Today we visit Esther O'Kelly at home in Belfast. Originally from Wexford, Esther is a visual artist and a founding member of Vault Artist Studios, a community of over a hundred practitioners working across a range of disciplines. READ ARTICLE
World Of Interiors April 2021
ARTIST OF THE MONTH – SEPTEMBER 2020 WINNERS
Delighted to be named as one of Its Liquid Magazine artist of the month for September 2020.
Luca Curci – What is art for you?
Esther O’Kelly – Art is life, It’s everything, I see it as fundamental to the human experience. Art helps us form an understanding of the world around us, it helps us process our experiences and connects us with others.
LC – What are you currently working on?
EOK – I have been working outside the studio and experimenting with being more immersive in the landscape by actively engaging with the notion and experience of the journey. Making work based on how I experience time, place, and space. How I experience the transient, the impermanent and the romantic all in a more connected way. Being in the landscape is a big part in making the work more relevant for me bringing a balance between being mindful and being mindless. I would like to make work that records the wisdom and bleakness held in the vastness of the landscape as it consumes and intoxicates generations of humans on their journey
LC – What is the most challenging part about creating your artworks?
EOK – The most challenging part about making work is getting the time and resources to make the work. As a self reliant full time artist and carer you feel the pressure to justify the time spent on your practice, so it can be difficult to dedicate research and development time to enhance your career with research trips and residencies. I have worked hard however to improve my creative network and relationships with mentors which has helped me gain perceptive on my career and my work which I am very grateful for.
LC – What is your creative process like?
EOK – I make my paintings in Vault Artist Studio’s in Belfast. They are mostly large format acrylic paint applied with thick brushes. An experimental and intuitive approach is at the core of my work. Works are produced in a spontaneous manner drawing upon the unconscious as source material. I work into the painting using wide blades that remove layers of paint while simultaneously creating scratch marks. I like this visceral approach to the medium, quite often it is what I remove from the canvas rather than what is added that creates the focal point of the work.
LC – Are your artworks focused on a specific theme?
EOK – My paintings are an evocation of my relationship with home; memories, landscape and heritage. I paint from memories and remembered experience, drawing narratives from personal and cultural memory, an active engagement with the idea of place. I am inspired by how we form an understanding of our surroundings, how the chaos of this world can turn into an abstract expression where personal experience overflows. Our mental maps are skewed by whatever is meaningful to us, it’s a visceral, fundamental human thing, My everyday experience goes into making a painting, recurring ideas that take root and flourish in the imagination, gateways into feelings and stories known or imagined. By travelling with the inner landscape I can encode a map that’s constantly being influenced with what is meaningful.
LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
EOK – I love being an artist, I feel very privileged to be able to practice my art. We play a diverse and necessary part in contributing to the overall health, development, and well-being of our society. Artist provide our communities with joy, and inspiration, enabling steps toward meaningful social progress. But right at the moment it’s tough for many of us particularly the performing artists. I’m hopeful for the future though, we always find a means and a way, that’s our thing and we’ll keep doing it.
Full interview here
Match Make is a Maiden Voyage commissioning initiative that brought dance artists and artistic collaborators together to work apart on short commissions during lockdown.
Match Makers Film in collaboration with Maiden Voyage
Streams of… captures dance artist Michael McEvoy and visual artist Esther O’Kelly responding to the location of Donaghadee Lighthouse in their own creative ways. Filmed in June 2020 after 12 weeks of lockdown they took the opportunity to create in an experimental, improvised and physically distanced way reacting to each other and the landscape spontaneously.
Streams of… can be veiwed here:
Michael McEvoy is a recent graduate from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance with a First Class Honours degree in Contemporary Dance. Michael has returned home and has ambitions to join a professional company. His Match Make collaboration Streams of.. with Esther O’Kelly is his first time working with Maiden Voyage. Michael is also co producer and choreographer of a Belfast based youth musical theatre company MMK Productions.
Esther O’Kelly BDES, BA, graduated from The National College of Art and Design in Dublin with an honours degree in Visual Communication. Esther is currently Vice Chair at Vault Artist Studio Belfast. Esther paints remembered journey’s through the Irish landscape, drawing narratives from personal and cultural memory, an active engagement with the idea of landscape, a journey with no departure or arrival point. Esther is inspired by how we form an understanding of our surroundings, how the chaos of this world can turn into an abstract expression where personal experience overflows. www.estherokelly.com
Maiden Voyage are principally funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and supported by Belfast City Council.
