Tribal Connections: Who Remembers What Was Here?

A little hello from the studio… 🎨🌿     

I've been looking at photographs today.

Old ones.

The kind where nobody thought to write anything on the back because, at the time, everybody knew who everyone was.

Of course that's Auntie.

Of course that's Mr So-and-so's shop.

Of course that's the street before they changed it.

Of course that's the woman who used to feed half the neighbourhood.

Why would you write it down?

Everybody knows.

Until one day...

everybody doesn't.

I've been thinking about that a lot since returning to Birmingham.

Because last week I was noticing what had changed.

This week, I'm beginning to notice something else.

How much is still here...

waiting for someone to remember what it means.

The Things We Walk Past

There are stories everywhere once you begin looking for them.

Not necessarily the kind somebody has thoughtfully placed behind glass with a little card explaining why they matter.

Ordinary ones.

An old shop sign still faintly visible above a newer one.

A photograph hanging slightly crooked on the wall of a community centre.

A building everyone refers to by a name that hasn't been written above its door in thirty years.

A mural whose faces mean something completely different if you know who they are.

That's what I've been noticing.

Places can carry evidence long after the explanation has disappeared.

And sometimes we walk past those clues every day.

Not because we don't care.

Because nobody told us there was a question to ask.

I've spent my life looking at walls.

Colour.

Texture.

The places where one layer of paint reveals another underneath.

I'm beginning to think communities work like that too.

Look long enough...

and the earlier layers begin showing through.

Somebody Knows The Story

I've heard myself asking the same question again and again.

Who was that?

What used to be there?

Why do people call it that?

Who started this?

And remarkably often, the first answer is:

"I don't know."

Then somebody says:

"Ask her."

Or...

"My grandad would know."

Or...

"There's a man who used to live around here..."

And suddenly the story isn't gone.

It's somewhere else.

Inside somebody.

I find that both beautiful and slightly terrifying.

Because we talk about preserving history as though history lives safely inside archives.

Some of it does.

But some of it is sitting in somebody's kitchen drinking tea.

Some of it is standing at the bus stop.

Some of it is telling the same story for the fiftieth time while everyone younger in the family thinks they've heard it already.

And perhaps they have.

But have they remembered it?

That's a different question.

Every Photograph Needs A Caption

There is something heartbreaking about an old photograph filled with people nobody can name.

As an artist, I can still appreciate it.

The composition.

The clothes.

The light.

The expression on somebody's face.

I can imagine all sorts of things.

But imagination isn't memory.

I can paint what I think happened.

That doesn't mean I know.

And this week, that distinction has become increasingly important to me.

Because communities are full of photographs without captions.

Not always literal photographs.

Sometimes they're traditions nobody remembers beginning.

Recipes nobody wrote down.

Nicknames whose origins disappeared three generations ago.

Stories reduced to:

"Your grandmother used to..."

And then a shrug because nobody remembers the rest.

We assume the important things will survive because they're important.

But memory doesn't work that way.

Someone has to carry it.

And eventually...

someone has to pass it on.

Before I Pick Up The Brush

My instinct when something moves me is to make something.

Paint it.

Sketch it.

Find the colours.

Work out where the light belongs.

I've already caught myself doing it here.

Seeing pieces of Birmingham and imagining how they might fit together on a wall.

Old faces beside younger ones.

Shopfronts.

Hands.

Recipes.

Street signs.

Fragments of stories layered over one another.

I can see the mural.

And that's exactly why I need to be careful.

Because seeing a story doesn't make it mine.

Being moved by somebody's history doesn't give me permission to decide how it should be represented.

I could make something beautiful.

Something technically excellent.

Something people praised.

And still get the story wrong.

Or perhaps worse...

tell the right story in the wrong voice.

So before I pick up the brush, there's another part of being an artist I need to remember.

Listening.

Who belongs on the wall?

What do they want remembered?

What would they leave out?

What matters to them that I might walk straight past?

Perhaps the first sketch shouldn't be mine at all.

What Does The Story Carry?

Chapter Three of When the Village Carries Home is called The Discovery.

And I think I'm beginning to understand what we're discovering.

Not Birmingham.

It doesn't need us to discover it. 😂

We're discovering how much of a community's story can remain present even when the connections between its pieces have started becoming faint.

A photograph survives.

But the name disappears.

A building survives.

But its purpose changes.

A tradition survives.

But the person who began it is forgotten.

A younger generation knows something happened...

but only in fragments.

And somewhere between those fragments are people who still remember the rest.

Maybe discovery isn't always finding something new.

Sometimes...

it's realising something was there all along and deciding to ask about it before it disappears.

Until Next Time...

Look around your own community this week.

Not for the obvious history.

Look for the things nobody has labelled.

The old photograph.

The shop everyone still calls by its former name.

The recipe somebody makes without measuring anything.

The family expression nobody outside your house understands.

The person who always seems to know what used to be where.

Ask them something.

One question.

Who was that?

What happened there?

Where did this come from?

Why do we do it this way?

And then...

listen.

Because the story you're looking for may not be missing at all.

It may simply be waiting inside someone who hasn't been asked yet.

Keep creating beauty in the people around you.

— Maya 🎨🌿✨ 

🎨 Continue The Discovery

I've returned to Birmingham.

Now I'm beginning to see what its streets are still carrying.

Continue When the Village Carries Home with Chapter Three: The Discovery, as photographs, places and ordinary conversations begin revealing stories that haven't disappeared...

but could, if nobody remembers to carry them forward.

📖 Read Chapter Three (Tribe Membership required) 

Haven't started Book Two yet?

Begin with Chapter One inside the Tribe Library and follow the journey from the beginning.

👉🏾 Begin Book Two