I cannot write about this in the 3rd person, nor as a performance work, though it is the most important art I've made in my life.

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This project involved going for a period of 7-10 days to stay with a person facing a terminal illness, often in hospice, though sometimes in the comfort of their home. There, I would interview them. I would be with them as much as their bodies, their pain and discomfort, their exhaustion would allowed. We'd speak about their lives, but this was not with the purpose to create a memoir. I wasn’t interested in timelines or accomplishments. I was working with them diligently to retrace all of their most powerful, potent, important wisdom - so that we could, together, write a text that could be handed to their loved ones after their death.

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I proceeded at first with a careful methodology... but then eventually I followed my intuition. We’d talk about everything: the beautiful, the brutal, the regrets, the triumphs, the things they thought they’d buried for good. I’d ask questions no one had asked them in years, maybe ever. Sometimes we cried. Sometimes we laughed when it didn’t seem like we should.

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We all know that the hardest moments are also often the ones most ripe with learning. So I held their hands and listened, and listened, and listened - and led them down passages that had often been untraveled for decades.

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While they slept, I’d listen to the recordings, transcribe every word, and start shaping it into something clear, sharp, true. On the last day, we’d sit with the text together, edit it, make sure it felt right. Before I left, they’d tell me who the words were meant for—how many copies, whose hands it should land in. They’d pass my contact info to someone close, so when the time came, I’d know.

Most people leave behind a legal will to divide their possessions. But what about the things that can’t be held? The lessons etched into the heart, the moments that broke and remade them, the truths that we want to outlast us? That’s what Wisdom Weaving was for—to hold what can’t be held, to carry what refuses to be kept, and to offer it back as something which endures.

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For the sake of privacy, I cannot share the documents themselves. The utter anonymity of each participant is sacrosanct. This image to the right is only here as indication. I consider myself - the shape of my soul - to be, ultimately, the only documentation of this work beyond the original document.

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I look forward to re-engaging this work again in the near future. ​