method – 15 – Casual togetherness

We’re just hanging out together. Stories often come out spontaneously, like a flash of inspiration or a rush of emotion. You always have to have a pen and a notepad ready to jot down those snippets of sentences. But it can also be the other way around. Nothing comes at all. You have to develop a method that gives people space to tell their stories. You live with the people, work with them in the kitchen or in the garden.

Sometimes I would just sit in the kitchen. I’d then casually ask a question. While standing or walking by, people would offer half-sentences and snippets, which I’d jot down exactly as they were, and at some point I’d pick up on those snippets again. That’s how a conversation would develop, along with a sense of calm in our exchange about a difficult matter—as it turned out later. It was never clear who had done what. Everyone in the family had a different memory.

Foto on the right: a destroyed bridge in the city Rombas/East France