Encounter

Death and the past impact upon every moment of the present. How we acknowledge the past shapes the way we deal with the present. From Hamlet to the Australian composition 'Ariel's Music', Encounter pursues this theme and its place in some of the world's religions.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

MACARTHUR CLOUGH'S SOLO CLARINET

Reader: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.

Florence Spurling: Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 5, the graveyard scene of clear-eyed realism about death and the past, a view of both which gives the young Prince's sense of the present a formidable and sombre clarity. Hamlet's tussles are not with the reality of death and the past but with the unknowns which might lie beyond death and how he should act in the present.

Welcome to this Encounter on ABC Radio National. I'm Florence Spurling.

Hamlet: Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fall'n? Now get you to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Horatio: What's that, my lord?

Hamlet: Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

Horatio: E'en so.

Hamlet: And smelt so? Pah!

Horatio: E'en so, my lord.

Hamlet: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

Florence Spurling: Hamlet's sardonic realism is in contrast with those who sentimentalise, avoid or even deny death and the past. This is a program with many highways and byways in which we examine how the past and death are viewed from various perspectives which, in turn, affect action and attitudes in the present. For instance, last year, the President of Iran gave an address at Columbia University in New York. He's a well known Holocaust denier and equally well known is his policy on Israel.

We continue the reflections for this Encounter with Mary Boys who is a Catholic Religious and a leading authority on Jewish-Christian dialogue. She is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Professor Boys' doctoral studies were at Columbia.

Mary Boys: I think perhaps in the case of Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust denial is merely a tactic, a way of getting the world's attention, you know. Earlier they had a conference for Holocaust deniers and I think that that's a strategy to distract from the fact that his presidency is not going well in Iran, and the poor whom he said he would help I think have not been helped. But let me take this in a slightly different direction, less about him and more about how I think it is difficult for probably all of us to deal with the shadow side of our history.

We here in the States are great for talking about the wisdom and insight of our Founding Fathers, I would also add our Mothers, the greatness of the Constitution and so forth, but we didn't like finding out that Jefferson had slaves, and that he had an affair with one of them. We talk about the American Revolution, but we don't say so much about the treatment of our Aboriginal peoples. Or we think that Well, we don't have slavery any more, but we forget that there are still consequences. I think this is true in the history of Christian churches as well. We're not so great in dealing with the way in which for instance when we missionised in the East or in the global South, we brought with it a great deal of Western imperialism. So I think in general, just as we have trouble on the individual level of really confronting our shadow side as persons, so too I think collectively we tend to deny that part of history that doesn't accord with our self-affirmation.

Michael Williams: We're still working and operating on the basis of those things that have happened in the past, and we're either benefiting from it, or not benefiting from it, whoever you are.

Florence Spurling: Michael Williams is the director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland. I'm talking with him about whether or not we can describe the present in Australian Indigenous life as post-colonial.

Michael Williams: So to me post-colonialism is a nonentity, if you like. I know in academic circles people have intellectualised and talked about it in a different way, and that's part of the academic process I guess, but for me, I see it from the point of view that there was a period of colonialism where colonial powers carried out certain acts that had an impact on people who they colonised, and those people who have been colonised are still enduring the impact of the actions taken a long time in the past and that has been perpetuated by the inability of people to deal with the past and to move on with the future in the way that we've been discussing.

Macarthur Clough: Music does have the power, if you're willing to accept it, and exercise some intuitive listening with music - it does have the power to transform you and not always in a good way.

Florence Spurling: Macarthur Clough has just completed his Honours degree in Music at the Queensland Conservatorium. He's a clarinettist, and I met him after a concert where he performed with the Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michael Morgan. The piece was 'Ariel's Music', composed by Brett Dean, originally from Brisbane. The story which inspired the composition is of Elizabeth Glaser and her daughter Ariel, who both died in the United States from an AIDS-contaminated blood transfusion during Elizabeth's pregnancy in 1981.

