Ghosts of place

 

‘Although the cultural language of modernity usually prevents us from speaking about their presence,

we constitute a place inlarge measure by the ghosts we sense inhabit and possess it’

(Michael Bell)

 

 

I sometimes find that I experience locations – spaces – somewhat like I experience people. Some I like, others I dislike. Some I feel comfortable with, others give me a sense of unease.

 

Some spaces I feel a connection to, some feel alien. Some spaces seem to hold the past, a sense of the presence of those who are not physically there but who were there once. Some spaces seem like sentient entities in themselves which, when I look at them, look back.

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In short, some spaces seem ‘personed’. I treat them as I do persons, imbueing them with some kind of animating spirit….with ghosts. It is these ghosts which, for me, transform a space into a place.

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The ghosts I find in places are always my own ghosts, that is, constructions from my own imagination. Sometimes the ghosts are called forth by my awareness of a space’s history, where their haunting connects me through time to those who once inhabited that place, touched it, animated it. Sometimes the ghosts are called forth by particular forms and shapes, combinations of light and shadow, which connect to some primitive part of my psyche and become more distilled and potent as I become mindful of them. Sometimes the ghosts emerge from the stories and narratives that others have passed to me.

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But always, when the ghosts come, my present reality shifts – I experience the space differently. I experience a ‘place’.