The one remaining photograph I can find from Censored Sensibility.
Words and a (reasonably representative) drawing of a heart. On my chest.
Language, Art, Concept and the Heart of the Artist, brought together in the centre of one of the bodies that brought it to life.
Something so appropriate about us choosing to do this.
She isn’t the silver lining on every nimbus and stratus that floats above you.
She’s more like white gold, or platinum, or that moment where the sun cuts a spiderweb across your vision with surgical precision.
She is everything you love and hate about yourself as if she has studied your face every second of every day until she knew a hair was out of place before you even did.
She could take a yawn from your mouth to save you the embarrassment.
She knows that the hot chocolate you buy from the cafe will continue to dissapoint you, so just walk across the road and get one from the library.
She laughs at your awkward jokes because like you she isn’t funny and like you she isn’t cool. And there is nothing funnier and cooler than a friend like that.
When she is in a bad mood, whether you know it or not, she’ll be fine, she’ll shine.
When everything gets too much and she folds into herself and shakes a little, shakes a little, shakes a little, she will push her chin up as though she is styling out awkwardly tripping in public.
She is not brave. She is bravery.
She is every smile you have ever shared because she inists on smiling like she can see down your irises and into your soul.
Because she insists on telling you your face is nice. Once, twice.
Because you should stop flirting, because two people have never been so perfectly and so poorly suited.
She is the first sip of tea and the first breath of a cigarette and the first rush of the breeze.
She is everything you never knew you needed, everything you always took for granted.
And now everything you would desperately need if she did not fill the days of your week.
She is the simple things, like the way her hair falls and she hates it but you love it because her insecurity screams out with everything you question about yourself in perfect harmony.
She is three o’clock. And she is four o’clock. When you could walk home but her shoes and her coat and her pens make you stay. Every day.
She is every word you hate, and none of the words she does.
She finishes off every sentence to make every second together a novel.
She is not a friend.
She is friendship.
And luckily, she is happily yours.
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We are all born to silence. Conceived with gentle moans of passion and brought into the world with the screams of the final push. But we are all born to silence. We do not own the words to say ‘thank you, ‘hello’, ‘nice to meet you’. We have to learn the words, we have to earn the words. We are born without our own voice. Someone decides which cry is one of hunger, one of sadness, one of pain. Our voice is their voice. Or their voice is ours. We are born fresh, new, a whole life on the horizon but we are more like the ineloquent grunting caveman than the fluent speaking spokesman. A series of sounds meaning nothing more than ‘be me for now, the best you know how, move my hands and speak my mind until I find what I must find’ – be me.
We grow and grow and know and know and show and show just who we are or so we think. We are moulded every day. We are changing every day. We begin to learn the words that express just who we are, or who we want to be. But we are moulded still, for better or for worse. The silence is falling away and this word is your and that word is yours, but your dictionary is not complete yet, your thesaurus is not filled with every meaning and every feeling, it is not filled up to the ceiling so you are ready to shout any words with confidence that they are yours. But you will.
I often wonder how people expressed sadness when they lost a family member or when that darkest day comes round again year after year before Facebook and Twitter gave you that voice you’d been yearning for since you were born to silence. Did people tie notes, ‘I miss you mum’ to birds and set them free or roll parchment into a bottle and send it out to sea? Did everyone remember, did everyone read? Did no one care? At least all of our two thousand five hundred Facebook friends can honestly say they care about us, can say they paid attention to our status – thanks for the ‘like’, it really helped. At least all four hundred followers stopped reading Piers Morgan’s tweets and favourited our ‘See you there Dad’, it was like a hug through my laptop. But seriously, how did people express their sadness before someone said ‘here, takes these pixels, tell the world’. I wonder. I guess people prayed, prayed for days, for days to last, for days that have passed, prayed for days and days and days. And who do they pray to? To that person in their dreams with a thousand ears, a thousand hands, a mind in a thousand lands. Or to those people on their screens with a thousand peers, a thousand hands, thousands of minds in thousands of lands. Perhaps God and Facebook aren’t so different; so absent and so present with a careful balance of followers. After all, it’s only pixels and prayers that divide them.
