i’ve loved the number four for a long time. some windows have four panes. four seasons, four directions, four days, four weeks in a month (sometimes). love, a four letter word. and the heart has four chambers. the chambers, with their oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, and the electric impulses that stall the barriers between them. the heart, blood flow, on time, beating.
i saw this installation on my way to the movies last Friday. i stopped in to see who made it and took this picture. i was struck by the possibility of making a heart more capacious; by doing so with concentration and awe. where would the fifth chamber go? what would it render her capable of?
Erika deVries, the artist, does a lot of light up pieces like this one. the ones i’ve seen seem to be concerned with attention and love. Among other things she calls herself a mundanity expert (!)
in a recording that accompanied one of her installations (on accident at first i wrote instillation..) she said “may you be safe from inner and outer dangers”1 those inner ones are frightful. i was grateful to hear this wish, this kindness.
could i grow a fifth chamber, and could it make me safer. or maybe i would install it, or maybe it would need to be instilled. i want one: a way of “way of railing against the catastrophe”2 maybe that chamber would attune me to the divinity in the mundane, The Temple of My Familiar.
the fifth chamber grew. and on that day i told you about how i learned to hold my own heart, about how i stalled the barriers.