recollection

                                             magnolia budding in the gardens of Toast

Went to The Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton this afternoon with a friend for the private view of 'Recollection' an exhibition on the theme of memory and memory loss. Met with some of the volunteers from Honiton's Memory Café with whom I shall be working next week, on Rag Rug Memories and Making.

 

Loved Sophie Bower's car boot items presented as exhibits in a mini museum with their associated narratives of provenance and memory.

 

For more details of her work see her website:

http://www.axisweb.org/p/sophiebower

 

This put me in mind of Arthur and Martha's work with carers and museum objects at Warrington Museum:

 

http://arthur-and-martha.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/objects-of-our-affection-warrington.html

 

But the theme of recollection continued outside the gallery space, in the gardens of Toast where my friend and I had adjourned, to while away the afternoon in the warm spring sunshine.

 

Which books had we enjoyed as children? Turned out we shared quite a number of favourites.  Had those titles reflected, or moulded, our interests and inclinations? To what extent had the dreams and fictive worlds those books had fostered, been jettisoned in adult life? And are they worth re-visiting for further inspiration and for what they might teach us about who we still might be?

 

One of my personal favourites was 'My Side Of The Mountain' by Jean Craighead George. All Boys' Own stuff about survival, in the wild. I'm still drawn to exploring the phenomenology of place, just love singing along to Talking Heads' 'living on nuts and berries' lyrics, but haven't in 53 years managed to learn more than a few wild bird songs.

 

'The Borrowers'  on the other hand is a book that I would credit as having instilled in me a life-long regard for the hand skills of making, for sideways appropriation and upcycling, and the belief that this extends to writing too; that there is 'always a story in there'. Somewhere.

 

On leaving the café, we passed chairs stacked up on the tables ready for the cleaner to sweep the floors and the sight triggered a memory of the lyrics I've been trying to retrieve for years - the daily prayer we sang at the end of each day as we stood behind our desks in primary school: "Now the day is over, evening's drawing nigh". We used to sing a shortened version of the prayer. One day, perhaps in another 45 years (if I'm lucky) the last two lines may come back to me!