[Applause]
the whole of our lives
is a journey between two breasts the
first breath when we were born and the
last breath before we died in the last
five years I started paying attention to
all of the breasts in between I started
research on freediving which has been
described as the second most dangerous
extreme sport
my preferred research methodology is
full immersion actually becoming the
thing I’m trying to understand free
diving or breath-hold diving at its most
basic is just holding your breath and
diving underwater it’s both a
commonplace in unique form of engagement
between humans and oceans commonplace
because we can do it from the moment we
are born if you we’ve already spent nine
months in the watery world of the
amniotic sac if you immerse an infant in
water she will open her eyes hold her
breath slow her heartbeat and start to
swim breaststroke but also unique
because it’s recently been reinvented as
an extreme sport divers are going 200
meters and more underwater on a single
breath and there are people who can hold
their breath for 11 minutes underwater
and it is an extreme sport we are
terrestrial air-breathing mammals to
take yourself very deep underwater on
one breath and with no ancillary
equipment is inherently dangerous
parallel to the competitive aspect free
diving has been rapidly increasing
around the world as a recreational
activity and that’s partly because
paradoxically many people find it they
can rapidly improve in free diving I
went from a breath hold of one minute to
four minutes quite quickly and many of
you would to pretty Ivan explores the
limits of the human body and to do it it
engages what’s been described as the
most powerful autonomic reflex we have
the mammalian dive response the MDR
slows our heartbeat withdraws oxygen
from our extremities to our core and
eventually releases oxygen-rich blood
from our spleen into the rest of our
body all of those things enabling great
access to oxygen that reflux connects us
to our ancient evolutionary origins in
the ocean the the ocean is 70% of the
planet’s surface and 99% of its living
area the fluids in our body are tears
blood reflect the chemical composition
of ancient oceans the ocean is inside us
all as well well I’d been Weller had
been researching free diving and
actually free diving for several years I
was failing to adequately write about it
that the normal academic expression is
objective removed to dispassionate and I
repeatedly tried and failed to produce
an academic paper in that vein which was
describing what I was experiencing so
eventually I took myself to a writing
retreat threw away all the previous
attempts and started from scratch and
instead of having an idea and writing
that down
I let the writing process find the ideas
I used the personal or lyric essay form
and it helped me to explain it freed me
to explain what free diving had done to
me what free diving had done to me is to
help me face mortality
you know it’s 14 my father killed
himself my mother had left when I was 11
those two events predictively
predictably had a big impact on my life
for most of my life I felt marginal I
feel like an impostor in my jobs
I expect rejection I failed to
understand my sewer my father suicide my
entire life freediving showed me a
different way to think about death the
writing retreat in the bush let me link
my personal experience of loss with my
research on free diving it is is called
salt blood and won the 2017 caliber
essay prize it’s 6,000 words long
unreferenced and has had the single
greatest impact and engagement of
anything I’ve ever written the essay is
a writing form that Tait traces its
origin from michelle de montagne whose
essays were published in 1580
immediately became a best-seller and a
stilling
prynt Montaigne wanted to decolonize
writing free it from its conventional
constraints the French verb sa a means
to try so it’s about opening up the
questioning acknowledging limitations
not nailing something down with
expertise it’s humble messy and
insult blood I take Ariel song from
Shakespeare’s play The Tempest as the
link between the freedive research and
my father’s suicide full fathom five thy
father lies of his bones are coral made
those are pearls that were his eyes
nothing of him but doth fade but has
suffered a sea change into something
rich and strange when you’re free diving
five fathoms under water more than ten
meters you’re not breathing free diving
medically is progressive asphyxiation
asphyxiation is what killed my father
so in stock blood I tried to take a
research story and connect it to a hard
personal story in the hope that would
find some reflection in the lives of my
of my readers it turns out that the
caliber prize has a lot of cred I was
invited to a lot of seminars to give
readings and with many media interviews
I was interviewed on Richard fibers
conversations and a number of other
programs and many readers personally
contacted me one of the outcomes of
those contacts was readers sharing their
