Interviewing a Phonebox

Q: How long have you been standing here?

A: Since the coins were heavy.

Q: Who visits you now?

A: Moths. A man who shelters from the rain and pretends to make a call so it doesn’t look like he’s just sheltering from the rain. Teenagers who use me as a selfie frame. Spiders, mostly. The spiders have the long lease.

Q: Do you miss the calls?

A: I miss being needed in a hurry.

We tested in daylight first, which is the wrong time for projection and the right time for listening. Sam Fraser and I kept moving the tripod a few centimetres at a time. Ten times. Twenty. Somewhere in there it stopped being a test and turned into a convesation, and I still can’t tell you who was interviewing who.

A phone box is a fossil nobody has told yet. We gave it one day, squashed down, and played it back onto its own glass skin. It took it well. Better than I would.

From the project: A Day in the Life of a Phonebox