Elizabeth Glaser fought valiantly for the cause of AIDS awareness and research in response to her family's tragedy. Her daughter died aged 7, six years before Elizabeth's own death. In this conversation we look at how music itself might respond to death and the past, and how this particular piece of music honours how one woman chose to view her predicament.

Macarthur Clough: A lot of music that is written, especially nowadays, and also from the last century even, you think of some of the great events in the last century, the Hiroshima bombing, in fact the entire Second World War, with the Holocaust, in fact countless wars that have happened in the last century, and the amount of human suffering that's been experienced, not only through wars, but also through obviously, as we're talking about AIDS and disease. A lot of composers have chosen this subject matter to write about, and sometimes the music depicts a certain sentiment that the composer has felt, and the response that he or she has felt to a certain incident. Other times it focuses purely on some of the darker aspects, especially when it's narratives that can depict the actual events and the actual suffering experienced during that time.

ARIEL'S MUSIC - CLARINET SOLO

I think that 'Ariel's Music' is particularly disturbing in the way that it's a very unrelenting and gloomy piece of music, and deservedly so. It's like that because of the suffering experienced by Ariel and her mother Elizabeth. After playing that piece of music, you walk away, at least I walked away with a bit of what I'd call a conscience trip, wondering how lucky I am and how fortunate I am to not live in that situation, that context that a lot of people have to live under, and I think that it's the responsibility of everyone to make the most of the hand they're dealt with, but obviously someone like Elizabeth Glaser who led quite a natural and normal life before experiencing the torment of the AIDS virus, her benevolent undertakings throughout the last years of her life, she really displayed some saintly qualities.

The redemption she sought through her last years, I think, was like what so many people experience I think when they're close to death, is they start to concern about leaving something that will stand the test of time long after they've passed away, leaving a testament to your life after your name's lost and after your children have had their children and generations later I think people will recognise the work that she's done. I think that just through her goodwill, she wanted to improve the situation of paediatric AIDS and AIDS in general, which at the time was abysmal.

It was something that was very frowned upon and didn't have any significant public recognition as a virus that could really strike anyone. It was at the time mainly directed towards people of particular sexual orientation, and it's just wonderful that someone like Elizabeth, despite hearing the death knell in her ears, as she would have, she still kept fighting for the cause. I think when someone, too, loses a close family member, their perspective must change in life, too, especially when it's a mother losing a child, I think that especially in such difficult circumstances, knowing that not that it was ever her fault, that had she had that transfusion months later, her child wouldn't have been affected by her virus.

So I think that in a way she did it for herself, she did it for AIDS in general, but most importantly she did it for her daughter who despite living such a short life, her life is very significant, more significant than a lot of people who live a full innings, and significant because her name, at least around here in Brisbane and because of this piece of music, is synonymous with not only the battle against AIDS and redemption through hard work, but also just through the common fight against tribulation and overcoming that tribulation through hard work and sacrifice.

Florence Spurling: Macarthur Clough on Brisbane's Southbank as we talk about 'Ariel's Music'. Professor Bee Chen Goh is Head of the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University in Lismore. She is speaking to me from the Gold Coast where she is now a member of the Sikh community. Our conversation pursues through Eastern religions some new emphases for this Encounter, about how the understanding of death and the past relate to the present and the future.

Bee Chen Goh: As a child I was brought up in more of a hybrid faith environment, growing up in the Chinese-Malaysian village that is in fact more apparent, because I came actually from a Buddhist, Confucianist and Taoist background all rolled into one, and therefore the transition into Sikhism was actually quite seamless. My own experience is more of similarities than differences, so if you ask me What is the distinction? I will say, The labelling, rather than the reality as such. And of course other distinctions will be more in the rituals, the practices for example in the Buddhist temple, or in the Sikh temple that's called the Gurdwara. For myself, I suppose I do not sort of hang on as much to the rituals as to the basic essence, and in that sense I think Buddhism, Sikhism, as indeed the other major faiths, all teach about love, harmony, peace, wisdom and compassion and respect - in that sense, basic human values for human behaviour.

