More than just words…
A series of thoughts created when researching about ‘The Room Upstairs’.
xxx
Are primary source of research comes from the memo books of meeting held about the drill hall in our room.
Looking through one of the memo books, I realise that it is not just the words written about the meetings that show a history of the room. It is the book itself.
The first meeting recorded on the 7th of February 1906, I see tea stains covering the edge of the page. There are indecipherable notes on the other side of the page.
A piece of an old calendar used as a book mark in haste.
One of the pages is repaired for a tear, but the sellotape of 1909, looks more like modern day postage stamps.
The books binding showing its thread, decomposition, almost falling apart. Yet the room that it was written in, the building which it is about is standing strong. It was repaired and rescued just like the building, no long used for the same purpose, but still held together by someone.
Xxx
Different handwriting filled the pages of the books. Some neat within the lines. Some fancy… If not with a few mistakes. Some rough and quick, barely legible, overlapping, never staying within the lines. Some indecipherable.
Different people’s hands working together to create this history of this space.
Xxx
As I sit here coping out the minute book, as photocopying and images were not allowed of this item, I thought about the secretary copying the passage I’m currently copying from its original letter into this book. Did his mind wonder like mine, did his hand cramp, did he often has to pause to decipher the words?
Xxx
Even the fragments that survived get broken down into smaller fragments, words lost in translation through the process of reading. Has our modern day tendency to only read typed text stopped us for reading other peoples handwriting? Is typed text making things clearer, not losing part of the story because of words we can’t read, or is something more telling getting lost in translation? Marks you do not see anymore, crossings out or words written over. Do they tell more of a story then uniformed ink on a page or a series of 1s and 0s turned into something legible on a screen?