A memory
A train station is one of the unique and unusual public places. Apart from the crowd and the noise, this huge space is always filled with humid heavy air that holds all kinds of emotions. Sadness, happiness, excitement, delight, fear, regret; all these feelings hit us as soon as we arrive at a train station.
I have a special relationship with such places. It always takes me back to my childhood, the first time when I visited the train station in the centre of my city, Beirut. It was an exceptional and unique experience that is still tickling my memory. But, unfortunately, it has never been repeated.
Beirut Train
I was a 5 years old little child. I was holding firmly my mother’s hand and looking around trying to see the train. I couldn’t find it at first because it was hiding behind the crowd. I was scared and excited simultaneously. I always wonder how it looks and how massive it is. All I know is its very loud frightening sound that breaks the silence of the freezing dark winter nights.
The number of people at the station was enormous. They were like shadows and shapes that kept moving non-stop. Everyone was caring their luggage or suitcases and waiting impatiently. Some were waiting for the departure of their train, and others for their beloved ones to arrive. I was looking at their anxious faces and their eyes were always staring at the departure board. Then a beautiful pleasant relaxing voice came from nowhere and started to announce the schedule of the train for the entire day.
After my first visit, the Lebanese civil war started, it was 1977. The station was bombarded heavily and then it was completely destroyed and vanished in a dark night. It was a terrible time; the sound of the bombs mixed with the sirens of the ambulances penetrated our ears with no permission, and the dominant aggressive acrid smell of the gunpowder filled the air. To sleep, I started to remember the station and the beautiful train that has kept smiling at me with his two twinkling huge eyes. I then realized didn’t know that the sound of the train can be beautiful and can be missed. I still hear it as I write.
After 43 years, I still visit the train station here in Edinburgh from time to time, holding my sketchbook, instead of my mother’s hand. When I’m there I draw all these mixed feelings of the passengers and myself without forgetting the massive smiley face of the majestic train.
People are shapes and shadows that continuously move non-stop. People come and people go like the image of life and death. This lasting image will never leave from that child memory.
Waverly Train Station, Edinburgh
Complex Railways
Shapes, Lines, Signs/directions…
BACK TO BASICS.
The Geometric Forms.
Squares, Rectangles, Circles, Triangles.
Light, Shadows and Patterns
A train station is one of the unique and unusual public places. Apart from the crowd and the noise, this huge space is always filled with humid heavy air that holds all kinds of emotions. Sadness, happiness, excitement, delight, fear, regret; all these feelings hit us as soon as we arrive at a train station.
They were like shadows and shapes that kept moving non-stop.
Chancelot FLour Mill
THE SOUNDTRACK
Personal presentation (Brief)
THE GRAPH (TIME/SOUND)
Mosquito Coil, the Kerosene Babur, and Shadows
The INWARD journey
Often the OUTWARD journey may feel like A to B (a destination). While the INWARD journey can feel more scenic going deeper and deeper
Personal discovery is like a train’s inward journey that takes us deep inside, from one memory to another, from one station to another, passing through our childhood. Sometimes we love to stop and get off at a station before heading to the next one. But often, it is extremely hard to stop. We feel that we need to run away from some memories that keep following us like these shadows.
Mosquito coil / Railway track
turmoil in my life
The Mosquito Coil
Who are we? Do we know ourselves? Are we real or just shadows? Or maybe we are a combination of both?
Shadows always keep following us as part of ourselves. They are the part that is hidden deep inside everyone. The part that we don’t know and we keep looking for during our entire life. Our shadows watch us constantly. They are close and stay with us wherever we go. However, at the same time, they seem distant and remote, to the point, they are anonymous, like strangers. They can hear us and whisper in our ears from time to time with mysterious words. Words that we keep trying to decipher, but the only way to decode them is to travel deep and deeper inside us.
Lots of things had shaped us in various different ways. Apart from religion and culture, sound and music have an intense and powerful impact. Various smells also play an important role that links us to our past, to our childhood. Sometimes different things remain with us similar to our shadows. These things can become part of us, part of our memories. They keep shouting loudly to remind us about who we are. One of these things is a mosquito coil.
Personal discovery is like a train’s inward journey that takes us deep inside, from one memory to another, from one station to another, passing through our childhood. Sometimes we love to stop and get off at a station before heading to the next one. But often, it is extremely hard to stop. We feel that we need to run away from some memories that keep following us like these shadows.
This train travels in a spiral path which goes deep to the centre. It reminds me of the mosquito coil that had a powerful impact on me as a child. Its strong unpleasant smell has embraced me like the air that I breathe every day. This green spiral shape produces a dominant smell, to the point that it has left deep scars in the memory of that little child.
For me, it is essential to go back in my memories, on this coil path, to discover more about myself, about this child who was one day holding his mother’s hand firmly, trying to discover where the scary train with his big eyes was hiding at Beirut station.
Life is as complex as our shadows. We think that our shadows are black but, in reality, they are layers and layers of shades of colours that hide our memories, and much importantly, true selves!.
This train travels in a spiral path which goes deep to the centre. It reminds me of the mosquito coil that had a powerful impact on me as a child. Its strong unpleasant smell has embraced me like the air that I breathe every day. This green spiral shape produces a dominant smell, to the point that it has left deep scars in the memory of that little child.
It is essential to go back in my memories, on this coil path, to discover more about myself, about this child who was one day holding his mother’s hand firmly, trying to discover where the scary train with his big eyes was hiding at Beirut station.
THe Shadows
Shadows always keep following us as part of ourselves. They are the part that is hidden deep inside everyone. The part that we don’t know and we keep looking for during our entire life. Our shadows watch us constantly. They are close and stick to us wherever we go, but at the same time, they are in the distance and remote, to the point, they are anonymous, like strangers. They can hear us and whisper in our ears from time to time with mysterious words. Words that we keep trying to decipher, but the only way to decode them is to travel deep and deeper inside us.
Traces from the Burning
Step 1
Step Two
Step Three
Lots of things had shaped us in various different ways. Apart from religion and culture, sound and music have an intense and powerful impact. Various smells also play an important role that links us to our past, to our childhood. Sometimes different things remain with us similar to our shadows. These things can become part of us, part of our memories. They keep shouting loudly to remind us about who we are.
Life is as complex as our shadows. We think that our shadows are black but, in reality, they are layers and layers of shades of colours that hide our memories, and much importantly, true selves!.
Metro map
Harry Beck’s Tube map
Now recognised across the world, the Tube map was originally the brainchild of Underground electrical draughtsman, Harry Beck, who produced this imaginative and beautifully simple design back in 1933.
Rather than emphasising distance and geographical accuracy, like other maps, Beck based his on the circuit diagrams he drew for his day job; stripping the sprawling Tube network down to a neat diagram of coloured, criss-crossing lines.
The Universe
“You presume you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire universe” Rumi, Persian poet.
Milky Way Galaxy
Our Sun (a star) and all the planets around it are part of a galaxy known as the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy is a large group of stars, gas, and dust bound together by gravity. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because it appears as a milky band of light in the sky when you see it in a really dark area. NASA
The Map of the Inward journey
In this final map, I combined the metro map with its stations with the final abstract piece of the mosquito coil, representing the universe and the galaxies.
