The lights go down, people settle. A violin starts to play. Stage left, an elderly man walks onstage, alone, in a suit and tie, wearing a hat. This is John Cartwright, aged just 87 - The Performer. In this episode, we consider what performance means – on life as performance, and performance as life. How performance brings us alive, stretches us and helps us to grow. Punctuated by his poetry, John Cartwright provides a meditation on ageing, on the body, on movement, and what it means to be alive in this world. A refraction from within the kernel of a particular existence, turned outward and inward, shared. A mirror of life and death. The lights dim, the curtain closes… we applaud. We shuffle out, head our separate ways, holding the memory of the experience. We’re reflecting on what things mean. On who we love, and how we might do better. The stars in our own little life show, silently reciting our lines. Perhaps we sense a flickering curtain. Or can register the fading light. Or perhaps we’re entirely unaware that this is it, that life is no rehearsal…
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The lights go down, people settle. A violin starts to play. Stage left, an elderly man walks onstage, alone, in a suit and tie, wearing a hat. This is John Cartwright, aged just 87 - The Performer. In this episode, we consider what performance means – on life as performance, and performance as life. How performance brings us alive, stretches us and helps us to grow. Punctuated by his poetry, John Cartwright provides a meditation on ageing, on the body, on movement, and what it means to be alive in this world. A refraction from within the kernel of a particular existence, turned outward and inward, shared. A mirror of life and death. The lights dim, the curtain closes… we applaud. We shuffle out, head our separate ways, holding the memory of the experience. We’re reflecting on what things mean. On who we love, and how we might do better. The stars in our own little life show, silently reciting our lines. Perhaps we sense a flickering curtain. Or can register the fading light. Or perhaps we’re entirely unaware that this is it, that life is no rehearsal…
A whopper of an episode with an extraordinary guest, outgoing Emeritus Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Cape Town Medical School, Dr Graham Louw. We discuss body donation and what it’s like for students to apprehend their first cadaver, and take a trip under the skin, besides discussing a whole pile of other things that Graham has learnt over his long career - a career which has benefited many thousands of people.
How To Die
The lights go down, people settle. A violin starts to play. Stage left, an elderly man walks onstage, alone, in a suit and tie, wearing a hat. This is John Cartwright, aged just 87 - The Performer. In this episode, we consider what performance means – on life as performance, and performance as life. How performance brings us alive, stretches us and helps us to grow. Punctuated by his poetry, John Cartwright provides a meditation on ageing, on the body, on movement, and what it means to be alive in this world. A refraction from within the kernel of a particular existence, turned outward and inward, shared. A mirror of life and death. The lights dim, the curtain closes… we applaud. We shuffle out, head our separate ways, holding the memory of the experience. We’re reflecting on what things mean. On who we love, and how we might do better. The stars in our own little life show, silently reciting our lines. Perhaps we sense a flickering curtain. Or can register the fading light. Or perhaps we’re entirely unaware that this is it, that life is no rehearsal…
