For an art and poetry project, which was also mainly intended as a connecting project in these times of polarization, fueled by the relatively new but ineradicable so-called social media, the municipality in which we live, Lievegem, was renamed ‘Liefdegem’ for two weeks around Valentine’s Day. A lovely play on words. ‘Liefde’ is the Dutch word for ‘love’ and ‘gem’ is the ending of the name of many Flemish villages, and long ago had the meaning of ‘house of’.
So ‘House of Love’. Wonderful!
Since we are both quite creative, we couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Moreover, we have two large windows facing the street on a fairly busy road, one in the living room and one in my studio. Before we moved in, both rooms together once formed the living room, and they are only separated by a row of bookcases.
I wrote two poems in half an hour, so the groundwork was quickly done. A Dutch poem (‘I love you, so excessive’) and an English poem (‘Love the World’), because English is a second language for almost everyone here.
Marc copied the poems for me with a thick black marker onto large sheets of white craft cardstock. The English poem on a heart shape. I had written it especially for that purpose, short and sweet. Then I colored a frame around both sheets of cardstock with a red marker, and cut out a lot of hearts in two sizes from dark red craft cardstock.
The day before the project started, we taped the poems and some of the hearts to our living room window, and then just a few more hearts to the other window, because we wanted to keep the rolling shutter mostly closed there when the sun was shining. The rolling shutter in the living room, near our television, could only be closed at night during the project.
It all looked nice and cozy. From time to time, people stopped to read the poems. And every now and then a tear of emotion flowed. Hooray, connection!