Keys
A poem on a first London home, an artist-made Phipps House doorplate, borrowed key sounds, and what access makes the body carry.
Read the stitched line. Then unfasten the image.
Poem & studio photograph
KEY / BORROWED ACCESS / LONDON
Artefact (Key Form), 2022 · plaster, found key and pigment · studio photograph.
I have not used physical keys like these for years.
The first house where I settled in London:
my first home.
That long-lost familiarity arrived
with freshness,
with culture shock.
Each time I left,
I had to carry this ring of keys.
It was also something
I found difficult to bear.
What if I gave it more meaning,
more feeling?
The shape on this broken plastic plate,
the address printed on it:
Phipps House
White City Estate
Australia Road
London W12 7QF
Could they signify something
like a European aristocratic crest?
Could I find their loose clinking in my pocket
less irritating?
Could I imagine the sound instead
as jade pendants colliding:
too extravagant,
something even an expensive modern television drama
could not reproduce?
In China,
I no longer carry physical keys.
So these are not my keys speaking.
They return through another person’s recording,
through a London address
that will not stay quiet.