In the context of death, I think, yes, there would be one fundamental distinction, again, it could be more a matter of nomenclature, and that is, Buddhism would look at death and the afterlife in the form of rebirth; Sikhism would then be looking more at the concept of reincarnation rather than rebirth. In the end I suppose the main teaching is the same, and that is when in our own lifetimes to be cognisant of the law of cause and effect, because in another life, a future life as it were, there would be repercussions, positive or negative depending on our behaviours in this lifetime.

In Buddhist rebirth it is about the transmigration of the mind, and therefore Buddhist teachings concentrate a lot on the mind, the psychology of the mind and mindfulness. In the case of Sikhism, it's more a belief in the soul. So it would be when death happens then the soul, there's a certain consciousness. So I suppose maybe if I could venture to suggest, it is actually different names given by the two different faiths to the idea of consciousness, which is an energy, and that kind of energy or the consciousness in one is the continuation of the mind from life after life as in Buddhism and in Sikhism the soul that survives.

Florence Spurling: Both of them would be speaking about re-entry into the world in an embodied form?

Bee Chen Goh: In that sense, yes, as in what form, whether it's human, animal, insect or whatever that is the mystery of life and the afterlife.

Florence Spurling: And of course the goal in Buddhism is to go beyond that process, re-entering the world. What's the equivalent or similar process in the Sikh religion?

Bee Chen Goh: I suppose in Sikhism when one talks about reincarnation, one expects to come back again hopefully as a human being and in a sort of a better material physical condition, because one could come back as a human being in very impoverished or harsh conditions, physical conditions as it were, but one could come back into a very comfortable family and then have a good life. In Buddhism I think, yes, there are different levels, and of course the ultimate is actually the fact that you do not have to take rebirth, that you could be a Buddha, in the realms of the Buddha.

My own personal belief is death is an awakening, and that in fact what we call death spiritually may in fact be eternal life, which is quite akin to the Christian concept. Of course as human beings we would like to be immortal, we would like to go on forever, but I think that can be achieved in the concept of the soul rather than us in the human body. So we change our own bodies like we change clothes, as most Buddhism texts would mention that, and yes, particularly in what you talk about the past impacting on the present and the present impacting on the future, that is very central to the idea of the law of cause and effect and the sense of accountability, responsibility and the sense of mindfulness especially in Buddhism one talks about not just even the action or intention, the motivation itself to do a certain thing or not to do a certain thing, and that if we can't benefit other people, at the minimum not to cause harm, and that I think is a very important kind of teaching, so that our future life at least, will be as good as we can make it now.

Florence Spurling: Bee Chen Goh.

Mary Boys is a Catholic Religious and a leader in Jewish-Christian dialogue. We spoke with her late last year from New York for this Encounter on ABC Radio National about how we deal with death and the past, and how our views about them shape our present and future.

Mary Boys: In working with Christians who are often not really mindful of our truly terrible history, vis-à-vis the Jewish people - it's a matter of helping them learn this history and situating it in context so we understand the particularities of the given age that gave rise to either our discrimination or our vilification or persecution. But to do that in such a way that people aren't paralysed with guilt. After all, we're not, in this case, the generation of the perpetrators or the bystanders, if we're talking about the Holocaust. And whenever Christians and Jews come together, one of the asymmetries is that in general, Jews are very mindful of history, vis-à-vis Christianity, and Christians tend to be somewhat naïve. So to set up situations where people can learn together, really confront this together and talk about it, you know there's nothing like transparency, opening something to fresh examination.