own experience of suicide and loss my
writing about that the place of that in
my own life opening a space for people
to communicate gently about those issues
for themselves and that’s not so
surprising in Australia’s suicide is the
leading cause of death between for
people between the ages of 15 and 45 my
father was 45 the philosopher Simone
Vail wrote of making visible the
possibility of death that lies locked up
in each moment Herman Melville in Moby
Dick put the same thought into the
whaleboat it is only when caught in the
swift sudden turn of
if that humans realized the silent
subtle ever-present perils of life I
didn’t start freediving to understand
mortality but that is where it led me
freedom takes you to a liminal space
between light and darkness between water
and air between life and death
freediving is about life and death both
personally individually and in a
planetary species sense it links us to
our deep evolutionary origins in the
ocean and reminds us of our humility
that we were just we are just one among
innumerable other beings living and
dying on the planet and it connects us
both to our strengths and reminds us of
our insignificance the lessons to me
from the research and the writing are
about carpe diem seizing the moment not
worrying about the things that you can’t
change telling people that you love them
about humility about being present about
the the universality of loss in all of
our lives and about how loss is maybe
not always lost but sometimes change and
finally about the power of stories
humans have been described as the
storied animal German author Franz Kafka
said writing should be an axe to smash
the frozen sea inside us
he knew both about the power of art the
power of story and that the reads of
frozen see inside us I’m an academic a
human geographer geography geography
means earth writing and the planet is
70% ocean giving myself to the salt
water helped free my voice writing in a
personal creative way changed the way I
think about my purpose here if as
researchers we recruit our communication
skills to engage with broad and diverse
story broaden diverse audiences to tell
our stories we can broaden our purpose
here all of our lives is a journey
between two breaths where are we on that
journey today none of us know so it’s
worth being present with however many
breaths we have left worth being present
with our humility with the
change with the loss with the love in
all of our lives thank you [Applause]
the whole of our lives
is a journey between two breasts the
first breath when we were born and the
last breath before we died in the last
five years I started paying attention to
all of the breasts in between I started
research on freediving which has been
described as the second most dangerous
extreme sport
my preferred research methodology is
full immersion actually becoming the
thing I’m trying to understand free
diving or breath-hold diving at its most
basic is just holding your breath and
diving underwater it’s both a
commonplace in unique form of engagement
between humans and oceans commonplace
because we can do it from the moment we
are born if you we’ve already spent nine
months in the watery world of the
amniotic sac if you immerse an infant in
water she will open her eyes hold her
breath slow her heartbeat and start to
swim breaststroke but also unique
because it’s recently been reinvented as
an extreme sport divers are going 200
meters and more underwater on a single
breath and there are people who can hold
their breath for 11 minutes underwater
and it is an extreme sport we are
terrestrial air-breathing mammals to
take yourself very deep underwater on
one breath and with no ancillary
equipment is inherently dangerous
parallel to the competitive aspect free
diving has been rapidly increasing
around the world as a recreational
activity and that’s partly because
paradoxically many people find it they
can rapidly improve in free diving I
went from a breath hold of one minute to
four minutes quite quickly and many of
you would to pretty Ivan explores the
limits of the human body and to do it it
engages what’s been described as the
most powerful autonomic reflex we have
the mammalian dive response the MDR
slows our heartbeat withdraws oxygen
from our extremities to our core and
eventually releases oxygen-rich blood
from our spleen into the rest of our
body all of those things enabling great
access to oxygen that reflux connects us
to our ancient evolutionary origins in
the ocean the the ocean is 70% of the
planet’s surface and 99% of its living
area the fluids in our body are tears
blood reflect the chemical composition
of ancient oceans the ocean is inside us
all as well well I’d been Weller had
been researching free diving and
actually free diving for several years I
was failing to adequately write about it
that the normal academic expression is
objective removed to dispassionate and I
repeatedly tried and failed to produce
an academic paper in that vein which was