‘Streams of...’ is a short film made during lockdown with support from @maidenvoyageni @artsni_ in collaboration with @michael_mce
https://maidenvoyagedance.com/match-make-streams-off/
Interview with a Vaulter
Hows it going Esther?
All good. I’ve been home schooling which provides structure and cooking three meals a day which provides the need for frequent exercise.
What is your living situation? Do you have outside space or are you living in an underground bunker?
I live in Sunny East Belfast in a 1920’s semi with my family. We have food, shelter, great neighbours and a big garden where we grow things and watch the birds bicker and bathe.
How has the pandemic effected your arts practice?
I can’t go to my studio, which was a huge shock at first. Not having that dedicated space to indulge my creativity is a massive blow.
At the beginning of March I began work on a studio refit to help upscale my practice and output. But Instead I’m back home where I started with my sketch books and paintbox, pawing the dog eared covers of exhibition guides and art books.
It’s tempting right now to question one’s career and to feel uncertain, especially when your professional skills don’t fall under the ‘Key Workers’ category. Despite this I’ve taken the time to appreciate what I have, to reflect and set new goals.
How are you coping with the temporary closing of the Vault?
I miss the chance encounters with creative people, the water cooler moment and coffee encounters, every day is different at Vault, they have the potential of taking very interesting twists and turns, some rabbit holes proving more fruitful than others.
Most of all I miss the unpredictable environment where there is no normal, it makes you resilient and adaptable which can be a useful skill in these weird times.
What do you appreciate during lockdown?
Community, family and creativity, but mostly I appreciate the time to pause and re-evaluate the important things in life.
How do you imagine the future after lockdown? For yourself and the wider art world in general.
Artists always find a means and a way, that’s our thing and we’ll keep doing it. However I fear that after the great ‘Lock In’ some of us will no longer be artists. The sector was already experiencing huge blows before Covid-19.
Each artist plays a diverse and necessary part in contributing to the overall health, development, and well-being of our society. Artist provide our communities with joy, and inspiration, enabling steps toward meaningful social progress.
So I imagine a future where artists can thrive and where the provision of the arts within Northern Ireland are valued and respected.
Where can people find you online?
@estherokelly
Vault Trustees Research trip, to Artist led studios in Amsterdam.
Four days of researching artist led spaces and broedplaatsen in Amsterdam with the Vault team. Inspiring to see what had been achieved and how organisations have sustained themselves.
Team photo from Vault Artist Studios trip to Amsterdam. Over 5 days we visited 6 arts and creative organisations. Behind us you can see our boat, Lotus, where we stayed for the duration of our trip. Image by Neal Campbell
Murder on the Gdańsk Floor
10 Artists and a Dog
In December 2019, I was one of five Irish artists (Jonathan Brennan, Joanna Mules, Marcus Patton and Katherine St Angelo - see below) invited to attend an international artist residence and exchange with three Polish counterparts in the historic city of Gdańsk.
The residency took place in Dom Aktora, a former actors’ residence in the old city, with over 30 years experience of organising artist exchanges. Professor Jacek Krenz (architect of the Monument to the Fallen Workers and the Cemetery of Lost Cemeteries), Professor Krzysztof Ludwin (Politechnika Krakowska), Anna Schumacher (Krakow) and Magdalena Nowacka (Katowice) formed the Polish contingent with whom we shared a living and working space for a week, creating new works of art inspired by Gdańsk and Sopot. All pieces were exhibited in a well-attended public exhibition at the close of the week.
Although Dom Aktora had organised similar exchanges with Armenia, Italy, etc. this was the first time that a Belfast-Gdansk exchange had taken place. The twinning of both cities in this way seemed right: we learned of our many commonalities, not least sharing a shipbuilding heritage and a troubled past, but also saw opportunities to learn from each other going forward e.g. Gdansk’s exemplary way of dealing with its recent history in the form of the Solidarity Museum vs. Belfast’s thriving, albeit underfunded, contemporary art scene.
