Like most people, places and things, the Somerville Library would be beautiful if it were only lit correctly. The peeling paint could acquire an antique charm, the missing ceiling tiles a sense of mystery, of the forgotten, and the painted horse engravings edging the wall could occupy a fascinating territory between ballroom and barnyard — at once unassuming and glamorous, sparkling with champagne, chandeliers and hay dust.
It could be the kind of place you run away to.
And running away, at least a few times a week, is very important. Woolf claimed that all it takes is a room of one’s own, but that doesn’t quite cut it. What we really need is a fort. A place for tree bark and invisibility, a secret place, sheltered by leaves: the kind of room you need a ladder to access.
Admittedly, I do not know the precise recipe for “correct lighting” — the necessary placements, angles, intensities and limitations or lack thereof on the color spectrum. But if there’s one thing we can all agree is certain, it’s that high-ceilinged fluorescent overhead lights are simply never involved.
The Somerville library is a small, three-story square sitting on top of a green hill with reasonable views of Boston and suburbia, and it’s lit with the kind of poison that makes you simultaneously want to leave right away, and forget how. Not unlike depression. I’d traversed the third floor at least three times before I realized I’d seen these people and places before. The air was stagnant, the quietude heavy, the faded armchairs worn and bent with butt potholes. Two floors away, ancient keyboards sounded a subtle, dooming percussion. I plunked down at a table near a large window and began to work.
“Uh, holdonholdon hold on,” I said to myself with some alarm. ” . . . What are you doing, again?”
