Who would you write to if you could?

leemingwei.com

 

How profoundly moving. Standing in a gallery space in Dean Gallery silent, curious.  In the space is a beautiful Eastern-styled three-sided booth with a single step up to a low writing bureau.  On all three sides are carefully designed slots to hold envelopes.  "Please remove your shoes before entering the writing booth" - is this request in respect of the project being the creation of a Taiwanese-born artist? In respect of the spiritual art of letter-writing? Or perhaps in awe of the addressees on the envelopes...

To Emanuelle
To my brother and my sister
Gordon, PM
Pour Piotr
An Artist Among Artists
Whoever in the Whole Wide World
Robert
God
Budda
Wonderful Grandparents
x x x
We Are the Wise Ones

I am writing these down trying not to disturb the woman who is kneeling in her stockinged feet writing her letter in the booth. Another, older, woman enters the room. She must have come up in the lift - our reverence is temporarily agitated by the digital voice announcing that the lift is now going down. This new arrival walks straight up to the booth and lifts down an envelope, opens it and reads the contents. I am shocked; i feel voyeuristic but cannot help glancing across to see what is written therein. It has been 4 years today since our first meeting and... She returns the contents, slots the envelope back in its place and removes another on which is written:

Dear God...

The younger woman in the booth has finished writing. I imagine her folding the sheet of paper (her back is to us) and then she begins to rise back to her feet, places the folded sheet inside the envelope and then finds a home for it with the others. On it is scribed:

God of Life

So who would i write to?  Why didn't i write a letter while i was there?  Why don't i just get on and write the letters, send them to those still living, mourn those who i didn't write to sooner...?  I am uneasy with the idea of leaving a letter in a public place where others can read it, judge me, laugh at me and i feel sure that i would try too hard to make the letter "good" knowing that others might indeed read it.   And yet i write and publish this blog and i guess reading my blog is like reading a private journal that i have chosen to share with the world...

What about you?  What would you do?