Flow

 

Flow.

The Sixth Year Common Room was zoned. There was the smaller end-room where the arty kids hung out, the ones who arranged to go see Del Amitri play the Barrowlands at the weekend. That was the space where I spent the most time. There was the large room, a more general space, but zoned, around the in-crowd. I was reasonably welcome there, but never entirely comfortable. I had been popular in the First year, not least because I was the one who brought a leather football to school, for the sprawling matches that occupied our playtime breaks; I kept goal, diving on tarmac, repeatedly going through the knees of trousers, causing my mother great distress; but in the Second year, depression touched my life, and from then, I was on the edge, in case the shadow be contagious. And then there was the space, just inside the door, that the outsiders made their den. The one who fantasised about killing people (and probably would have done, had it been America). The ones who today would be called Incels. The ones who were deliberately ‘deviant’ in their sexuality, as an act of rebellion. The one who would become the first of our cohort to die, of an overdose, not long after we left school. I deliberately spent time there, too. Once, a girl from a ‘good’ Christian family asked me, “Ugh. Why do you hang out with these people? They are…repulsive.” All I could offer her in response was that Jesus loved them and would have me be their friend. I don’t know that I have much more to add to this day.

They offered one another acceptance in that space, but it wasn’t a healthy space. The misfits who gathered there could be themselves, but in many ways, it was as toxic as the in-crowd space, where no-one was truly themselves at all (including, but by no means limited to, the ones who would come out at some future time).

I won a couple of school prizes that year, for Geography and for History, and chose books on architecture, poured over line drawings setting out principles of the flow of people (and light, and wind) through architectural space.

There are limits to spaces. There is a place for designated spaces, bedrooms for example, but also for communal spaces and still other spaces that connect them all. There is a place for open-plan space, for daily life shared, in common and without differentiation, segregation, privacy. But there are limits to open plan living, too. And every solution raises its own set of problems, notably unforeseen or perhaps dismissed as worth the cost, by those who will not be the ones living with the cost.

We all need spaces for our lives to be lived. Purpose-built, well-constructed, safe. But every space has its limits. At the limits of identity politics, in all its expressions, potential friends are pushed to become enemies, those who demand to be seen and heard refuse to see and hear others, those who needed to leave a space in which they were not permitted to ask questions refuse to be asked genuine, respectful, and sometimes challenging questions.

The ways in which our designated spaces connect, and the flow of movement between them, matters. And we will feel more, and less, at home from one space to another. Will relate to people differently, in each of our intimate, our personal, our social and our public spaces.

How do we create robust communal spaces, where we can co-exist well?

In a polarised society, this question is one we need to attend to.