7 — Connie Lynn
"Home, home, home — what even is home?"
Welcome to Objectively, a series about people, the objects that hold meaning for them, and the stories they tell.
Leading with curiosity, the project is interested in objects as extension and embodiment of selves. We want to give space for people to reconsider their relationships with things, maybe acquiring new understandings of themselves in the process.
In this one, Connie Lynn muses on being liquid, reincarnating as a rock, and what home means.
Connie Lynn enjoys the slow and little things in life such as the smell of night-blooming jasmine and sitting on the bus, on the top deck. She is interested in how the cookie is made and how it crumbles, in connections between languages, diasporas, food. She wants to learn how to make cheese one day.
What would you be in object form?
A (melted) disco ball. The core of a disco ball is made of styrofoam — hard but light, and can be soft and floaty. I always wonder if anyone actually asks themselves how a disco ball is made when they see one; usually at a party or a gig, it is just hanging (literally) around, spinning round and round.
A disco ball is nothing without light and darkness — reflecting light in so many ways, shining, sparkling — making you notice new things and making you lose track of time with a bling moment.
A mirrorball is called Boule à facettes, which translates to Ball made of faces. A soft fortress that hangs around but never really mingles, close enough but still detached, just spinning around and shining lights, ultimately reflecting what is there in the moment and the space.
An extroverted introvert with low social battery, which no one knows is an introvert. A fragmented shiny chameleon showing different faces? Reflective on the outside and soft on the inside?
And why melted? Imagine all of the above but as a squishy, malleable, lethargic object; liquified but with rigidity; envious of beings that are free and fluid as water.
Now imagine you could be any object. What would you want to be?
I spend a lot of time lying down on the floor in my room, and I always imagine myself as a pebble on the beach. A pebble being eroded by waves — a calming scene that often comes to mind, a state of everlasting homesickness even when I am physically back home on my hometown beach, letting waves crash into me.
I have always joked about being reincarnated as a rock in my next life — horizontal, tired, not having to move, resting, grounded, almost invisible, shaped by waves, the moon and time. A flat pebble perfect for ricochets, tiny and pocketable.
And what is an object that holds memories for you?
Rice grain porcelain sets. A pattern that reminds me of home (home, home, home) — what even is home? In perpetual cultural in-betweenness and confusion, of looking like but not speaking nor understanding, but knowing the slightest amount that is enough to feel a connection…
This pattern, in a way, is a universal symbol for me, in my eternal regret of not knowing more, and in my longing to find out more one day, to attach and capture a sense of home — the spirit of gathering and sharing, a communal sentiment of comfort and warmth through food.
Find Connie on Instagram.
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