Becoming what we are

These past couple weeks I have been thinking about space in the context of performance. Stimulating my thoughts is the work of Phil Smith, a member of Wrights & Sites.  [His autobiographical texts, along with those of Deirdre Heddon and Carl Lavery, appear in Walking, Writing & Performance (edited by Roberta Mock, Intellect Books, 2009), which I will be posting a review of next week.]

What has caught my attention is how Phil Smith sees walking through place as an "act of becoming."  Over a period of time Smith set out to reconnect with the "magical playground" of his childhood.  I think I was grabbed by this because for the last few weeks I have been revisiting places of my childhood, some of which now exist only as empty space.  While some are in my conscious memory and recognizable, there are others that I had no conscious memory of until I happen to pass by.  As the memories came flooding back, I came to the realization that these places, which occupied, consciously or subconciously, a space in my memory, were memories about becoming who I presently am.  Those acts that I performed there and then in those spaces form to a great extent those acts I perform in the spaces I occupy today.  The history of those places, i.e., those spaces I have occupied, even if for a few minutes, is embedded not only in what I have become, but also in what I am becoming.  

When I reconnect with a place of my past, I am also connecting with that space in the present moment, not only physically, but also spiritually; I am in the process of becoming "another me."  There is a new connection and I have become reborn as a different (yet, the same) person.  What I did in that space is connected, not only to my once again passing through that space, but also to what I am becoming.

To put it in the context of performance, each connection is an act in the same play leading to the conclusion.  However, the play is an ever-evolving one, and thus the conclusion is ever before us, unknown.  Yet, each act has an irrevocable effect on the conclusion.