No Place Like Home

Today’s work will be dedicated to a song by the band Ninth Key and two opposites.

I was talking to a person recently. And she said, “My home is where I am.” It’s an interesting phrase. Although it reminds me of the title of a song, the work is not about it.

This person kept asking me to answer “shorter.” In one or two words. And it made me feel a certain guilt. A feeling of wrongness. That I was “broken” and couldn’t clearly convey my thoughts. I couldn’t express myself in the way she wanted. And suddenly, recently, I came across Angie – a person who showed me that in that situation it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t that I was wrong. She just wasn’t my person.

We talked to her for 9 hours straight, and time flew by completely unnoticed. Maybe we would have continued like this if I didn’t have to get up for work in 4 hours. It was a strange and unusual, but pleasant experience when…you weren’t limited? Exactly. When a person expressed themselves in the same long paragraphs and voice. What is depicted in this work?

I will highlight a fragment of the song lyrics:

“I thought I could choose (Choose, choose)
I could change, I could run away
Now I’m just like you (You, you)
So afraid, circlin’ the drain again and again

Ground zero in the chest
Lookin’ for the rest of myself in this mess I was born in
Too afraid to build a home
When the only home that I’ve known is

Screamin’ through the walls, holdin’ it together
Cryin’ on the floor, hopin’ it gets better
Some wounds close, some will last forever
You can leave, but it lives in your bones
There’s no place like home”

This song quite clearly reminds me of my story, when I initially thought that the problem was me, and I should just be “a little different from myself.” A little different. A little comfortable. But “home” (as that person considered themselves) turned out to be someone else’s. With someone else’s rules and regulations. So all that was left was to “shout through the walls,” hoping that they would hear you. That you are who you are. But they heard you from the other side – that’s why this work also features a mirror, which is an analogue of this very “other side.” In the original version, the image on the phone was also reflected in the reflection. You could say that it’s like “finding home” (a comfortable place) in another person. Because of which you don’t have to change the specifics of your manner of communication. That’s why the picture features a phone, in which you can see a lot of voicemails from a person who likes to communicate and share thoughts just like you.

The second verse of the song has the lines:

“There’s no love, no trust in my veins and it ruins me
‘Cause here I am, grown up, guarded and for what?
To find the love you left in the dirt for me”

So I wanted to visualize the word Home (which was originally the only word at work) as letters flowing into each other, like veins on an arm. Despite the dark tone, I consider it to be a “light” work – one that is more about healing than destruction. Actually, the work is dedicated to Angie, who inspired it and without whom it would not exist.