Ireland
Jonathan Brennan - https://www.jonathanbrennanart.com
Joanna Mules - http://www.joannamules.com
Esther O’Kelly - https://estherokelly.com
Marcus Patton - https://www.bpw.org.uk/content/marcus-patton
Katherine St Angelo - http://www.katherinestangelo.com
Poland
Jacek Krenz - http://watermarks.weebly.com/ and http://www.pg.gda.pl/~jkrenz/index-gb.html
Krzysztof Ludwin - http://ludwin.pl
Magdalena Nowacka - https://nowackakolano.com
Anna Schumacher - http://www.annaschumacher-malarstwo.pl
Amber City EOK
Esther O' Kelly Listed among the 10 Irish homeware designers you need to know
https://irishcountrymagazine.ie/10-irish-homeware-designers-you-need-to-know-395605/amp/
Excess Baggage: a constellation of works on paper and objects. Esther O’Kelly and Chris Lewis-Jones
Excess Baggage is a record of Chris Lewis-Jones and Esther O’Kelly’s conversations about mythology, folklore, culture and identity.
During the course of their collaboration the artists became attuned to the mythology/ies that shape our views of the world and our places within it. Acting within an ecology in which apparently opposing difference produces entropic transformation, the artists became excited by the ways in which each creative interaction generated a new context. From the start, virtuosic drawing underpinned their collaboration. Undertaken in Esther’s studio and via correspondence, their approach to mark making was visceral and spontaneous, drawing on the unconscious as both source and inspiration.
The act of collaborative making, in which each thing leads rapidly to the next, through a process of intuitive iteration, resulted in what Esther called ‘imagery riffing’. Thus, riffing on both the familiar and the unfamiliar, drawing on the mythic narratives prevalent in both cultures, the artists were reminded of the trauma bond that exists between Britain and Ireland, the long and troubled history of colonisation and its associated grand narrative/s, which has generated baggage that we have yet to deal with (hence the title of the collaboration/exhibition). This troubled history permeates the work, as does the poetic presence of the literary and the mythological. Excess Baggage is a response to the context/s in which it is placed: the gallery, Belfast and the ESP collaboration. Bound up with notions of personal and collective memory, the need to survive, to rebuild and to defend, in these precarious post-war pre-Brexit times, the exhibition invites us to unpack (at least some of our) our baggage.
Chris Lewis-Jones and Esther O’ Kelly share an interest in exploring the specificity of geographical context/s. Each week (since their initial meeting at Primary) one of the artists has sent the other a series of artworks to which s/he has responded, in kind. Initially these works tended to be expressionistic paintings and drawings of cultural archetypes, thus, a visual conversation has been taking place between the two artists and the socio-geographical contexts in which they are each located. However, since working together in Belfast(1) they have found themselves exploring notions of cultural identity using masks. ‘What masks are we wearing?’ is a question they have been asking themselves (several times a day)! This represents a departure for both artists as neither has explored the mask before. Their exploration is influenced by Lyotard’s theory of ‘mythic discourse’(2) and by the murals that surround Vault studios in East Belfast, many of which feature masked combatants.
In addition to this painterly/expressive body of work, they have also been exploring the notion of ‘cultural baggage’ using words and assemblage. These approaches are quite different and the artists are not sure how, or even if, they will bring them together to complete their collaboration. In the meantime, they are very much enjoying travelling hopefully together (which is what collaboration should be about)!
Note: (1) Including a day in Esther’s studio in East Belfast when they were surrounded by preparations for an impromptu Orange march (2) The concept of national identity, as it has been passed down to us, is an example of what Lyotard calls the ‘narrative discourse’ (The Post Modern Condition, 1974); the story of a (social or ethnic) group which, simply by its telling, reinforces/legitimises the dominant values of itself. The group, which legitimises itself through ‘the chanting of a myth,’ becomes ‘bonded’. The myth requires no authorisation or legitimisation, other than itself. ‘This is who we are’, says the group, ‘this is where we came from…this is what we do’, and ‘this is how it is’.
The Expanded Studio Project is a 6 month collaborative initiative between Belfast based artists and artists based @weareprimary Nottingham. The aim of the project is to develop external relationships, exchange ideas and explore different modes of collaboration.
Opening August 22nd 6pm @pssquaredbelfast
Esther O'Kelly named among top ten Influencer in Irish Home Design
Cast your vote by following the link below:
Space To Create.
