MUSEUM OF READING

2018

Luis Méndez Salinas

poem for the exhibition

We human beings are islands.
Islands that learned to be toghether in the sea of language.
The waves of that sea are words.
They reach to the shores of our senses and build the world.
We are alone , but out loneliness is imposible.
Words speak with one another , they speak , listen to each other.
They are sound that comes out of the mouth and gets inside the ears.
Long ago we understood that saying things was not enough.
And we started drawing those sounds.
To write is to fix what comes out of the mouth.
And that which comes out of the mouth is a magnet.
Words are magnets that atract senses and subjects.
Books, then , are chains of magnets.
Vortexes.
Every page a bonfire.

Its fire catches the look and leaves everything else in darkness.
Eyes are nomads who move over a Groove of words.
To read is to liberate the sound the word has.
To read is a concrete activity done in a specific time and space.
Nevertheless, when we read we erase time and space.
To read is to talk, but specially to listen.
You read to establish a conversation with people who died
many many years ago.
You read to visit imposible places.
You read a hole in our chests and, finally , found ourselves.
To live more lifes , because one was never enough.
To know certain things and to forget others .
To imagine.
He who reads is looking for something, searches and may find somethings.
Something that is outside and inside oneself.
The skin is the frontier of our bodies.
Nevertheless, is incapable of containing all we are.

Eight persons were Reading quietly for tree hours as Reading sculptures.

With charcoal drawings on the walls of people Reading.