ARTIST STATEMENT

Grief’s Garden: Meditations for Moving Through Loss

“…the price of living wholeheartedly (which is the only way worth living) is the heartbreak of many losses — the loss of love to dissolution, distance, or death…”

—Maria Popova

A letter to those who have experienced loss,

When we speak of grief, we often associate it with death, but whenever we lose love in some way, grief enters the room. People come in and out of our lives, romantic relationships end, friendships change, a parent’s physical health alters.

Within these shifts, something dies, in that the relationship is no longer what it once was. Grief is love with nowhere to go, or love that cannot go where it went before. Grief is love trying to hold on. How do we let go of what was when we don’t want to let go of it? How do we continue on when the idea of living without what was lost feels unbearable?

Grief is often characterized as a heavy burden or a weight to be carried, but what if we allowed grief to carry us? What if we shifted the paradigm to think of grief as a being or spirit with its own autonomy? A companion offering care and guidance on a sacred journey.

Instead of taking grief with us, perhaps grief takes us where we need to go.

As we do the brave work of leaning into our grief, our shadows, our humanity, we need sacred spaces in which to unfold and move through this work of healing.

In considering what new meditations I could offer this brave space, I asked myself in the silence, “What new space do I need? Where do I need to be brave?”

My deep reply, “You need a place where you can grieve the love you’ve lost.”

The work asked of me to bring the whole of my experience with grief to create a portal to a world that could hold its continual outworking. This came specifically in the context of how I experienced (and continue to experience) the loss of love in my relationship with three beings, the loss of someone to death, the loss of an intimate friendship, and the loss of an animal friend.

This process involved exploring an already existing world and giving it a sonic space in which to be experienced. It took me on a journey intertwining inner landscapes with threads of my ancestry within Korean funeral ceremonies.

In Korea, funerals traditionally took place over a span of three days. Within that time, ritual wailing known as gok (곡) was done at three specific times. After the death, after the body was washed, and after the burial, at which point a period of three years of mourning began. During the three years of mourning, ritual wailing was continued twice a day in the first year and twice a month in the second and third years. These rituals were done more so for the loss of parents and family.

Within these ceremonies is held a deep respect and place for mourning those who have passed, not only to honor their lives and how much they were loved, but to guide their spirits into the next realm.

In the same way, the meditations of Grief’s Garden offer space to mourn the relationships that have passed in the ways we’ve known them, but in this case, to guide our own spirits into the next realm of those relationships, whether they continue beyond the physical, in new iterations, or in memory.

As ritual wailing followed a three-fold framework in traditional Korean funeral ceremonies, a similar structure was used to paint a landscape for three movements through loss.

Throughout the meditations, grief finds voice in the traditional Korean instrument of the gayageum (가야금), a 12-stringed plucked zither. The ajaeng (아쟁), a seven stringed bowed zither, upholds foundational sounds of support in the sonic world, and a yoryeong (요령), a hand-bell, heard at the beginning of the final song, “Grief’s Garden”, mirrors the burial procession and the beginning of a long walk and journey with Grief.

In the first movement, after the death, Grief appears. The song “Don’t Fade (The Loss)” holds space for loss in a tangible experience or felt moment, conveyed in the concrete language of lyrics.

In the second movement, after the body is washed, Grief sings. What can be said when you’re overwhelmed by oceans of love’s absence?  “No Words (A New Companion)” begins a conversation without words. It is the unfolding of a new way to offer the love that can no longer go where it used to.

In the third movement, after the burial, Grief holds space. “Grief’s Garden (A Long Walk)” is a longform song, a place to settle in and linger. Grief’s Garden holds a collective experience made of very personal loss. In this garden is solemn soil. It is an endless, expanding world with paths tread by a million steps and trees grown over lifetimes from great seeds of loss. Here, you are never truly lost, but learning how to love what was lost along winding back roads.

I cannot say what these meditations will be for you, but I can tell you what they have been for me. Even as they were being unearthed and not fully formed, these songs held me as I moved through waves of grief. They held space for me to be seen, to unravel and unfold, and to laugh, celebrate, and remember. They offered unspoken understanding as I turned over, with sometimes shaky hands, the love I’ve lost “to dissolution, distance, or death”. Grief has taken me where I needed to go, and I trust will continue to guide me as I come to know more of myself and this world of love and loss.

Though these meditations were birthed from a place of leaning into loss specifically  in relationships, grief is grief. Perhaps you are mourning the loss of a certain type of childhood, of hiding a part of yourself, or losing a physical place near to your heart. Whatever losses you hold, there is space for you to be held in Grief’s Garden.

As you move through those tender places within, may you find whatever is needed in this sonic world. May you come to know Grief as a companion, and perhaps someday, a friend. And as you travel through the linear days of the physical world, may you trust the non-linear movements of integration and transformation held simply in being with each present moment.

Deepest breath, deepest bow,
Shel Kim Rollison,
Our Daughter (우리 딸)