Expanded Studios Project
Expanded Studio Project
23 – 31 August 2019
Opening: Thursday, 22 August, 6-8pm at PS² - Belfast
Participating artists
Alex Brunt; Declan Proctor; Esther O’Kelly; Zara Lyness; Gerard Carson; Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell; Robin Price; Jackie Wylie; Thomas Wells; Heather Dornan Wilson; Sinead McKeever; Grace McMurray; Barry Mulholland; Hannah McBride; Chris Lewis Jones; Roger Suckling; Bex Gamble; Bruce Asbestos; Christine Stevens; Frank Abbot; Georgina Barney; Ines Garcia, Louisa Chambers; Marek Tobolewski; Mik Godley; Paul Webber; Pete Ellis; Rhiannon Jones; Sarah Tutt
The presentation at PS² is not an exhibition of finished work, rather a showcase of peer outcomes created through collective ideas, conversations and self-directed activities.
On 28 September a symposium will take place in Primary Studios, Nottingham, where the full group of artists will reconvene to discuss the project, its challenges and possible further development.
The Expanded Studio Project is a 6 month collaborative initiative between Belfast based artists and artists based at Primary Studios, Nottingham. The aim of the project is to develop external relationships, exchange ideas and explore different modes of collaboration.
The project is based on a pilot programme which ran between Primary Studios in Nottingham and Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge in 2014-15 where artists engaged in a period of dialogue and exchange over a four-month period.
The challenge this time was to initiate and sustain collaboration across further geographical distance between England and Northern Ireland. In addition the Belfast participants are based across several different artists’ studios. (These include QSS- Queen Street Studios-, FLAX Studios, Array Studios, Creative Exchange Artists’ Studios, Pollen Studios and Vault studios.
Through planned visits to each other’s cities and continued conversations and emails, artists began either ‘partnering up’ or discussing ways that they could come together in groups to find a way to work together through continued communication and find a means to respond to each other’s ideas.
@expandedstudioproject2019
Frottage of Esthers Ladder by Chris Lewis Jones, Artist based at Primary Nottingham.
The first visit of the Belfast based artists to Nottingham will take place between 23- 26 April.
HIT THE NORTH 2018
I was delighted to be asked back to paint at HTN18. I returned to paint on North Street alongside some of the most internationally star studded line up to date.
From Colombia to Australia and Portadown to Poleglass, street artists and muralists came to the city on 20th & 21st September to bring their unique brand of colour, flair and creativity to radically transform the Northside of the city centre.
There wasd international depth to this year’s programme featuring artists from Belgium (Dzia), Italy (Alice Pasquini), Holland (Nol) Australia (Danni Simpson), Switzerland (Sonic Oner), Colombia (Sancho MDN & Visual) joined by artists from the UK and for the first time this year Tape That from Berlin. Tape That installed their artwork at the Bullitt Hotel on 18th & 19th September before moving over to Blaklist for the main festival on 20th & 21st September.
This year's line up included Annatomix, Tape That, Rogue-one (graffiti), Danni Simpson Art, Sonic oner, Dzia & Sons, Alice Pasquini, Conzo Throb, Ciaran Glöbel, Sancho Mdn, Visual, Michael Nol, KVLR, Friz, JMK ART, DMC, Emic, Verz Art, FGB , Rob Hilken - Visual Artist, Leo Boyd & Laura Nelson, Holly Pereira Illustration, Wee Nuls, Gary Real RoweDoc, Morgy, Conor McClure Illustration, Voms, Shuk, ADW artist, Caoilfhionn Hanton Art, Kathrina Rupit - Kinmx, Rask, Aches, Emmalene Art, MARK_one_SZO, Vanessa Power, Shane O Malley Art, Novice, Mack, Ominus Omin, Vents Dublin, Stay Lo, So Fly, SUBSET & Esther O'Kelly Artist,
Hit the North Street Art Festival was established by Seedhead Arts and the Community Arts Partnership in 2013 as a response to vacant space along North Street and to transform the streets of the Cathedral Quarter. It has become one of the biggest street art festivals in Ireland and attracts artists from across Europe.
@campbellphotography
Images by @campbellphotography
Image by Chris Copeland
Esther O'Kelly named in 10 ten influencer of Irish Homeware Design.
