Border Lines

Berwick, North Northumberland: Food-Travel-Culture-Community

Archive for the tag “light box”

27 Feb 2018
1 Comment

Words in my window: February

20180204_203544

A ring at the door bell. An old friend I’ve not seen for some time. He cuts straight to the chase:

‘What does it mean, ‘ice and a slice?”.

Me: ‘Erm, hi! Yeah. What does it mean?’

Him: ‘Well, it immediately makes you think of gin and tonic, yes?’

Me: ‘I guess so’.

We may just be about to experience the Beast from the East but at the beginning of February a cold spell was also forecast. I hoped for a playful ambiguity with my first February words in my window ICE AND/A/SLICE. Also, at first glance, ICE AND looks almost likes the name of our near neighbour, Iceland (the shop not the country!).

20180211_131200

Valentine’s and Lent were definite cues for WHEN/HEARTS/BREAK. But boy, oh, boy did I struggle to come up with a phrase I liked and had enough letters for.  The whole process became almost too knowing. I enlisted the support of the Husband and 16-year-old. ‘Hearts will break’ was too much like a challenge, ‘Hearts are organs’ a tad provocative. Finally, I chose the elliptical ‘When hearts break’. My friend from above returned bearing chocolates. And an email arrived with a PS:

What happens when hearts break? Or what happens if, for that matter? I think we should be told!

20180227_095850

I think quite a lot about cancer. It’s something that happens once you’ve had it. You wonder when it will come back. You almost wish it would come back so that you can get it over and done with. Then you feel guilty because you know that, unlike many others, you’ve been given a reprieve: you’re still here and you’re cancer-free. I’m reading a marvellous book, ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ by Paul Kalanithi a neurosurgeon (who’d never smoked) diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at the age of 36. He writes beautifully and explores the connective tissues of life, death, hope and faith – literally and figuratively. How do you find who you are and the life you want to live when you know – really know – you are going to die? I guess these thoughts, along with the viciousness of news of school gunshootings, bombings of innocents in Syria etc etc and, conversely, as so often happens with streams of consciousness, the snowdrops in the garden informed LIFE/KEEPS/COMING.

20180226_103309

I have a lovely home. It’s warm, it’s safe. It’s mine. I’m lucky. A stroke of fate can remove all our certainties. Think Grenfell Tower. Think Migrants from shattered territories. Only today a block of flats ‘pancaked’ in Leicester.

20180225_165809

I’m not quite sure if my own thoughts about the words in my window come before or after I choose them. The thing is, words are so stimulating – don’t you think? Here’s some words from someone else’s window here in Berwick:

20180226_211926

 

 

Posted in Posts, Uncategorized, Words in my window 2018 and tagged , , ,
28 Jan 2018
2 Comments

Words in my window: January

For Christmas I received a light box and set of letters. Statements or words, placed randomly or intentionally, can have surprising effects – from graffiti to art installations. I encountered Nathan Coley’s work ‘There will be no miracles here’ on New Year’s Eve 2016 and wrote about my response here.

I decided to place a kind of Christmas greeting in the front window of our house (which fronts on to the main drag here in Berwick-upon-Tweed and has become a de facto community noticeboard). And then I began to wonder what might happen if I put different statements up over a period of time? What responses might the statements (they have to be statements as there’s no question mark in the pack) elicit from passers-by?

My aim is to change the statements every week or so. Here are January’s words in my window:

And here’s the gen on responses so far:

I also used GLAD/TIDINGS/HERE & NOW as my post-Christmas pre-New Year greeting on this blog and Instagram and got thumbs up all round.

WHAT/LIES/AHEAD prompted one Facebook friend to respond: ‘Some from Trump, some from our politicians. Lots from the Daily Mail.’ Its placement (31st December) was quickly followed by the smashing of a lower window pane in the early hours of New Year’s Day – was there a connection?

NO REST/THEY/SAY perplexed some friends. Was it a biblical reference in response to the smashed window pane? Were they supposed to slip a word of encouragement through our letterbox?

I don’t really want to give guidance on what the statements mean. I’m not sure they mean anything other than what the viewer thinks they mean. Although some of the ambiguity is contrived by my choices, I am sure other ambiguities will derive from others’ interpretations.

Whatever the known and unknown responses of those who see these statements, I am enjoying placing them there. And, perhaps inevitably, I now find myself thinking about what the next words might be in a more purposeful and conscious way.

Posted in Posts, Uncategorized, Words in my window 2018 and tagged , ,

Post Navigation