‘And what does every one of us think? Does one stop rushing – on the street, in the tram, wherever… struck as if by lightning with the thought: after all, I could die in any moment.

A multitude of information speaks to us about others – somebody there… has fallen down, had a heart attack, has fallen into (??), has been attacked, has cancer, has committed… (committed doesn’t really make sense here. Committed what? Or is committed? Or has been committed? But to what?

And we? And I? – I am alive. I go further… but… This thought has accompanied me from my childhood, when I was looking with my grandmother at photos of the funerals of her two children, my uncle and aunt…

She was strong, and it was she who accustomed me to the thought that the time spent here has its own end. And I should use it in the best way. Because it will not be repeated – even if we believe in reincarnation, we will not return in the same way.

When I saw for the first time a butō performance – Daisuke Yoshimoto’s Earth’s Dreams – I didn’t understand very much. But my first thought was that memory of my grandmother, and those scenes from the photos we looked at together. Next, came verses of my beloved poet, Zbigniew Herbert.

(Janusz Andrzejewski)