this is my niece ann-marie performing her monologue 'slow' at the sydney writer's festival on thursday ..
it was pretty difficult getting the entire writing in an image and still be readable ..
& its definitely a piece that is so much more powerful when read out loud as a performance .. it loses so much like this ..
i wasnt sure if the writing could be read by someone who hadnt read it before .. after alicia's comment i'm putting it in here ...
Slow
I used to payout on people who told me smoking kills, until the doctor said I have six months. That’s when I realised I was now her, I was that girl, that girl in the ads, with her tile-white scalp staring at the passers by. I, Susannah Garvie, am now her.
I feel as if I couldn’t have let cancer sneak up on me like this. Don’t I know myself? How can death grow inside me and I not notice his presence. Will I call cancer a he? Yeah, I think I will.
People believe they’re alone when they go through a break up, or a drug addiction, or a try out at depression; but they’re wrong. I realise that now. Nothing is more alone than facing your own death.
I feel as if whispers surround me. People talk quietly to me, about me, alongside me. Living people seem to think dying people love silence. And I do. I love the silence of sunset, but I hate the silence of my dying life. Why can’t I die as I’ve lived; normally, loudly, unashamed. No, my friends seem to say, you’ve got to die in a whisper. Die quietly, so that once you’re gone things won’t change around here, because you would’ve already left. Don’t hurt our ears. We need monotony of sound. Don’t let your voice be alive then suddenly dead. Phase out, Susannah.
When they aren’t around I scream. I scream until I cough up blood. That makes me feel like I am noise again. And noise is only made by the living.
When I was a kid I used to imagine what it’d be like to die. I wanted people to cry for me. I wanted everyone dressed in black. I wanted sadness and agony at my ten year old funeral. Then I grew up a bit and wished my teenage lovers would sob for me. Now that I’m actually about to die I no longer want to go.
Some days I wake up and say ‘come on Susannah, today is the day you’re going to become one of those people they write novels about. The kind who gets the cancer at twenty-seven and takes it like a hero.’ I imagine myself becoming an inspiration, going into schools and speaking in a gentle voice, helping the children see that old cliché: death is but a part of life.
As soon as the doctor told me, I knew that I wasn’t going to be a miracle story.
I knew my cancer was serious.
I had no choice.
I accepted.
But when God finally says ‘go’, I’m going to say, ‘okay…but slow.’
I love the old worldly charm of this ROZ as it look like an image from the past.....
Rich golden etched colors, to highlight the verse.
You have an amazing talent with whatever you do.....
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