And the other thing that I think is helpful is when we can join together to commemorate certain events. For instance, this interview is taking place on 8th November in Australia, this is just before the night of 9-10 November in 1938 called Kristallnacht, when mobs, mostly unleashed by the Third Reich, destroyed over 1,000 synagogues and burned many, many shops and Jewish businesses and murdered 91 Jews. This was the portent of and prelude to the Holocaust. And I was in Florida to do a speech in commemoration of the Kristallnacht, that was planned together jointly by Jews and Catholics, and I have to say it was terribly moving. There were a few survivors there and, of course, they're getting to be frail elderly now, and it was a wonderful occasion, I think, for Catholics both to learn about this, but to see the face of people who survived it. This is not something, an event from back then, but an event from back then that continues to have effect.

Florence Spurling: Can you comment on Robert Bly, the American poet's prose poem 'Seawater pouring back over stones' when he talks about 'I hear the driftwood far out singing, and the great logs fifty miles out, still floating in, the water under the waters, singing, what has not yet come to the surface to float, years that are still down somewhere below the chest, the long trees that have floated all the way from the Pacific Islands', and he ends on even a reference that as a Christian you would resonate with, 'and the donkey the disciples will find standing beside the white wall.' I wonder if that fairly lyrical evocation of the way the past is still surging into our present, is a way in which your imagination might also be operating when you're dealing with these thoughts of Jewish-Christian dialogue issues and others as well, for that matter.

Mary Boys: I think this imagery of these massive logs sort of bouncing in the water with the waves, and the water singing 'What has not yet come to the surface to float' - seems to me that that's one way of saying that the past is never finished, the past always opens up to new understandings, and all our perspectives on the past are partial. So they're still down somewhere below the chest, and I think that when we go to get at the past to bring it towards us, it's elusive, it's like those logs, they're floating on water and one can't grab onto it easily. I also must say I simply like the evocation - if you will - of the Pacific, since I grew up on the Pacific north-west of the United States, and I remember the first time that I went to Australia and I stood looking east to the Pacific. It was such a reminder of our perspectivity, that to me the Pacific was always the West, but now I looked East to it.

Michael Williams: The past has to be taken into account when you're wanting to work through to the future and deal with the present, and it's as simple as that at one level.

Florence Spurling: Indigenous leader and academic, Michael Williams, in Brisbane.

Michael Williams: And the discussion coming from people who say things like 'Let's forget all that' or 'Let's get on with the present', you're not giving each other the due respect of saying, 'Well, we have the capacity to set down this and discuss this with respect for each other and decency, and work it through, to try to put the past out of the discussion, I think is not giving the best opportunity to move forward.

Florence Spurling: And give me a bit more of an example with the horror of the past. How is that horror best dealt with?

Michael Williams: A couple of things. I think that again to the personal, if you lose somebody, somebody dies in your family, your advice that everyone gives you and your own understanding, is you have to grieve, so you have to spend time thinking about the event, working it through, talking, crying, having the emotions out there and that allows you to heal. Otherwise if you don't do that, it bites you sometime in the future. You're sitting there with something sitting inside you. And I certainly have found that in my times of working in education, that as students have come to work in Indigenous studies and understand Aboriginal experience in Australia, the first thing they say is, Why weren't we told this in Primary and Secondary School? And then they go to a space of the more that they read and understand and come to terms, they may not condone what might have happened, what did happen but they will certainly have the capacity through this dealing with the past, understanding it, working it through, they can then move on to creating their own response to it.

Florence Spurling: One of the ways that you've been particularly conscious of this question of the past is record-keeping in the Indigenous community. Can you give me an example of where that disrespect for record keeping, or record keeping release in the present day Indigenous community is a serious issue in how the past is fully honoured and understood, and made compensation for quite often.

Michael Williams: Well, my experience with the various records kept by governments over the years in this State and other States, the removal records, as they're known, there's been a position held by those in authority that there's a reluctance to reveal the detail of these removal records, in terms of what was said about people's ancestors. And the reason for that I think is flawed. I think it's a paternalistic attitude - again, I liken it to the subject of death in your family.

