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THE PREAMBLE – To & Fro: A constant movement backwards and forwards.

I have had many a history lesson, classes focusing on every subject of history from Shakespeare and Chaucer to the History of Love to the standard, dry, fall asleep while eyes open slide presentations of Art History 101. I can recall with a dull vividness the bottomless cups of coffee while pouring over slides and dates for exams that would test a knowledge all too soon forgotten.

It makes one question what exactly it is that makes a thing memorable, what qualities must an event have to make a deep impression; so deep that its mark is left indefinitely to be recalled and revisited, not as some random piece of information but as an occurrence whose effects and meaning are felt and understood, shedding light on the past while simultaneously penetrating deeper events of the present. T.S. Eliot put it well in his selected essays ‘Tradition and the individual talent,’ when he wrote,

“What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them…Whoever has approved this idea of order…will not find it preposterous that the past be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.”

What it boils down to is context, the set of circumstances that surround a particular event become just as crucial as the event itself. It is what’s led me to my own foray into history, a search for meaning in context, not just to place events solidly in memory but to create a wellspring of knowledge that has no bounds, shedding light on both past and present…and thus begins design:to&fro and my own search for inspiration.