Cole Haddon / 5 am Story Talk
We're All Made of Horrible, Beautiful ScarsAustralian rocker Nick Cave, Native American activist/poet John Trudell, and a 14th-century Japanese shogun have thoughts about how to put ourselves back together through art
It is a story told in anecdotes, about a teenager who fell off a cliff, about a fire that killed a man's whole family, about a 14th century Shogun, about Japanese philosophy, about the death of Haddon's father. I can't excerpt it - it needs to be read as a complete piece -- except I can explain this:
... Kintsugi, or “golden joiner”, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer that’s been mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. It treats breakage — but, really, repair — as part of the history of an object. No attempt is made to disguise the “scar”, so to say. The cracks and repairs are, instead, part of the life of the object....
In their own ways, all of the people in Haddon's stories found how to continue:
My heart doesn't hurt anymoreBut my soul does, maybeThat's what souls are for, toTake the hurt the heart can't takeThe heart can't take...But really, the act of putting ourselves back together through our art. The breakages, the scars, the hanging on lines on full display. Because nothing remains the same forever.
