An Interview on the subject of the narrative of home

An Interview on the subject of the narrative of home Conducted by Logan Stallings Interviewer: Logan Stallings Interviewee: Anonymous 22-year-old St. Edwards Senior.

Interviewer:​​ Myself Interviewee:​​ Anonymous male 22-year-old St. Edward’s student with experience of life in transit Interview Setting: ​Interview conducted in my living room in Austin Texas. The interview was conducted at 7:30 PM on Tuesday evening Nov. 6, 2018.

Affiliation with interviewee: ​Interviewee came forward with a narrative of the difficulty of cultivating home.

(Start of Interview) Interviewer: What does home mean to you?

Interviewee: Um well, my family life has been really tumultuous in the last five years so where I used to think of home as a sedentary space I've really come to think of it as something that's mobile almost… that you create spaces of comfort with the people that you interact with.

Basically, home is where your friends are. Home is where your family is. Home is where the things that give you peace are… whatever those may be.

Interviewer: How do you create a sacred space for yourself and cultivate that?

Interviewee: Yeah um, most of the time… It’s gonna sound weird… I guess I'll just spend a lot of time in a place and mess it up, like f*ck it up a little bit… and then I’m just like oh now if feels more like… sorry that sounds weird. I guess the way that I make it a home is by experiencing an amount of time with the space I’m inhabiting. Cause I had several summers where I just had a bed and some bed sheets and books and clothing and that was about it, and I had to like make do with what I had, but after time when I got paid by my lousy job at home depot, I was able to afford more amenities. So like seeing that space really develop with me like get a bed, get a bookshelf, get a coffee table get a regular table, get a stool, get an actual chair like it really helps build a sense of history that I find comforting.

Interviewer: When moving around a lot is it hard to find that sacred space?

Interviewee: I… In the material sense definitely, because you know you don’t really have a physical anchor to things because you don’t have time to develop that history with places, but you do have time to develop that history with people, and so I think at that point you kind of start… because a home is like so many different contexts and meanings. If you’re living a nomadic lifestyle you’ll start to develop a like a metaphysical… it's gonna sound kind of

wonky… but like a metaphysical home with the people around you...and whatever object there are that are recurring, those objects as well… it becomes more of a cerebral space that's inhabited by things that you find comforting.

Interviewer: Do you have any physical objects that travel with you?

Interviewee: Probably the closest thing I have to that would be my giant computer that I’ve had for a long time. My connection to the internet is like… it sounds very basic, but my connection to the internet is what’s kept me tethered and has helped me retain my agency in times of tumultuous… and like I have a lot of invested value in the computers that I have… not just because it’s a form of entertainment and escapism through the gaming that I do, but also because I get to maintain my social connections through them I get to maintain like the sense that I’m in control of my destiny to a limited extent, but it definitely helps foster that feeling within me. So if I had to say something that is integral to me that I have to take wherever I go, it would have to be that.

Interviewer: What’s the relationship between physical space and the sense of belonging?

Interviewee: I think everybody has a space they feel they belong to or feel they want to belong to or feel they have a destiny to belong to almost… and I feel that sense is informed by history a lot. Kind of like you’re shaped by your interactions with others, and the relationship you have with the environment around you, and I think the longer your body and mind adapt to that, the more comfort you feel there and the more you feel you naturally belong to that space.

Interviewer: When you inhabit a new space or home, do you practice any kind of nesting?

Interviewee: Oh yeah, well, my dad always said if you’re going to stay in a place for longer than two days, it’s a really good idea to unpack your dirty luggage. And based off of that simplistic anecdote, I think there's a similar feeling too, because if you’re going to inhabit a space for a long time… there's an intrinsic desire… I feel like people are naturally drawn to do it because like if you're expecting it stay in place for a long time, you obviously want to do it and you have free reign of the space, you obviously want to adapt it to your environment so you can better exist. Because comfort is really important to people, and i think if you don't get it somehow every day to some degree, it starts to grate on you a lot emotionally and mentally and to that extent, I think that adopting a place to your needs is a self-preservation action so yes I think that as people move throughout spaces and people inhabit saves the environment and the person have a weird sort of dialogue with each other where they inform the form of each other. … it’s motivated by self-preservation and the desire to connect and to express because that, of course, is part of it too.