The Art of Becoming Unstuck

An Attachment Theory

I was so sad, last year, to hear that Christian Boltanski had died.

Like a couple of other artists his work seems to have punctuated my life in surprising ways. Agnes Varda is the same: I have found myself walking in a park in Paris from a film of hers, and remembered the film as the park without the strange runner who kept circling us that afternoon. If it hadn’t been for the film how would I remember the park without the runner? The film: an exclamation mark for the park. Boltanski shows are where I have ended up more than once by accident while at a loose end in Paris.

Whatever punctuates our lives, it’s worth noticing. Someone was telling me about the way their cat relates to space. It made me think how space affects us. Attachment. Attachment theory is so incomplete it makes me anxious and avoidant. Attachment doesn’t happen out of space, or time. Where on earth do people think attachment happens?

So here’s a picture I find beautiful of children moving across space, brought to you from a Boltanski show that ended on the same day as my birthday in 1980.

It reminds me to hold on to love.