I draw a parallel between not being given access or having guarded and controlled access to those documents, the same thing is happening when somebody says to you, Your relative has died, but we're not going to allow you to go to the funeral. To me, it's as simple as that, at one level. And I think that you're better to have the full impact of what happened placed before you, so that you could work with it, and so I support the idea of having people have access to those removal records, in a controlled way, a way that they understand. If it comes out of left field, where it's put into the public domain without them having control of it, that's another part of the story, and I don't agree with that. But if somebody says, 'I want to see my ancestor's records, I want to see these removal records', I think they should be entitled to see that, so that they can work it through.

Florence Spurling: The paradox of dialogue is very much with you. The paradox of the past and the present, the more one accepts and embraces the past, the more the present can be enriched by it, rather than destroyed by it. They're truisms, but I guess in a sense the sort of work you're doing represents the sincere truth of that.

Mary Boys: Yes, I think when we have the courage to confront our shadow side of the past, that it makes for healthier living in the present. I remember one time a Jewish colleague and I ran a colloquium for Catholic and Jewish educators over a three-year period, they were very, very intense sessions. And at one of the sessions we really studied the kind of history, the general overall history of Christians and Jews together, and I must say the Catholics were really blown out of the water, it was so sobering to them.

But I remember one of them, older Jewish educators saying as we came to the conclusion of that, 'Good, now we can get off the mediaeval battlefield and talk where we are today. And I think we have to be willing to look at the mediaeval battlefield and when we do, then we can move to the present.

Florence Spurling: Mary Boys, Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. And to Bee Chen Goh again. She's Head of the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University.

Bee Chen Goh: I think when I spoke of the law of cause and effect, we are actually talking about karma, and of course in terms of karma and karmic consequences, we do not know, like for myself I do not know how many previous lives I've led, but certainly I believe I've lived in the past before because I think, you know, some sense of familiarity when you do certain things, or when you come across certain people, so I'm sure they've been past lives. And as to how we deal with that, sometimes we may have very instant insights as to, yes, I'm dealing with a particular consequence.

Take illness for example. In Buddhist belief there is that belief of when one is ill, especially when one's seriously ill, it could be some sort of karmic consequence, it could be from a previous life, unless we can trace it to something that we've done now, and that needs to be resolved. So yes, wrongs that we've done in the past, I think we talk about forgiveness, which again most faiths would preach a sense of forgiveness of the other people, of ourselves, and then to make sure that we no longer perpetuate that kind of a harm, no matter how small or insignificant.

Florence Spurling: Can you tell me more, please, about the way in which you and your family have reflected upon the passing of both your sister and your father over recent years, in terms of what we've talked about with the blessings they brought to their life in the present, and what this might mean as an ongoing impact on the present and the future, and perhaps in relation to the whole question of karma that we've been speaking about.

Bee Chen Goh: Yes, my sister who passed away in her mid-40s in the year 2003, and my father who passed away early October, I suppose in a sense in both instances, I had trained myself if nothing else in a textbook training version of spirituality and how to deal with death, and what death might mean. So in that sense perhaps I will count myself fortunate in the sense that although I grieved for the loss, I also was very conscious of how to deal with it spiritually as in the sense of their soulhood and the blessings that it was really good for them, but as a human being, of course, I felt really sad. And in my sister's case was different to my father's because my sister passed away when the family felt she could - she was highly talented, a brilliant teacher, very dedicated to public service - could have done so much more for the world, and so it was like a young life lost but of course there would be meaning in her passage.

In my father's case, again, he led a life of service, of blessedness, and in my father's case it was a very good lesson, for me and I'm sure for the family, that he gave us the sense of completion that in whatever you do, whatever you've begun, complete it. And just before he passed away, he was able to offer incense to the ancestors and to my grandparents, and I thought that was an amazing thing. It was a small thing, in the sense of a human act, but with amazing significance as in that signified a sense of completion he always carried about him.

And there was another thing with my father too, that each time I've phoned home, because he was in Malaysia, he would be always giving us words of appreciation about the family and about us, about our achievements, about how proud he was of us, and he will always say that each time. So when he passed away and I thought about him, I always thought about what he said.

