Recently I visited an exhibition at the Glucksman Gallery, in the beautiful grounds of University College Cork. It was called Now Wakes the Sea.  Irish and international visual artists had taken on the sea as a theme in their work.  Striking, for me, was the highly charged romantic nature of almost all of the work on show, except for the piece by Tacita Dean. 

As I began the last page in this journal volume, I was walking down the Lisburn Road in Belfast.  I passed a glass & steel 1980s BT telephone box near the City Hospital and like being sucked through a vacuum tube, surged abruptly into surreality. Images, visions, dreams of the past swirled together with the present on this misty Belfast street. I took out my phone and dialled it's number 028 9023 2471, holding my breath waiting for the green amber screen to illuminate and for it to ring

As we prepare for new years - new beginnings and a reflection on the past - there's lots to give thanks for, and yet alongside this, are also the things we cling so tightly to that have already slipped away, leaving husks of hurt, the hope having withered away.  All this - the good and the bad mixed together - sits uncomfortably in our minds' gut. Nonetheless we get put on our party clothes, make-up and a smile, hoping as the clock strikes midnight our sullied pages will be bleached blank. After all the revelry we head to bed, and eight hours later wake up mulling those same thoughts, hopes, joys & fears, realising that once again, a new year does not mean a new you, and we find ourselves at a loss as to how to move past the past.

Language has limits, which I was reminded of yesterday when I said something along the lines of, "I hate when you do that". When I used the form "you", I meant "one", or more accurately "I/me", as in, "I hate when you stub your toe", meaning, "I hate when I stub my toe", and as I realised I'd caused insult, I suddenly realised I had accidentally been criticising everyone around me when I was trying to show empathy.

Moving further into the question of how we remember the dead, this week's journal has begun to expand on and explore the concept of monuments to our lost loved ones. When a friend, who was a graffiti artist and a tagger passed away, a whole world of people memorialised him on walls. His name is a secret, and although these walls are there for all to see, only those who knew him can truly see the stories they tell and the parts of him they celebrate.

British designer Alexander McQueen's work explored, mastered and subverted history, culture, craft & fashion. Famous for deeply relatable imagery and for being unafraid of bringing an audience on a dichromatic journey of dark and light, McQueen provoked imaginations, assertively juxtaposing the familiar with the alien.

““You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.””

— Alexander McQueen