We built the wall from banana skins we stole from strip cartoons, piling slip-up on slip-up until the joke became a nightmare, then stretched coiled laughter to rip the edge to rags. Sign and signification shift in the speaking, and although the image loses precision with each successive iteration, the wall stands strong, even as it slips into pure abstraction. Anecdotally speaking, bananas are the most popular fruit in the world today [insert reference to a dead website that oozed authority] but how many of us have actually slipped on their skins? More importantly, considering the crisis in the industry [NHBC 2024], who exactly was the “we” responsible for the unlikely construction with which our journey began? Regardless of rumour and of rotting metaphor, the wall’s the wall, slimy and impassable, and if we could do it all over again, we’d maybe build our foundations upon different source material – Greek myth, say, or endangered marsupials – but chances are the outcome would be the same [Google determinism].
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Oz Hardwick.