Latest / The Book & Beyond: Books, Authors, Film & Culture / Copper Wire Baskets: Weaving Beauty from Demolished Ruins | The Book & Beyond
Transcript
- You’re standing in the dust of a demolished building, holding a coil of copper wire that was once part of someone’s walls, and suddenly you realize you aren’t just fixing something broken—you are remembering it. I want you to picture this with me. It’s late afternoon, and the light is hitting the debris in a way that makes everything look like gold. I’m not talking about metaphorical gold here. I mean actual, physical, oxidized copper wire, stripped from the insulation of wires inside a house that no longer exists. The air tastes like drywall dust and old secrets. Most people see demolition as an ending. They see chaos, waste, the violent erasure of memory. But if you’ve ever held a piece of that wire, you know it’s different. It’s still warm from the sun, even hours later. And it’s alive. Or at least, it feels like it wants to be. When I first started pulling these strands out of the rubble, my hands were covered in cuts and grime. I felt like I was digging through the skeleton of a giant. But then, I wrapped the first loop around my finger. Just one simple circle. And something clicked. Not in my brain, but in my chest. It was the same feeling I get when I find a sentence in a novel that stops me cold. A sentence that says exactly what I’ve been trying to say for years but never could. That copper wire had a shape waiting to be found. It had a history written in its twist. And I realized I didn’t need to build something new. I needed to listen to what was already there. Let’s unpack that scene for a second. Because this isn’t just about crafting. It’s about how we relate to the spaces we leave behind. Every house has a nervous system. The wiring, the plumbing, the studs—they carry the current of daily life. When a building falls, those currents don’t just disappear. They scatter. They become loose ends. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we treat our own pasts. We tend to box them up, label them, and put them in the attic. We want to move forward, clean and unburdened. But this copper wire? It refuses to be buried. It’s too conductive. It holds energy. So, I started weaving. Not with reeds or grass, which bend easily, but with metal. Metal that has been stretched, pulled, and exposed to the elements. It’s stubborn. It fights back. You have to work with it, not against it. If you force a straight line, it snaps. If you let it curve naturally, it remembers its original path. I think that’s what healing looks like, isn’t it? It’s not about erasing the scar tissue. It’s about integrating it into a new form. The basket I made last week has a handle that twists like a question mark. It came from a wire that ran along the ceiling of a bedroom where a child grew up. I don’t know who lived there. I don’t know what arguments happened in that room or what laughter echoed off those specific plaster walls. But when I hold the basket, I feel the weight of all those small moments. The subtext is screaming, as I often say. The silence of the empty house is loud, but the wire whispers louder. There is a strange kind of magic in turning trash into treasure, but I think we use that phrase too lightly. It implies that the value was always there, hidden, and we just uncovered it. That’s not quite right. The value wasn’t hidden; it was dormant. Like a seed under snow. Stripping the insulation off a copper wire is an act of violence, yes. You’re tearing away the protective layer that kept it safe, that kept it useful to the electrician who installed it fifty years ago. But in doing so, you reveal the core. The shiny, bright, conductive heart of it. This process mirrors how we sometimes have to strip away our own defenses to find our true selves. It hurts. It leaves us exposed. But what’s left underneath is stronger than before. I remember watching an old film editor talk about this once. He said that every cut is a loss, but every edit is also a creation. You lose the original take, but you gain the story. Here, I am losing the building. I am losing the structure that sheltered people. But I am gaining a form that can hold things again. A basket doesn’t shelter. It contains. It invites. It says, 'Put your flowers here. Put your keys here. Put your worries here.' It’s a vessel for the present moment, built from the wreckage of the past. And that feels like a profound act of hope. Tell me what you saw in the margins. Because when you look closely at these woven pieces, you see the imperfections. A kink here. A discoloration there. These aren’t flaws; they’re fingerprints. Each knot tells you where I paused, where I hesitated, where I changed my mind. In literature, we talk about the white space on the page. The unsaid words. In sculpture, it’s the negative space. The air around the object. For me, it’s the gaps between the coils. Those spaces allow the light to pass through. They make the object breathable. If I weave it too tightly, it becomes a solid wall. Heavy. Opaque. But left open, it dances with the shadows. I’ve come to believe that our best stories live in those gaps. Not in the plot points, but in the pauses. Not in the big declarations, but in the quiet glances. When I weave copper, I’m trying to capture that pause. The moment between destruction and creation. Between forgetting and remembering. It’s fragile work. One wrong move and the whole thing unravels. But that fragility is what makes it beautiful. It reminds me that nothing lasts forever. Not the building. Not the wire. Not even me. But the act of making? That echoes. It ripples out into the world in ways I can’t predict. There’s a physical toll to this work. My fingers ache. My shoulders tighten. Copper is heavy. It drags down your hands if you let it. You have to engage your whole arm, your core, to keep the tension right. It’s exhausting. But there’s a meditative quality to the repetition. Coil, twist, secure. Coil, twist, secure. It’s a mantra. And in that rhythm, I find peace. I think about the women who built homes in places that tried to break them. Who wove their lives together out of whatever scraps they could find. This isn’t just my art; it’s a tribute to them. To the resilience that runs through the veins of history, literally and figuratively. We are all made of salvaged parts. Our memories, our traumas, our joys—we recycle them into who we are today. No piece is wasted. Even the broken ones. Especially the broken ones. They add texture. They add depth. When I hold up a finished basket, catching the sunset light, I don’t just see a craft project. I see a testament to survival. To the idea that we can take the debris of our lives and make something that holds beauty. Something that reflects the sky instead of reflecting the dark. It’s a small rebellion. Against despair. Against oblivion. Against the notion that endings are final. So, here is my challenge to you. You don’t need copper wire. You don’t need a demolished building. But I want you to find something you’ve discarded. Something you thought was useless. A ticket stub. A dried flower. A worn-out shoe. Hold it in your hand. Really hold it. Feel its weight. Its texture. Ask it what it remembers. Then, try to weave it into something new. Maybe it’s a story. Maybe it’s a drawing. Maybe it’s just a thought written down. Don’t aim for perfection. Aim for connection. Let the material guide you. Let it surprise you. I promise you, there is magic in the mundane. There is poetry in the pile-up. There is a whole universe waiting in the dust of your own life, if you’re willing to kneel down and look closely. The Book & Beyond is about finding those threads. About connecting the dots between what we read, what we watch, and how we live. Today, the thread is copper. Tomorrow, it might be ink. Or sound. Or silence. But the principle remains the same. We are all weavers. And our lives are the loom. Let’s make something beautiful together. Take care of yourself, my dear listener. Keep your eyes open for the gold in the rubble. I’ll be right here, listening to the whispers. Until next time.