We gather here today to say farewell and goodbye to nuance, a much loved member of the human family, now sadly passed.
She was proud of her French ancestry in the word ‘nuer’ which means ‘to shade’; she even claimed Latin roots in the word ‘nubes’, meaning ‘cloud’ or ‘vapour’.
For nuance, as we know, would not be pinned down!
But French? Latin? English? No. None of these labels would suffice for her. As she reminded us, in typical fashion: ‘I am all and none of them, and part of them too.’
Yes, our dear nuance was a subtle, complex, multi-layered figure in a world where hard lines have replaced shades.
‘You see a face.’ I still remember her words to me. ‘You see a face – I don’t see a face. I see an infinite variety of expressions; small variations but each of great significance. In one face, many faces.’
Her drift into homelessness became a tragedy for her and a shame on us all.
‘I refuse to be stupid,’ she’d say as she rejected political and online discourse. ‘There is no place for me now. In the world of aggressive opinions, I struggle. I fear I am not stupid enough for this game.’
We know who made her life difficult. We have read it in the papers; we’ve seen the news. It is hardly a secret.
Shunned by single-issue activists across the world.
Endlessly harassed online by victimhood, outrage and hysteria.
Demonised by black and white of being wishy-washy.
Beaten senseless by the binary brothers.
If we judge someone by their enemies, then truly nuance stands tall.
And so, with heavy hearts, we gather today to say goodbye to her; in many ways our saviour, but saviours do get killed.
For when lies are the truth, then the truth becomes a lie. And nuance was always the truth – the beautiful, difficult, obvious, particular, awkward, revealing and elusive truth.
Before the curtain closes and the coffin proceeds into the flames, a moment of silence to remember our dear friend nuance.
We’ll then listen to a poem written about her by Ute Kelly. It is a poem inhabited by shades and appropriately called ‘Nuance’.
the softness of trees
on cobweb mornings.
the five hundred versions
of grey that may
or may not
have names. gainsboro.
lightgrey and silver
and darkgrey and dim.
red-green-blue-in-balance-grey.
lichen-on-dry-stone-wall-grey.
sun-almost-not-quite-breaking-grey.
almost: a sky too mellow
to break. the holding
of more after all has been
held. the before
and the after
of rain.
