Speaking Through Water

This work began from a dream I had in Beijing, China, exactly a year after my father passed over. Something had haunted me since his passing: I had been forbidden by my father’s wife to speak at his funeral, which I felt was an important rite of passage. In my dream I was shouting, saying how I wanted to speak at my own father’s funeral.

No one could hear me. It felt like I was speaking through water: no one could hear me. I took this dream experience into a physical process where I wrote down on paper what was important for me to say, and then filmed myself saying these words into water. In turn, I asked others from my community in Beijing to do the same. As I was in China, I assumed their concerns would be of political issues, the larger picture. Surprisingly, people wrote more about emotional censorship and personal difficulties…

essay