When Home is a Verb and a Person

Dear Curious Minds,

I have been thinking about ‘home’ a lot. There are largely two reasons. I’m part of an experiential exhibition on this theme at The Lake House Art Centre, which will open later this month. I also had to go through 30 years’ worth of records and memories for lawyers lately. I’ll start with the exhibition notes. Thank you for being here, I appreciate you.

I put my hand up when The Lake House and the Australian artist duo, Whiskey & Boots, had a call out for people who had stories of home. The artists had prepared some questions to help the participating artists to prompt the upcoming interview to build the exhibition.

‘What does home mean to you’, ‘What was the first place you identified as home’, ‘What was your relationship with it’.

I got stuck on that third one. If I don’t spend enough time in my head already, that question helped me spend even more time in some corners of my brain I haven’t explored for a while.

I can. The problem is I tend to use too many words on that relationship. Because it’s a complex and complicated relationship. I can describe it like the specific forensics of the top bunk when you shift your weight and are trying not to. Or just like the floorboard outside the door announces you. Or the temperature of a room where two adults have been going for three hours and the sound has moved from shouting into something worse and sharper. The colour of the walls. I could paint you a swatch of those days.