Florence Spurling: And the sense with your sister again, the injustice of early death is strongly noted and felt in Western communities. Would you have felt that?

Bee Chen Goh: I suppose maybe not in as strong a sense as the word injustice perhaps, but a sense of an early loss, and I suppose maybe when you talk about karma and about Buddhism, we also always think about that there is a meaning to everything, a larger meaning to which we do not understand and that if we were in the know, we would then say, Oh, OK, that's what it is. And even though in my sister's case, she died fairly young in her age, she fulfilled I think many of the things she came onto this earth to do. So in that sense, she gave us the gift of what she had blessed each one of us with as well.

Florence Spurling: Elizabeth Glaser, she contracted AIDS through an emergency blood transfusion when she was in advanced pregnancy with Ariel, that's correct, isn't it?

Macarthur Clough: That's true, yes. It's a tragedy.

Florence Spurling: So when did Ariel die?

Macarthur Clough: Ariel passed away in 1988.

Florence Spurling: And Elizabeth, Ariel's mother, when did she die?

Macarthur Clough: Elizabeth passed away in 1994.

Florence Spurling: And in that terrible time between the death of her child and her own death, she raised an enormous amount of money, more than thirty million dollars for AIDS research, AIDS awareness, and it's particularly relevant of course to paediatric AIDS research. So in a period of time which wasn't as AIDS-conscious as perhaps we might be now, she really went forward and exposed her own vulnerability to try and make some good come out of this. Is that how it comes across to you?

Macarthur Clough: Most definitely. I think Elizabeth Glaser will probably be viewed even in posterity as a pioneer for AIDS recognition.

Florence Spurling: Macarthur Clough has toured internationally as a recognised clarinetist and he is presently principal clarinet with the Australian Youth Orchestra. We're talking about Ariel's Music, Brett Dean's composition inspired by Elizabeth Glaser and her daughter Ariel. As a clarinetist, Macarthur Clough first performed 'Ariel's Music' in October last year. In Elizabeth Glaser's response to the tragedy of AIDS and in the composition of 'Ariel's Music' we glimpse something which might have given Hamlet hope: clear-eyed realism about death and what has happened in the past, and ways of acting in the present which are decisive and constructive.

Macarthur Clough: Without her immense contribution to paediatric AIDS, I think that AIDS today and most specifically paediatric AIDS, wouldn't have the same awareness that it would have today without her help, and it's even more remarkable given the fact that her own fate was sealed, and she could have died much sooner than she did, but just having that vitality and that stiff upper lip to keep going, and really push the envelope in terms of AIDS research and AIDS funding.

Florence Spurling: Tell me a bit more about Brett Dean's response to the story. He read about it and then felt inspired to compose the music, 'Ariel's Music', as it's called?

Macarthur Clough: I had a conversation with Brett about how he came to start composing 'Ariel's Music', and he told me that he read an article in The Age about the plight of Elizabeth and Ariel Glaser, and their tragedy, and it was through that forum that he got his inspiration to compose 'Ariel's Music' which I guess is similar to other homages in music histories. And in terms of my response to the piece, I think it affected me quite deeply, quite spiritually, as I think it also affected people who listen to it in the performance and also the musicians accompanying me throughout the rehearsals and the performance.

It's one of those pieces you play and no matter where you've come from or what you've experienced, I think that most people can relate to some element of suffering they've experienced in their lives. I think that the work affects so many people because it does have that spiritual element, and it has the ability to enlighten people through music, which I think is something very special to the arts, and especially through music in that music can communicate things that can't necessarily be expressed through words.

Florence Spurling: But whose voice do you really feel you are?

Macarthur Clough: It's a very good question. I think that with music in particular, you can actually be playing one voice and have several different voices speaking at the same time, and it just depends on the listener's perspective as to the type of voice the listener is hearing through the melodic line that the soloist is playing or the orchestra is playing. I think most of the time, my voice is that of Elizabeth Glaser, and a lot of the time the clarinet part is rebellious and juxtaposed against the often lyrical orchestral textures, and the clarinet will have jagged, incisive, melodic lines jutting out against that.

