Saying the Unsayable: Making Questions for John

August, 2025

‘Of course, yep, no problem. A piece about John, well… a way of asking him questions. Yep.’

I put the phone down (well nobody ‘puts the phone down’ anymore, so I thumb a red square on my screen).

And then I forget I had said what I said within minutes.

The last time I was with John, John Berger I mean, was in the mountains. I travelled in from Geneva Airport to the Haut Savoie by taxi. I had never in 25 years travelled to where John lived by taxi. He always met me. Or if ever he didn’t, Yves would. Yves is John’s youngest son. His mother Beverly died in 2013. Dawn was breaking over the mountains. I took a photo.

Almost every morning when I wake, a train is running. A train of thoughts. People and faces appear. You are there. Almost every morning.

The taxi drew up to the house, which felt quiet. It was always quiet because everywhere in the mountains has a feeling of quiet. Maybe because they are so massive, that at our voices, even when loud and they do have to be loud in that air, feel insignificant. I was used to the mountain quiet.

Right now I want to ask you what the fuck more can we do. Everything is stacked against us. Our rights to even talk about Palestine are shut down, closed up, inhibited by lack of information, prohibited by law. What do we do John?

But the quiet as I got out of the taxi was unfamiliar. The geraniums on the balcony were dry. It was winter after all. But should they have not been put in the stable to sleep? Away from the cold?

I sat briefly at John’s desk and tried to translate what I had written on the plane. Yves and I drove down to the church.

As I lie in my bed, which you know because you slept in it, not here in this valley where I live now, but in other houses and in other times, I conjure your voice and your laugh. And your astonishment. And curiosity. And your furious resistance at the injustices which grip the world.

In the side chapel there is John. I stand. Yves is drawing. I bend and kiss John’s forehead. It is so cold. Colder than my father’s head, though I kissed him so soon after he died he was maybe warmer. My mother too. She didn’t feel as cold. This felt like kissing marble. Later I speak out loud that we have John’s words that are like a roof for us all, under which we can take shelter.

I turn over in bed again. Holding my pillow.

‘I think you need to try to say the unsayable ’ Did you say this? Did I imagine it? Fantasise it? Did I deliberately create you and imagine your words, I know the sound of your voice so deeply I can hear you say anything. Or maybe I can’t. Maybe I can only hear the echo of things you said to me so many times. But however these words come they seem to me to be the ones I will need. What are they?

(The word Genocide was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin to describe a crime that was indescribable. Ecocide was created by Arthur W. Galston in 1970 to describe another atrocity; that of the environmental damage from U.S. defoliation practices, the obliteration by bombing of the forest, in Vietnam. Unthinkable, unspeakable, unconscionable, unimaginable… unsayable… what words do we have for this horror so that we can see? Or hear? Or simply come together? What words…?)

We all gathered around the deep dug hole and lowered John into the ground. We threw flowers and objects in on top of his box, which lay and lies on top of Beverly’s. The mountains watched. We sang. We laughed. So many were there. Then we all ate in the village hall of Mieussy.

…

‘Hello?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m not sure what I can make or if I am capable of making something that can speak to the abomination of what is happening… what would be needed… to even begin?’

‘Well it’s sold out’

‘What?’

‘In a couple of hours…’

‘Fuck’

‘It’ll be fine…’

The phone off, I lie back on my bed. Did I really agree to this? To make something in three days? About this atrocity the world is complicit in, that we are all simply watching in real time? And then do it in front of 200 people? Who have paid? What do you think John?

I try to hear you. I think you are laughing. At the back of your throat. I know that I will have to speak to you in front of everyone. Something I only do alone. Normally. Something private will have to become public. It feels too intimate. Too exposed. I won’t find the words. I am not even sure what the words are. But I will have to try… you’d better be there. Because I will ask you how to attempt to say the unsayable. I will try to do this. At least… I will try.