Fall

Fall is an installation of 85 mobiles made from fallen leaves of ginkgo trees and dropped branches of birch trees. It honours GG, my neighbour, an east end shopfitter who died aged 85 after falling on the ice on a street lined with ginkgo and birch trees. The mobiles attend to the moment of falling — gravity, time and loss suspended — and the act of holding what has been and is still broken.

In its first iteration it was installed at the Salvation Army thrift shop in Walthamstow which GG visited every morning. In its second iteration it was installed in FILET Gallery in Hoxton. Over the course of the exhibition at FILET the leaves will bleach and shrivel as visitors pass among groves of the mobiles.

Fall is part of Held: a series of site-specific kinetic installations of alder, ash, beech, black locust, cherry, elm, gingko, hornbeam, lime, maple, oak, plane, rowan, sweet chestnut, sweet gum, sycamore, and whitebeam leaves collected from east London as a memorial to local residents.

A Chorus of Fallings

With Ocean Vuong, Sylvia Plath, Li-Young Lee, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Crowded House, Maya Angelou, Marilyn Monroe, Alicia Keys, Jane Austen, Beyoncé, Jack Halberstam, Sun Tzu, Helen Fielding, Elvis Presley, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell, Tom Petty, Pablo Neruda, André Dallas, Terry Pratchett, Albert Camus, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Bradbury, Nora Ephron, Jeanette Winterson, Bob Dylan, Dr. Seuss, Alexander Hamilton, Jennifer Aniston, and Buzzcocks

How sweet. That rain.
How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.

Each fallen leaf is trapped by spell of steel,
crimped like fern in the quartz atmosphere;
repose of sculpture holds the country still.

The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

If you mean to be free, you can be free;
if you do not mean to be free, you will fall and be forever fallen.

Hey, whenever I fall at your feet
Won't you let your tears rain down on me?

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

Sometimes things fall apart
so that better things can fall together.

I keep on falling in and out
Of love with you
I never loved someone
The way that I love you.

To be fond of dancing
was a certain step towards falling in love.

When you’re falling, what are you thinking?
I just kept thinking: you better get up.
I was like, Just go for it—do it harder.

To be underachievers, to fall short,
to get distracted, to take a detour,
to find a limit, to lose our way,
to forget, to avoid mastery.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night,
and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

It is a truth universally acknowledged
that when one part of your life starts going okay,
another falls spectacularly to pieces.

Take my hand,
Take my whole life, too
For I can't help falling in love with you.

We are asleep until we fall in Love! 

Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all 
Is never to feel the burning light.

It's easy to fall in love.
The hard part is finding someone to catch you. 

I'm gonna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while
Now I'm free, free fallin'.

In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?

So if Rhodes gone fall, then we gotta rise
It’s only through knowledge that we free these minds
See their structures start to topple as I speak these rhymes
If Rhodes gone fall, then we gotta rise,
One and all haffi call to de, decolonise.

Humans need fantasy to be human.
To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. 

Such nights,
or such mornings rather
(for the fall occurs at dawn),
I go out and walk briskly along the canals.

Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees
I'll wait for you
And should I fall behind
Wait for me.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love.
Write only what you love, and love what you write.
The word is love.
You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. 

Don't you love New York in the fall?
It makes me want to buy school supplies.
I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

Do you fall in love often?
Yes often.
With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers,
with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all. 

And it's a hard,
it's a hard,
it's a hard,
and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Which way does a tree fall? 
Uh, down? 
A tree falls the way it leans.
Be careful which way you lean. 

Those who stand for nothing fall for everything. 

Once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself,
I think it all kind of falls into place. 

Ever fallen in love with someone
Ever fallen in love, in love with someone
Ever fallen in love, in love with someone
You shouldn't have fallen in love with.