Sometimes there isn’t a reason. Not one we can articulate with words. That is the case with The Lost Chair. Or at least it was until now. As I sit and write and try and discover, through these words, why this chair came to be as it is.
A-stack-with-a-cap – Gavin-Birchall
I wanted to save something overtly unwanted that had been discarded (I bought the chair itself from our local recycling centre shop) to find out that even the most lost of all can be encouraged to live again and glisten. I needed to know this was true. I always need to know this is true. True for a time. For the time we have. I think we all do.
So, without a specific vision I began. Washing and drying. Sanding and washing. Drying and painting. Drying and painting again. No pre-conceived design. Beyond colour and pattern. At some point the idea of poetry on objects that we might use day-to-day arose.
I looked back through some of the poems I have written, the ones on the pages of the Lifesider Poetry Collection, and there it was. A short, monostich poem, that called to be included. It is titled ‘Lost’. It is a line about being a place of refuge when we imagine we are lost. About how we can always respond to what occurs and continue. About how there are places where we can find support and encouragement. About how that which we imagine we have lost is often, just changed or hard to sense.
The-Lost-Chair – Gavin-Birchall
The vision crystallised to include the words of this tiny invitation. Daubed on the surfaces of the chair, the ones where a body rests when it sits down, to draw in the heart as well as body. A place for the whole self to reside.
Designing letters to fit. Printing on paper. Stencilling onto the chair with chalk. Painting with acrylic pen. Drying. Two coats of transparent indoor furniture polish and, of course, drying again. So much drying.
I wrote these words before I trained to be an integral development coach. Which is odd as they resonate with the call to service as a coach. The idea of taking a seat with yourself is as beguiling and curious as the words of this almost nothing poem. Or taking a seat with another to sit for a while and be with whatever is there.
I made this chair as personal practice and invite. Make space and it will find fulfilment. A chair because we all need rhythm and rest. Colour because colour can only be known in the light. These specific words because we have all misplaced things and help in finding them is helpful.
It is raw, real, messy, art. There will be scratches and nicks and bumps and some of the paintwork will be ‘lived with’. As it ages they will accumulate. That’s the point. Furniture is not like art that is to be looked at from a distance. It is to be used. To be involved with. To make contact with. And as such offers us a real and tangible opportunity to appreciate impermanence alongside beauty. Living with it as both chair and human gather chips and scars, niggles and dents is real. Very real. It won’t meet some definitions of perfect but it is perfectly imperfect. A bit like all of us.
Under-and-over – Gavin-Birchall
If you appreciate it you can go ahead and literally take a seat. Take this specific seat actually. It is for sale. If someone hasn’t already taken it. Whatever we think we have lost, it is inside us in some way. We just need to find the way again. Integral development coaching is about finding the way. Your way. If there is something you need to bring, bring away.