bright sun, there’s a cold wind blowing in from the east and patches of rain splash down unexpectedly.
The true process in Man is the progression of an inner vision. That’s what Vincent van Gogh meant when he said, ‘Isn’t life given to us to become richer in spirit?’ My children are happy to see one another. Although they all have different mothers, they’re similar and even look like sister and brothers. It gives me great joy to see them together.
My little empire appears to be crumbling. At first, Kyra and I try to chase the money owed to us. It could save my life. People who owed me money are supportive, but not one, not even in the face of my death, will return one dollar. I won’t elaborate. It’s too appalling. I realise that my reserves need to be built up because no money can be generated for a long time. Arts curator Maudie Palmer, who’s one of the first friends I made when I returned here in 1965, encourages me to explore and exploit my humble beginnings as a stills photographer, and after thirty years of not having touched a still camera, I take a series of photographs of dancer Delia Silvan with the camera and tripod that had been hidden all that time.
Delia is a delicate flower of great beauty and integrity, and in a few days we produce a series of photographs called Evening Light. We found a simple, singular way of expression – beauty enclosed in the prison of light. It started as a financial exercise, but of course lost its way in that vast landscape of possibilities. Some of these photographs may be a little too disciplined, but the light burns in each one with longing and defiance. In my threatened existence the light should be fragile, tinted through dust, heavy skies. That’s what I thought would happen, but this light is strong and bright and suggests hidden colours. One is never really in charge of the inner gods or demons. It’s only by making something that its purpose manifests itself and, if one is in tune, offers a direction to take. A film too, in my not so humble opinion, is always made in the making. As soon as it gathers a life of its own, one knows one is on the right pathway and all one has to do is keep up with its force and have faith. Life itself is mostly a matter of fate and not of choice. People tend to believe that they’re somehow in charge. Thank the good Lord, Krishna, Allah, Buddha and all other Gods that we’re not.
Gallery owner Charles Nodrum offers exhibition space in his inner-city gallery. We decide to add some early black-and-white photographs in another room for balance. The show does reasonably well, but the main thing is that it receives interest in other un-exhibited material. My early career as a photographer blossoms once again, and brings some much needed financial rewards.
At the opening, a woman stops me several times. ‘I am Suzi’. I find it hard to concentrate and talk to anyone at length, and try to ignore her. But she is persistent, takes me to the room with the old black-and-white photographs and says, ‘I’m the model in number twenty-four.’ A volcano spews fire. Here is the missing link I’d been looking for in the puzzle of the past. I hadn’t recognised her at all, but suddenly I remember her immense beauty and the sweetness of her smile. In the few encounters we’d shared in the far distant past, I’d experienced an extraordinary sexual awakening through her. Body of my body, flesh of my flesh. Ecstasy stored away for centuries made inner and outer become one and melted into one softly boiling river. I’d never met an uninhibited soul like that. She was beautiful and glowing with womanhood. It shook my foundations. Through her, the artist in me thrived and I learned how to merge the inner and outer and celebrate the outer with the same degree of mysticism and human touch as the inner. I’d totally forgotten how crucial she was to my development. Some forty years later, Grandpa Me and Grandmother Suzi have become friends again.
It’s almost five in the morning. Sleep comes and goes. A dream of some confusion throws me out of bed. In the dream, I try to answer my phone but I have to get out of bed as it is positioned out of reach. My skin is dripping with sweat as I answer a call from the hospital. ‘You ordered a transplant,’ a female voice says. ‘Yes, a liver transplant!’ ‘We don’t have livers – we have sausages and cut meat.’ A familiar figure approaches. For a split second I know who it is, but then I lose it. I think it’s the butcher who supplies meat to the hospital. I suspect him of terrible crimes. A small woman who comes with him starts to throw eggs against the wall. I get into a wild panic – maybe they have my new liver waiting for me at the hospital and these people are trying to steal it from me. I sneak out of the back door and start running, but then realise I don’t know which direction the hospital is. The phone rings again, but remains out of reach.
I indeed wake up in a pool of sweat. The hospital did ring this morning to ask whether I’d had a certain blood test last week. There was no record of it. The call gave me a bit of a shock, which must’ve stayed in my consciousness until the dream released it.
It’s now a waiting game. Nobody knows how long it will take to find a new liver. Sometimes I despair and feel trapped, but then have to tell myself how very lucky I am. Apart from the nausea, the headaches and the sleepless nights, I am alive, and have a true solid chance to bounce back to life. This was never expected when it all started.
It’s such a blessing to be surrounded by my three children. Ezra can’t stay too long, but our connection is growing stronger, as is our friendship and trust. They are fine generous people – loving, humorous and humane.
It’s early morning. A bright new day with a clear blue sky and sunlight flooding the kitchen. There’s a review of Salvation on the table. The film came and went. I’d almost forgotten we ever made it. If you don’t have a large advertising budget, no film can succeed in this country. The review has a funny headline, ‘Thank the good Lord for eccentric artists.’ I rarely read reviews, but the headline made me smile. I like the light-hearted approach, unpretentious and revealing. Don’t see myself as an eccentric, though I must admit a certain fascination with eccentric characters. However, when people refer to me as an eccentric, I always look around to find out to whom they’re referring.
Every morning, two large magpies pay me a visit. They tap on the kitchen window and sing a duet until I come out and feed them some cheese or meat for breakfast. One has grown very cheeky; she sits on my shoulder and offers her primeval call right next to my ear. I go downstairs and check the endless emails that have come flooding in since my illness.
Kyra arrives and, together with Marius, we hop in the car and go to the hospital. As they’re taking blood we keep joking, and when I’m dressed in one of those humiliating hospital gowns they say goodbye. I’m now on my own with their kisses on my cheeks and their warmth and love in my heart. I’m so lucky. My children are wonderful human beings.
When I return from the scanning and the prodding, I’m so tired that I fall asleep and another dream enters my consciousness. We’re in a courtyard of a red building. The bricks are like large sandstones and should be yellow. A group of Swedish workers are discussing a Swedish film. Roger Ebert doesn’t agree with the general opinion. Does Roger speak Swedish? I ask him. He says, ‘They’re not speaking Swedish, they’re discussing a Swedish film.’ Roger is speaking, what a surprise. I’m so pleased that he can speak again even though he doesn’t get his facts right. He senses my thoughts and says, ‘Best to ignore me speaking, nobody has noticed anyway.’
There is a two-day conference on my films at Melbourne University and straight after that, the opening of the photographic exhibition. So many people from the past – so many good friends – appear. It is all very touching, but also extremely exhausting. It’s common knowledge that I am ‘riddled with cancer’; bad news travels at the speed of light. Not many people know that there is a flutter of hope, that I am not totally doomed, that I might actually outlive them all. Find myself talking to people without having the slightest idea who they are … not a nice thing to admit, but true. There is always some familiar touch – something that stirs old memories – but they don’t find fertile ground, I’ve gone blank. I’m sure the chemo that’s still lurking in my body and mind has something to do with an almost total lack of memory.