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Consecration
It was in Falmouth, Cornwall, at the 2015 meeting of the Association for Medical
Humanities. I met Martin the first morning, at breakfast. He sat down and immediately
engaged conversation, eager to know us. His lean narrow face with strong nose are adult,
looking strong in the ways of the world, but his big darting eyes, wide mouth open in
ready grins and laughter, and quick-sprung gestures made him look 18 not his 28 years.
He said that he would present a performance that evening. And, in the matter-of-fact way
he might have said he was a bus driver or a copyeditor, said that he had cystic fibrosis.
At 7 we gather at the Dartington Gallery where the performance was scheduled,
but are told it was moved. We walk to a small paved space between buildings. There are
tall trees on one side. The day is coming to an end, birds are gathering and calling in the
trees. In the falling darkness there are spurts of wind. Martin appears, wearing only a
loose athletic supporter. His body is youthful but virile and firm. Its attractiveness does
not intimate the sickness within. The white athletic supporter does call attention to his
male genitals and its looseness suggests easy access.
He lays two sheets on the pavement some distance apart. On one he moves a large
triangular box about three feet high on one side and then sloping to the ground. From a
bottle Martin pours oil over his body, rubbing it everywhere. He rubs vigorously and at
length. He does not identify the oil, it doubtless had been extracted from plants. What had
been inside them is now outside, and makes the outside of his body gleam. It enhances
the attractiveness of his lissome torso, thighs, legs, and arms. It spreads an obscure
warmth, not the languid eroticism of abandon, instead an active and assertive sensuality.
Anointing the body with oil is a healing in Judaic and Christian practice, in India,
and anthropologists have traced it back in prehistoric times. In Orthodox and Catholic
practice anointment of the dying with oil (extreme unction) is a last act of healing and a
spiritual healing of the soul about to depart. Anointing the body with oil is also an act of
consecration. The anointed body is advanced to a sacred state and delivered over to an
appointed destiny. The Hebrew word “Messiah” means “the Anointed One.” Jewish
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priests were consecrated with holy oil. At coronation ceremonies in Europe monarchs
were anointed by bishops and thereby elevated to priestly or saintly status.
Martin takes a scalpel and cuts on his chest the outline of his lungs, now drawn in
blood. He lies back on the triangular box, head down, and pounds his chest violently.
Finally he is shaken with convulsive coughing, and he coughs into a plastic cup some
viscous phlegm. He slides off the box and crawls across the pavement to put the plastic
cup on the second sheet. The sick inside of the body is being exposed. He returns, pounds
his chest, coughs up more phlegm. It is not himself he is assaulting; his body is a thing
that is destroying itself, a medicalized organism that he pounding with determination and
force.
This pounding is in fact a physiotherapy enjoined on sufferers of cystic fibrosis. It
is a daily subjection to the illness of the body. Making this activity a voluntary
performance, we see the depth of his suffering and also see him affirming his
determination, his existence, and his identity.
The performance lasts about an hour, repetitions of the pounding, the coughing,
the taking the phlegm over the pavement to the other side. It is not a time in which an
action is being inaugurated, developed, and concluded, not a time of a narrative
advancing to its denouement or complete disclosure. It is a time of waiting and of
convulsive effort that did not advance or build or accomplish.
Martin is not simply affirming his identity; he is performing for an audience. He
is engaging with us witnesses.
We live our lives silently, effortlessly breathing. Inside our bodies all is discretion;
our lungs do not push themselves before us. The harsh convulsive coughing expels
Martin’s tormented and constricted breathing outside; it throbs inside us. We do not look
upon his suffering as a spectacle; it invades us. It announces sickness inside our bodies
that our minds do not see.
It takes time, time to pound and loosen the mucus, to cough. We endure this time,
a dead time of waiting. We wait and then hear and feel the harsh effort in coughing to
expel the phlegm. Then we will wait as Martin pounds his chest again, wait for his
convulsive coughing. Then endure the time of waiting again.
The outline of Martin’s lungs in blood, the convulsive effort, made us feel that the
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duration of time he endures is the limited time of a life fated to an early death. We are
referred to our mortality, which is there indistinctly in the indeterminate future. For those
of us who are already advanced in years, we sense death pressing on us as it does on him.
Martin crawls across the pavement to the second sheet where there are now a
dozen cups of mucus. He kneels upright and drops the thick greenish mucus from the
cups, one after another, over his head and body. What had been inside his body and
invisible is now visible over his body surfaces. It has not been rejected. The cystic
fibrosis had not been cast away. He rubs the mucus over his head, his body. He plays
with, takes pleasure in the abject substances produced by his body. Like a child.
Martin’s body is anointed with mucus as with oil. The mucus drawn from his own
body becomes a consecration of his body. The performance is sacred ritual.
The following day Martin O’Brien spoke and showed videos of performances he has
given. He spoke with zest and drive, moving across the stage, laughing, suddenly
bursting loud into song, leading us into song.
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