I think that that's particularly symbolic of the struggle of Elizabeth Glaser against a greater body of people. The whole time the clarinet's screeching to be heard above the orchestra, except for moments of lament and exhaustion where it winds down to this distinct motif of a 9th which I'd say you could call that Elizabeth's motif where that motif of what we call a 9th in music, permeates the entire piece and I think that whether people realised it or not, whenever they heard that motif, it brought them back to the start of the piece and that initial sorrow. If you're talking narratively, it probably reflects the death of Ariel at the very beginning.

ARIEL'S MUSIC - SOLO CLARINET

Florence Spurling: Macarthur Clough, internationally recognised clarinetist, talking to me at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. And to extend our theme in this week's Encounter on ABC Radio National, we listen to Les Murray's poem, The Widower in the Country, which is another unflinching account of a death in the past and how its reality impacts upon every moment of the present. This poem extends our awareness of how the magnitude of death and the past are often profoundly realised but not precisely named.

I'll get up soon, and leave my bed unmade.
I'll go outside and split off kindling wood,
from the yellow-box log that lies beside the gate,
and the sun will be high, for I get up late now.

I'll drive my axe in the log and come back in
with my armful of wood, and pause to look across

the Christmas paddocks, aching in the heat,
the windless trees, the nettles in the yard ...
and then I'll go in, boil water and make tea.

This afternoon, I'll stand out on the hill
and watch my house away below, and how
the roof reflects the sun and make my eyes
water and close on bright webbed visions smeared

on the dark of my thoughts to dance and fade away,
Then the sun will move on, and I will simply watch,
or work, or sleep. And evening will come on.

Getting near dark, I'll go home, light the lamp
and eat my corned-beef supper, sitting there
at the head of the table. Then I'll go to bed.
Last night I thought I dreamed - but when I woke

ihe screaming was only a possum ski-ing down
the iron roof on little moonlit claws.

Florence Spurling: Professor Mary Boys in New York is a member of the Order of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, a congregation of Roman Catholic women.

Mary Boys: Actually our name was an inheritance. We were founded in the 1840s in Quebec, in Canada, and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary were originally a French foundation. They were to come over to North America but their dissolution in the French Revolution, they instead simply passed on their name and their rule book, and their habit, which we then adapted. So historically, this is something that we merely adopted. I think for me this is a sense of bringing the feminine, bringing the relationship between Mary and Jesus, but also maybe more significant for me, and it's kind of a personal thing, is a sense of what it means to be a holy name and to regard others as also having holy names. What makes a name holy, and I think here of a name as standing in for a person. And then, of course, in the Jewish tradition, one doesn't speak the name of God, one might even refer to God as Hashem, as the Name. So, somehow this Holy Names of Jesus and Mary and working with those who speak of God as Hashem, somehow I'm not sure I could articulate it but they all kind of work together for me.

Florence Spurling: So the nameless in the Jewish tradition and the name which is holy in the Christian tradition carry a common sense of awe and mystery?

Mary Boys: Yes. Yes I think that you've hit it quite well. Each person is really inexhaustible, not in the same way I suppose that we speak of God's infinity, but there's always something unknowable about the person, no matter how much we are with them. And so this sense of name as mystery, when Moses asked God to reveal the divine name, it means something like 'I will be who I will be', it's this transcendence, this ungraspability.

Macarthur Clough: Playing a wind instrument, woodwind instrument in particular, it is really in essence an extension of your voice, and I don't mean it in a literal sense, as an extension of the larynx, but in the sense that playing an instrument you feel like the instrument taps in to something that cannot be described, and is there, tangible enough but something that's hard to put a finger on, and it communicates something that I think is very Schopenhauerian, in a way, it's tapping into the noumenal of human soul that you can't really find the right words or the right illustrations to properly describe, and I think that when you play a wind instrument, you do sing through it, and you do talk through it, and you can do anything through it really, like it's a tool of limitless power and it's a great privilege being able to do such a thing where you can communicate without having to use your voice, without having to use words, and without having to use a paintbrush, just having with you what is essentially a cylinder of wood, and a small, artificial mouthpiece to make sounds that can communicate with people on a level that we don't really understand. It's definitely a great honour.