Great to see art getting its due as a key player in interior design.
Vault Artist Studio Launch
I'm proud to call myself a founding member & trustee of this ground breaking collective based in East Belfast.
Vault Artist Studios is a group of artists working across many disciplines. We are visual artists, musicians, puppeteers, photographers, film-makers, bee-keepers and writers. Vault Artists Studios are a community driven, not for profit arts charity with the mission to provide affordable art studios for creatives working across a wide variety of art forms. 88 artists have established the groundbreaking co-operative under one roof in East Belfast. Calling oursleves Vault Artist Studios, we have moved into the old Belfast Metropolitan College building in Tower Street.
The initiative is a reprise for the group who were formerly known as the Belfast Bankers after we were offered the temporary use of the empty Ulster Bank at the Holywood Arches last year.
It began with a mysterious email... In Late 2016, founding member Adam Turkington received the kind of out-of-the-blue email you might just scroll past but which contained an extraordinarily generous offer: would he be able to make use of an old Ulster Bank building in East Belfast for a year?
23 artists came together, united by the twin ideas of building a community of artists, and making as much happen in one year as we possibly could. There would be monthly meetings, everyone would actively contribute towards the project, we would engage with the local community, we would make great art – and we would see if this could be the beginning of something wonderful.
Our neighbours joined in. Local people came and shared food, gained insight into the secretive working practices of artists, learnt how to play the piano, watched beekeepers in action, listened to live music and shared our vision of placing the arts at the heart of the community.
Now we’re growing...
In a short period of time; Vault Artists studios have become a major contributor to the cultural identity of Belfast and the creative narrative of the city.
https://www.vaultartiststudios.com
Artist Launch at Pigyard
Gorgeously colourful abstract canvases by emerging artist Esther O'Kelly.
In the same way that a flower fragrance or a tune takes us back to a special place and time, the Belfast- based artist uses her paintings to explore familiar memories and experiences, at once universal and personal, of growing up in Rosslare. This is O'Kelly's second one person show at the Pigyard. We have great hopes for her fine art career and viewing is recommended.
Esther O'Kelly and author Cat Hogan, guest speaker at Esther's exhibition of paintings, 'To & Fro in My Dreams', which opened on Friday. Two Wexford artists who share a maritime background.
‘To and fro in my dreams I go’ An exhibition of paintings by Esther O’Kelly at The Pigyard Gallery Wexford.
This exhibition is a collection of paintings about our fragile human state and how we experience life, love and loss. The work is about family, friends and influences as much as it is about the artist herself. We see her making connections from the outset, as we travel back through fragments of her past, The journey beautifully non-linear, an inexplicable series of dreamlike states that gracefully ebb and flow through the parameters of the Artists consciousness. The paintings act as emotional triggers, visual springboards into her past.
Impressions of place are a main feature of the work, remembering childhood laughs, larks and loves with nostalgia. The paintings are synonymous with recollection, a series of beautifully simplistic compositions that signify youthful joy and glee.
‘I’m less interested in the detail of the memory than the joy of it: I want to convey the thrill of accessing a treasure trove of memories buried in my mind, my paintings relive shining moments and act as a respite from every day life. I see them as a joyous celebration of remembering with a touch of heartbreak.’
Esther’s work is romantic and expressively coloured, with forms that seek to capture a memory and evoke a sense of place. The Irish landscape with its mixture of buildings nestling in dramatic rural settings have a strong presence in her work. They may begin as depictions of a place from a memory but during the painting process they take on a life of their own – houses and walkways are painted over but the imprint remains visible, creating an archaeology beneath the painted surface. Colour is an integral element – fine layers of paint are built up and stripped away creating delicate colour passages and textures reminiscent of stone and peeling paint.
‘Painting is a very physical and sensual process for me, I try to keep the painting open to all possibilities, deviations and directions. I like working back and forth between organic and architectural elements, colours and textures that become saturated or atmospheric, marks that whisper or shout. I try to frame the past in different or unexpected ways to challenge how we think about major events in our own time. The paintings tell stories about personal memory, that reframe the past not as a fixed narrative but as a multiplicity of voices layered and faded.’
‘To and fro in my dreams I go’ oozes with powerful memories of a simplistic upbringing, complete with family, friends, love and life in all its magnificent glory.
