I've loved lamps and lights as long as I can remember. Fairy lights, Christmas lights, glow sticks, books that feature light. I love the way they warm and can transform spaces.
My favourite songs of 2023 are compiled in the playlist below, and my favourite lamp of the year is featured on the music card at the beginning of this post. The lamp, a 2023 Christmas gift, is a replica of a lamp that's no longer sold by the artist and designer Rachel Kozlowski.
The lamp features a goose with a lampshade on its head, I assume because it's trying to hide and doesn't realise its body is still visible. It's silly. It makes me chuckle.
There's no good transition to Invisible Man, a Masterpiece and a Massive Work of Art and an Entirely Different Thing Than My 2023 Playlist and Goose Lamp
Speaking of light, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the piece of art that I admire the most that features lamps.
The novel opens with the narrator, a Black man, describing his life in a basement room illuminated by 1,369 lightbulbs. This hidden space, where he lives unnoticed and uses electricity without paying for it, is tucked away in a building "rented strictly to whites." The overwhelming light in this space is as overwhelming as it is symbolic.
As I read it (and, as a white man, I'm sure I'm not getting the full picture), the light represents his yearning for visibility and understanding in a society that overlooks and marginalises him. In his subterranean room, he is isolated and intensely seeking self-awareness. Society sees him as a collection of stereotypes and misconceptions, not a person. He struggles for recognition and self-realisation in a world defined by racial prejudice.
