“DEATH”

I.

We see not death, but rather a vast symbolism that stands in its place. Our notion of death could only be metaphor.

II.

Death is but a circumference, beyond whose boundaries there is nothing more than time, and more time, without limit.

III.

My death is a form across space and time. Its shape is determined by the limits within which I can exist. All that exceeds the limits of that form is my death.

IV.

Various deaths embody various forms.

V.

An animal evolves into the shape that is the negative of its mortality.

VI.

The true definition of “death” is unutterable, and as unknowable as the true circle. While the true circle is spatially breadth-less, death is a breadth-less state of mind.

VII.

Archimedes’ fateful words were: “Don’t disturb my circles”.

VIII.

Death is the chasm between personhood and corporality. In death, the vulnerable notion of personhood is cleft not only from the form and the object of the body, but also from the world.

IX.

Sometimes when you’re in a hole, it’s best to keep digging.

X.

Death is a shadow of time.

XI.

Death was in a temper after trying to explain the concept of past, present and future to a circle… It was tense.

XII.

Language is the geometry of remembering.

XIII.

Death is the punctuation of history.

XIV.

But am I presupposing that “death” is even a word, when in fact it is some other eccentricity of language, such as a slogan, or a motto, or an opinion? Can I prove that the word “death” exists without my argument becoming circular?

XV.

When I say that the thought of death is now in my mind, and that there is no other thought in my mind other than the thought of death, and that the meaning of the word “death” within my thought of death is only the thought that I am thinking while I am thinking this thought of death, but while I cannot think another thought other than this thought of death (while I am thinking this thought of death), then how can I know while I am thinking of death that this death I am thinking of is the true thought of death?

Nathan Hollywood, 2017

(text commissioned for Andrew Liversidge, DEATH, at The Commercial, Sydney, 2017)