When words express

The image is a powerful thing. But it is also a very personal thing. For example I lived much of my childhood in a property by the sea and was a few moments ago looking up information on this area when I came across part of this property for sale again. Furthermore there was a photographic tour through the very property available and like a person passing a childhood venue for the second time and finding the door open, I couldn't help but pop my head in. In fact I took the artist to this very building on a number of occasions, and have mentioned it in this blog as the place where she finished a series of images of my relatives from the flatlands across the roaring sea. Anyway, some of the rooms on display during my virtual tour had been tarted up: I use the phrase correctly I believe. What once were bright and often pale-walled modest rooms were now brash and bordello-like expressions of ghastliness. (The price, too, was obscene.) Through one of the windows I could see one of the gardens and could not bear to think while staring unblinkingly at this latest rendition, that once upon a time I ran about in such gardens, picked rhubarb, weeded, watered them. It was to me such a beautiful place, a special place, and is now about simply sixteen uncommunicative and cramped looking flats. I could feel the spirit in my bones tingle, like a lampshade of knives clinking in the wind. Now, to anyone else such images would probably represent only the unremarkable. Another example, say, of people's poor taste when it came to what they imagined prospective buyers liked. (Worst of all: they were probably right.) To me, though, it was like someone was meddling with my past and though this is not an experience peculiar to me it was only me feeling it at the time. A great artist, I suppose, is capable through images of conjuring up such feelings, but when it comes down to it in this instances, only these words will I think do. The past is indeed another country. Boy, they do do things differently there.