Claire Falcon has come up with the September brief. Here it is in Claire’s words.
Over the summer I read Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. A brilliant book, which actually caused me to miss my tube stop not once, but twice (yes, on the same journey – you can imagine the expletives uttered under my breath as I looked up to realise I was sailing past Oxford Circus for the second time, this time in the opposite direction). If you haven’t read it, it’s all about the conventions that hold society and a certain way of life together (late 19th century New York), and how people choose to live both within and outside it – mostly within.
Also over the summer various things made me think about society today and the conventions and events that hold it together. In July, I went to the funeral of a much loved elderly relative, who was herself both of and within society, if you know what I mean, but who was wonderfully irreverent and not in the least stuffy. There were many people there from all walks of life who’d known and loved her, which was rather uplifting. Then, last weekend, I was in Scotland for my father’s 70th birthday, and there was a gathering of the clans for the inevitable party. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how the way we live as human beings is both marked and determined by rites of passage, and that, essentially is the brief. Or, if that’s not clear enough:
Reflect on society and its rites of passage.
I won’t be any more specific than that – make of it what you will… hmmm… sounds rather like an exam question…
