After our module meeting tonight, I thought I’d take the plunge and do one of the few posts here (that’s assuming that loads of people haven’t posted in the time I’m writing this, then I’ll look like a right wally!)
Conan talking to us about the concept of home really got me thinking about where I truly identify with as ‘home’. I’ve moved around a fair bit and I’ve never really felt anchored to a particular physical place – I feel national pride, for my country, I definitely think of myself (and am proud of) as being British but I’ve never really felt a sense of local pride and loyalty.
Home for me isn’t necessarily where you’re from – I was born in London and in a way consider myself being from there, even though I lived there for a grand total of 3 months. I grew up in a small town in Hampshire but my memories of that place are so hazy that I can’t truly say that I identify that place as having been home. At 8 I moved to Portsmouth, which is where I’ve lived the longest, but I’ve never identified myself as being ‘from’ there – the city doesn’t seem home to me. It’s familiar, yes, but not ‘Home’. Coming to Lincoln then, since Portsmouth wasn’t a home environment to me, hasn’t seemed too much of a displacement – I’ve never felt a gut-wrenching desire to go back to Portsmouth, like some other people have (not to Portsmouth, to their own homes).
I’m rambling here, as I haven’t properly set out my thoughts and this is just becoming a garbled stream of consciousness, so, dear reader, please forgive me.
What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that the idea and sensation of ‘home’ has never been physical for me. Home, to me, is a metaphysical state – or, to use the common aphorism, ‘Home is where the heart is’. To be surrounded by the warmth and love of family or friends, THAT is what makes a place home. Thus, for me, home is everywhere and nowhere and I really hope that that feeling can be conveyed somehow on West Parade.
The other thing I wanted to talk about was one of the pieces of reading that we were given at some point in the holidays. One cold Winter evening (much like this one) I had a read of a piece on Blackboard called ’25 instructions for performances in cities’ by Carl Lavery, which I heartily recommend you all have a read of as well (don’t worry, it’s only a couple of pages and is very interesting, I promise. If you’re interested it’s in the ‘texts’ folder under learning materials).
Basically, it’s what I would call a ‘Ronseal Deal’ if I were a Conservative Prime Minister – it does exactly what it says on a tin. It’s a quite compelling list of 25 activities (that’s unfortunately the best word I could think of to describe them, it’s a tad inadequate) that performers who want to do a site-specific performance in a city may want to try out so that they can engage with what it means to be in a city on some level. Some are very simple, like number 4, which suggests setting up a camera and filming a section of city for a couple of hours and editing the footage together. Some ask quite a lot of the performers, like 9, which says to make the public private, i.e.: live outside for a day doing everything you would do in your own home – sleeping, eating, brushing your teeth, etc. A few still are entirely conceptual and very vague in how one might approach the task, for example: ’17. Create a forest in the city’.
The reason I bring up this article (other than not really having any other outlet to really talk about it in) is that I’m curious. Do any of you, dear readers, find any of these instructions interesting? Are there even some of you who want to give them a go – I certainly want to and it would be great if some people in this group would like to experiment with the idea presented here.
So, please, contribute your thoughts, I’m really interested to know what you all think!
References:
Lavery, C., 2005, Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities [e-journal] 25(3) pp.286-289. Available through: The University of Lincoln Blackboard website <blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk> [Accessed 14 January 2013]