describing what I was experiencing so
eventually I took myself to a writing
retreat threw away all the previous
attempts and started from scratch and
instead of having an idea and writing
that down
I let the writing process find the ideas
I used the personal or lyric essay form
and it helped me to explain it freed me
to explain what free diving had done to
me what free diving had done to me is to
help me face mortality
you know it’s 14 my father killed
himself my mother had left when I was 11
those two events predictively
predictably had a big impact on my life
for most of my life I felt marginal I
feel like an impostor in my jobs
I expect rejection I failed to
understand my sewer my father suicide my
entire life freediving showed me a
different way to think about death the
writing retreat in the bush let me link
my personal experience of loss with my
research on free diving it is is called
salt blood and won the 2017 caliber
essay prize it’s 6,000 words long
unreferenced and has had the single
greatest impact and engagement of
anything I’ve ever written the essay is
a writing form that Tait traces its
origin from michelle de montagne whose
essays were published in 1580
immediately became a best-seller and a
stilling
prynt Montaigne wanted to decolonize
writing free it from its conventional
constraints the French verb sa a means
to try so it’s about opening up the
questioning acknowledging limitations
not nailing something down with
expertise it’s humble messy and
insult blood I take Ariel song from
Shakespeare’s play The Tempest as the
link between the freedive research and
my father’s suicide full fathom five thy
father lies of his bones are coral made
those are pearls that were his eyes
nothing of him but doth fade but has
suffered a sea change into something
rich and strange when you’re free diving
five fathoms under water more than ten
meters you’re not breathing free diving
medically is progressive asphyxiation
asphyxiation is what killed my father
so in stock blood I tried to take a
research story and connect it to a hard
personal story in the hope that would
find some reflection in the lives of my
of my readers it turns out that the
caliber prize has a lot of cred I was
invited to a lot of seminars to give
readings and with many media interviews
I was interviewed on Richard fibers
conversations and a number of other
programs and many readers personally
contacted me one of the outcomes of
those contacts was readers sharing their
own experience of suicide and loss my
writing about that the place of that in
my own life opening a space for people
to communicate gently about those issues
for themselves and that’s not so
surprising in Australia’s suicide is the
leading cause of death between for
people between the ages of 15 and 45 my
father was 45 the philosopher Simone
Vail wrote of making visible the
possibility of death that lies locked up
in each moment Herman Melville in Moby
Dick put the same thought into the
whaleboat it is only when caught in the
swift sudden turn of
if that humans realized the silent
subtle ever-present perils of life I
didn’t start freediving to understand
mortality but that is where it led me
freedom takes you to a liminal space
between light and darkness between water
and air between life and death
freediving is about life and death both
personally individually and in a
planetary species sense it links us to
our deep evolutionary origins in the
ocean and reminds us of our humility
that we were just we are just one among
innumerable other beings living and
dying on the planet and it connects us
both to our strengths and reminds us of
our insignificance the lessons to me
from the research and the writing are
about carpe diem seizing the moment not
worrying about the things that you can’t
change telling people that you love them
about humility about being present about
the the universality of loss in all of
our lives and about how loss is maybe
not always lost but sometimes change and
finally about the power of stories
humans have been described as the
storied animal German author Franz Kafka
said writing should be an axe to smash
the frozen sea inside us
he knew both about the power of art the
power of story and that the reads of
frozen see inside us I’m an academic a
human geographer geography geography
means earth writing and the planet is
70% ocean giving myself to the salt
water helped free my voice writing in a
personal creative way changed the way I
think about my purpose here if as
researchers we recruit our communication
skills to engage with broad and diverse
story broaden diverse audiences to tell
our stories we can broaden our purpose
here all of our lives is a journey
between two breaths where are we on that
journey today none of us know so it’s
worth being present with however many
breaths we have left worth being present
with our humility with the
change with the loss with the love in
all of our lives thank you [Applause]
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