NICOLA CAROLI | BLOG

The unique interdisciplinary Life of Breath project which ran from 2015 – 2020 in the UK has come to an end. Life of Breath was led by Prof Jane Macnaughton at Durham University and Prof Havi Carel at University of Bristol. In their exploration of the theme of Breathlessness, they were supported by teams at both Bristol and Durham universities and expert collaborators.

I’m honoured to have participated with a blog post contribution at the beginning of the project and have shared Life of Breath content over the years on this blog.

The Life of Breath Project left a legacy of practical resources, a video archive, a podcast series, and a vibrant blog as well as academic publications. It is really timeless since breathlessness is potentially, and for many actually, ever present.

In this interview, world-renowned and reliably wonderful author David Grossman talks about his book A Horse Walks into a Bar with euronews’ Isabelle Kumar.

The interview from 2016 in Jerusalem is strangely relevant to what is currently going on, I found, as I listened to it today. The central theme of fear in society dominates the conversation. One phrase by David Grossman that particularly struck me was “the air of despair”. It embodies a physical and metaphysical atmosphere that one is exposed to but also something which one participates in and co-creates.

I just took part in an online group session with Gopal Norbert Klein, one of the leading trauma therapists in Germany. Gopal teaches that all we seek, as mammals, apart from survival, is connection. The basis of connecting with others is to connect with oneself, to sense one‘s own body, sensations, needs and feelings. And then to express these sensations, needs and feelings rather than holding them in or overriding them with thinking. 

Gopal said that „with people who can‘t sense themselves, who can‘t do that at all, I tell them to hold their breath. Then a need will come, the need to breathe. The next step would be to sense the need to drink, to eat… Needs have nothing to do with thoughts, with the stories we tell ourselves.”

At the beginning of March this year, I had one of those blast-from-the-past-triggers which promptly brought on a terrible cough. I was back in my childhood, lying in bed, coughing. Looking back, I realised I’d spent the majority of my life coughing. I had chronic bronchitis since I was a child and smoked for thirty years, from the age of twelve to forty-two. Coughing, being ill, lying in bed, were „normal“ to me. 

This time, for the first time, I realised how lonely and painful this had been. Listening to myself coughing was like hearing a whole orchestra of coughs, evoking the different beds I‘d lain in, in different countries and houses over the years. 

I’d like to share an excerpt of The Ghost Road by Pat Barker with you. The Ghost Road is the third volume of a trilogy that follows the fortunes of shell-shocked British army officers towards the end of the First World War. The other books in the trilogy are Regeneration and The Eye in the Door. This trilogy, I can safely say, is one of the best pieces of literary works I‘ve ever read. 

The Ghost Road is set at the end of World War I in 1918. As the psychologist William Rivers takes on new shell shock cases, he remembers his research trip to Eddystone island in Melanesia years before. One ritual of the locals of Eddystone island was head-hunting, a pursuit which had been abolished by a British colonial administration. „The contrast between the primitives’ deeply considered approach to death and the pointless killing (of the First World War) indulged in by supposedly more civilized people is only hinted at, but it gives the book, particularly in its deeply eloquent concluding pages, enormous resonance.“ cites Publisher‘s Weekly.

The excerpt I’ve chosen deals with the death of an elderly resident, Mbuko, of Eddystone island, and offers insights into the dying process and into what it means to die.

In response to the death of George Floyd and the numerous recent police killings of unarmed Black people, singer/songwriter H.E.R. composed her latest song I can’t breathe. 

22 year old Gabriella Wilson aka H.E.R. impresses with powerful images, lyrics and spoken word in the video to I Can’t Breathe.