One day we will all be old enough, wise enough, brave enough, to own our own words, our own voices. They might have mortgages, we might have to pay taxes on them, but they will be ours and yours and mine and theirs and they will be worth every penny for your thoughts. And one day, when it is your turn to leave someone behind to pray, to tweet away their feelings, you will have written your own eulogy, you will have written the markings on your grave – you will have written yourself; the best you can hope for is to have lived without quotation marks around your name. You will be your own. Your words will will be your own.
When you have escaped your birth of silence. When you are older. And wiser.
And you
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I feel your body before I touch it,
I taste you before I open my mouth,
I see your body before I open my eyes.
Even in the dark
there is a light
like nothing else;
Bright.
A kiss, a hand on the back of your neck, a soft touch; a breath.
The feel of your skin.
Even in the heat
the air
feels just right
Cool.
A wondering tongue, a hand reaching down to your waist, a strong hold; a shiver.
The sound of your voice.
Even in nervousness
there is a confidence
you didn’t know existed.
Powerful.
A bite, a hand feeling a heartbeat, a force that doesn’t scare; a moan.
The feel of your body
The taste of your skin
The sight of your face
I can feel it.
A breathe, a push, a quiver.
Collide.
Collapse.
Co-exist.
A breath.
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I began by letting go of hands that had led me on my way,
So that I could open up my arms and intertwine my fingers with those of people I had never met before
I found warm hands; one pair, six more. And linking our hands sent a simultaneous heartbeat between us from within.
I discovered hands not meant to hold, just mean to touch and to scratch and to grab.
But not to hold.
And I have been searching; and I find myself returning.
One pair. Six. One more.
One more pair of hands to hold. A hold that sends a simultaneous heartbeat between us from within. A simultaneous heartbeat that moulds into one.
We weave our fingers like a tapestry of memories.
Our hearts beat in passion, in fear, in anger, in harmony.
As one.
Unity, intensity.
Ignorance, insularity.
Isolation.
I let go of one pair of hands. And six more.
For too long I had held on to only one.
Yet stitches begin to unravel. Snags begin to tear. Holes begin to form.
And our woven fingers cannot help but pull apart.
So I stand without hands to hold; not letting go, just losing.
I stand without hands to hold.
One less. My doing.
Six less, for the sake of that one.
So I pick up my needles, grey and sharp and cold, and try to stitch six tapestries together before the edges are too frayed to repair.
I am trying to make images, memories.
I am trying to hold on.
I began by letting go of hands that had led me on my way; but hands are meant to be held.
I will never let go of any hands again.
Because hands are meant to be held.
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From Censored Sensibility, chalked in a walkway and titled ‘Degradation’, the piece considered the loss, degrading and weakening of language, wondering whether a presentation of artistic effort and positive message would affect how people responded to, treated and understood language.
I haven’t met you yet,
but you have your mother’s eyes.
I remember when my love would pull faces just like that.
Be sure to take every opportunity you can – you kids don’t know how lucky you are.
You would laugh, but I had a cardigan much like your one.
Ask questions; I will always be there to answer them. Even when i am no longer here.
Hold hands with everyone who walks into your life.
Know that i will always be proud of you.
Your handwriting is just like mine,
and you have your mother’s eyes.
Write notes to your grandchild before they are born, and every day from then on.
We know nothing of each other,
but my love would pull faces just like that.
I will always be there. Even when i am no longer here.
I haven’t met you yet;
yet we know everything of each other,
and you have your mother’s eyes.
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An installation from a project functioning as a conceptual exploration of language, known as ‘Censored Sensibility’. Perspective provides a visual representation of the importance of context and positioning within the use and understanding of language. Part of getting across ‘the genuine power of words’.
I want to get across the genuine power of words
A dear friend, with the quote that started it all.
Scott McGinn 