In a perpetual state of (de)composition, democracy properly speaking belongs exclusively to the future or the past. This means, however, that, in the here and now, we are all exiled from it – something that many of us are perhaps feeling more acutely today than ever before. Yet if democracy does not belong to the present, it nonetheless is not without relation to it. It remains legible, here and now – and in its legibility, it does not cease to beckon us.
Beckons us to what?
First and foremost, perhaps, to continue to read and re-inscribe its traces, such that it never simply vanishes from the world.
The sculpture in the photograph is by the late William F. Herrick. This photo and the text inscribed within it became the occasion of a correspondence with Mr. Herrick, whose kindness and generosity I here commemorate with gratitude.