Notations
Tendrils
Remembering John Berger
Drawing for John Berger 1926-2017
Some years ago I arrived at the proportion that a real, lived space exists in which home can be found not in a specific geography which has been lost but in the voice of others, in the sound/tonality/texts of those whose paths have crossed a similar terrain. For me, John Berger, who died earlier this year, was one of those voices. He spoke about power relationships, about dislocation, migration, connection to the earth and to one another, bringing together mind and body in a borderless/phenomenological manner.
‘the dead put our songs into their pocket of silence and then the silence changes, it’s no longer one of distance but of closeness, a shared silence’ John Berger ‘Here is where we meet’
Today, the early morning sun that shines through the kitchen window is especially sweet, while the news is filled with the rising toll of deaths across the globe. Outside, crows call to a blameless blue sky and white butterflies pronounce their innocence. Here on the bench - a horizon of sorts - light skips through the glass of upside down tumblers, and tiny suns shine on tiny worlds spinning in the stems of crystal glasses, washed and placed upside down to drain. I don't know what it is about this haphazard collection that is so pleasing. Perhaps it is light in the midst of darkness. Light that illuminates a looking back, a search for strength, an accounting of days, a new balance sheet, a wondering what it means to live a life.