Florence Spurling: At the University of Queensland, Aboriginal leader and academic Michael Williams returns to the question of the colonial past and its impact on the present for indigenous Australians.

Michael Williams: For there to be significant movement away from the present dynamic, people would have to have the courage to start the process of change from a point outside of that which has been influenced by the colonial enterprise.

Florence Spurling: What would be a way you could do that in the Indigenous community, for instance here in Queensland? How would you do that? What's an example of how you do that?

Michael Williams: The stark and probably too testy an example is to consider the implications of recognising sovereignty, I mean that's stepping outside of the boundaries well and truly. But the other way I think is that how truly have subsequent governments and policy makers and bureaucrats over the years really sat down and engaged on Indigenous people's terms to understand what they're saying and really hear their voice. And I think you can extrapolate from that to talk about any group that the government has an impact upon.

Florence Spurling: Acknowledging the voice of past and present experience brings us to the future. I've called this Encounter 'Releasing the Records', after Michael Williams' point earlier about the importance of records release for Indigenous Australians. We've recorded our signature on Kyoto, what past and present wisdom's might need our acknowledgement as we go forward? A final question:

Noel Pearson wrote recently in The Australian that the Church is no longer the driving force of meaning and values perhaps as it might have been once, and he commented that now we congregate on a Sunday morning in the aisles of a very well known major hardware store to get on with our latest home improvement, and I'm just wondering if that focus on consumerism and the personal small world of the home which Noel Pearson's referring to interests you in terms of how meaning is forged in the present in Australia. I'm wondering what comments you'd want to make of how Indigenous meaning might be forged compared to the sort of focus on consumerism and materialism.

Michael Williams: I would suggest that for some, the Church no longer represents that driving force.

Florence Spurling: For some Indigenous or some mainstream Australians?

Michael Williams: For both, mainstream and indigenous, I think it probably doesn't, but I think for many it does still. So it's not an either/or, I think like anything there's some who still see the Church as the driving force for their meaning in life. As for consumerism, I think that that's probably something that certainly Indigenous people and those who are interested in the welfare of our earth, our planet, that's one of our major concerns, is that this obsession with more and more, and consuming more and consuming more, is something that we regret and are constantly arguing that should change, we should have an earth-focused, ethical approach to life, not a human focused only. We need to see where we fit into the whole broad scheme of things. We're not here to dominate, and I think if we continue to dominate or have that attitude of domination, as human beings, our earth will be destroyed.

Florence Spurling: Thanks to all who took part in this Encounter on ABC Radio National. Macarthur Clough's solo clarinet performance of 'Ariel's Music', composed by Brett Dean, was recorded by Gary Yule at the ABC's Ferry Road studios in Brisbane. Next month Macarthur performs with the Queensland Youth Symphony and maestro John Curro in the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

The orchestral rendition of 'Ariel's Music' for Encounter came from the ABC's CD, 'Ariel's Music' with Paul Dean as clarinet in his brother Brett Dean's composition and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Mills.

Paul Denny read Les Murray's poem 'The Widower in the Country' published by William Heinemann from Collected Poems.

Eugene Giulfedder read from Hamlet by William Shakespeare from the Folger Library edition.

I read from Robert Bly's prose poem 'Sea Water Pouring Back over Stones' from 'The Morning Glory - Prose Poems by Robert Bly', published by Harper and Row. I also referred to Noel Pearson's article in The Weekend Australian of September 1st last year.

This is ABC Radio National's Encounter. I'm Florence Spurling, and thanks as well to James Ussher and Peter McMurray for technical production.

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Florence Spurling