Esther’s solos show opens June 29th for 3 weeks in The Pigyard Gallery Wexford.
Wardrobe Jam in CS Lewis Square Belfast
I was asked to take part in this community event by Seedhead Arts and East Side Arts.
A group of Artists were each given a wardrobe to paint as part of a day long festival.
Just for one day. The 20th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement as depicted by Esther O’Kelly
‘Keening’
‘Keening is a traditional form of vocal lament for the dead. In Ireland and Scotland it is customary for women to wail or keen at funerals. Keening has also been used as part of civil disobedience and protest.’
‘Keening’ is a collection of paintings informed by my own experience of living in Belfast in the shadow of conflict. Using memory and intuition, the work intends to evoke the everyday spirit of Belfast, to define our sense of place and community. These paintings look beyond the illusion of talks and deals to everyday life. They explore the raw beauty of who we are, our basic need to live in peace, in this place where the violent echoes of our past are still reverberating.
I see The Good Friday Agreement as a vessel that holds the grief of a community in escrow. These paintings explore our fragile human state, how we experience loss and how we haveagreed to place our trust in such a fragile concept as a peace deal. The Good Friday Agreement honours our connection to the past and promises to shape our future, but Stormont now stands as an abandoned house. All the while lives are lived and lost, children have come and gone, family life continues to be sucked into the passage of time and the precious moments we live for are fleeting.
The venue for ‘Keening’ is Joan’s Hair Salon. A place where everyday life takes place, where we laugh, gossip, cry and grieve. A place at the heart of our community, a place to be vulnerable. A place where we reveal the hidden elements below the skin of this place called home.
'Just for One Day'
There’s going to be a lot of familiar and famous talking heads, looking back pensively, giving the ‘I was there’ definitive version of ‘what really happened’ at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement twenty years ago.
We will note the wrinkles and the grey hair and we will see how they have changed, if only in their appearance.
The usual role-call will be called.
But what about artistic responses?
What might an artist create that could ever contain the complexity, horror, and sorrow of over 3600 lives lost from the armed conflict in Northern Ireland?
And what might ten artists create?
In ten locations across Belfast.
And how might we respond to these different framings, after twenty years of the Good Friday Agreement?
This was the seed idea that Susan McEwen and Paul Hutchinson began with: – what could be said that might reframe our shared past and allow us to see a flourishing way forward?
We wanted to be both ambitious and modest.
Ten artists commissioned to create new works, in ten locations across Belfast.
Just for one day.
And that’s what we have assembled for Thursday 12th April.
A bus trip. An art map. Painting. Soundscapes. Physical Theatre. Songs. Research findings. A long poem. Digital Art. Photographs. A film.
Just for one day.
Take three examples.
Take Leonie McDonagh, who will be performing a one-hour physical theatre piece at An Chultúrlann. Entitled Stand and Fall, the artist will see how many times she can fall and rise and fall and rise in 3600 seconds.
How much can we bear to watch?
What will be left at the end of the performance?
Of Leonie?
Of the audience?
Take a room in a disused bank. Neil Foster has set his piece Safe House in this odd, wonderful location.
Neil will be creating an immersive space filled with sound, images, and opportunities to reflect on safe and unsafe pasts, present, future.
Stay for five minutes. Stay for an hour.
Take a special performance of four songs by the incredible Ursula Burns. Her sequence, entitled Being born in Belfast, will include a song that she began twenty years ago and finished this year. How will these songs resonate in the beautiful space of St Patricks Church on the Lower Newtownards Road?
Other venues include a barge, a deconsecrated church, a hair salon, a library, acommunity café.
Other mediums include anthropological research, photography, digital art, a short film, a painting.
The tenth artwork is a specially commissioned art-map which will serve two purposes – locations of the art works and a statement about how we map our multi-storied city.
A fifty-seater bus has also been hired (now fully booked) to take participants on a journey to all of the artworks, culminating at Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church – a huge space that befits the scale of this project.
So here comes the surge of stats and anecdotes.
So here comes the celebrity story-tellers.
A 20th Anniversary
Of a Good Friday Agreement.
And Stormont is empty.
And people are waiting for a change.
How might these ten frames help us to look again at who we are, where we came from, where we might go?
We might see things differently.
Just for one day.
Perhaps for longer.