I wonder who built the first wall. What was in his/her mind. Protection? Privacy? Or something else. We build our civilisations with walls, giving us shelter and stronghold. Keeping out 'the other', the elements, wild beasts, people who are different. Walls define us, as they divide us. Walls separate people, and not just the walls we build. Perhaps the walls we have to be scared of most are the ones we can't see, that we simply believe in. I had a dream about that. In my dream there was 1 note, 1 musical 1, 1 sound. and when it sounded all the walls everywhere came crumbling down. And all the people eveywhere saw. They saw each other, doing all the things that people do behind walls. Nobody had anywhere to hide anymore. I woke up then, so I never knew if it was a good thing or a bad thing, not having any walls. Not having anywhere to go and hide, and being able to go everywhere, no pretending, no protection, no secrecy.
They tell me the Great Wall of China is the only human artifact that can be seen on the Earth from space. I have never seen the Earth from space. I don't know anyone who has. I have only seen pictures. They tell me that when you get that high, it's hard to tell 1 country from another. You would think they'd be coloured in, like on the maps we had at school. So you could tell.
Maybe we should look beyond walls. Listen: painters and writers and music-makers and film-makers and the ones who paint graffiti slogans that blossom like bright flowers on the sides of derelict buildings- all of you. The walls need to be broken down. Governments and official voices point out forever that good fences make good neighbours, and tighten the border controls in an effort to make us happy where we are. But there is something that does not love a wall, and it's called humanity.
"Something there is that does not love a wall." Robert Frost said that, but he also suggested, in the same poem,' Mending Wall' that 'Good fences make good neighbours', so what did he know?