…will please do so on this stone only. Jodie Forbes, and all the many others who relieved their anxiety by writing their names on this stone, I salute you.
This stone has been relieving anxiety since 1887, and it’s fascinating to think of the countless names that have been written on it and worn away in all that time, and wonderful to think that Victorian England had a problem with graffiti that could only be solved by the use of two large slabs of stone set into the ground. Tilly Whim Caves nearby, locked to the public since 1976 and now home only to bats and Willy Tim the dragon (or so I tell my children), is also home to walls of graffiti, carved into the Purbeck stone near the entrances. I’ll get in there one day.
Ever since I started photographing graffiti I’ve wondered what it means to write your name in a public place? There’s a lovely answer at WikiAnswers to this question: “They think that writing their name all over will make other people know who they are. All it does is make other people see their name, of course, and not understand anything about them.”
Personally I think it’s about our anxiety with being so small and so temporary. We are tiny insignificant beings and here for such a short time, and we want to be noticed and then remembered. Some people seek this through fame and celebrity, maybe notoriety, some through creativity (and maybe fame through creativity). To some it gives them a sense of identity – think of taggers, whose mark is largely illegible to most of us, but which identifies them to their peers. And some resort to writing their name repeatedly all over the place. Jodie Forbes wrote her name on this same stone at least three times, in the same pen on presumably the same day.
May she be anxious no more.
The Great Globe at Durlston is here.
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