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On the way out to finally see “Guardians of the Galaxy†tonight (I enjoyed it, but as everyone else had been bigging it up so much I was slightly disappointed) I was looking for my shoes. I wanted to wear my trainers (because I am young and cool, and they are more comfortable to wear when I am doing my jigsaws) but I couldn’t find them. We were in a bit of a rush so I looked in the wardrobe for alternate footwear and came across some old slightly dusty (and possibly even a little bit mouldy) shoes that I hadn’t worn for possibly a decade. I had forgotten all about them. But ten years ago (or however long ago it was that I had them, time seems to concertina now, it might have been 15 years, it could have been two weeks), these were my favourite shoes. In fact I had two pairs of them, buying a spare pair when the first one became a bit dog-eared. I suspect the first pair eventually got thrown away, but the second pair, now even more dog-eared survived. So I thought I’d walk in another man’s shoes (technically my own shoes, but I am such a different person now that they feel like they belong to a different human - and if it’s true that pretty much all of our cells are replaced after seven years, then maybe literally another man’s shoes) and put on these babies for old time’s sake.
What was once familiar and normal and even preferable for me now seemed alien and weird. My feet looked wrong in these tan half trainer, half shoe, half bowling shoe hybrid (yes, idiots, I did that on purpose). I couldn’t imagine why I had liked these weird and ugly little things. But they were relatively comfy at least, although the laces did come undone rather too easily. What was once so right now just felt slightly wrong, but I decided to give them one last run around the block before I gave them to a charity shop to throw in their bin.
The shoes did not transport me back to the past or make me remember more carefree times (I think I maybe had more cares then than I do now if I am honest). I just felt confused about my previous fashion choices and like I was wearing the wrong shoes. But how can that be when they had once been so cherished?
If I had my time again and was an artist, then I would like to have kept every pair of shoes that I had ever owned and then display them in chronological order (with some kind of graphic effect indicating how long the shoes were in use). From tiny booties, through tiny wellingtons and Clark’s sensible shoes, through the awful Cornish Pasty shoes I favoured at Middle School (not literally pasties, things didn’t get that bad), the Doc Martin shoes my parents let me wear as a compromise when all my friends got into Doc Martin boots (the kind of compromise that just made me look more of a prick than if I hadn’t bothered trying of course), the trainers that came embarrassingly late into my repertoire as I embarked on my mid-life crisis, the posh and sensible shoes that I have had for the last few years that look grown-up and smart but still cut my feet to bits if I walk more than two miles in them, the running shoes that I wear most of the time because they are comfortable. I would only display the shoes once I was dead and I would need a massive long room or corridor in an art gallery to get the full effect. It would be good in fact if the shoe display ran for exactly a mile so I could call it “Walk a Mile in my Shoesâ€.
Maybe that would be impractical. But a very long display of all the shoes that a dead man ever wore would be an amazing piece of art. Showing how humans grow both physically and mentally. Seeing the changes in our fashion choices, in the longevity of shoes as we got older. The creases and scuffs on favourite shoes would match the battering that life had given to the now absent person who once stood in these empty containers.
It’s even better than my idea to take a photo of every hair cut a person has through their life. It’s too late for me, but were I ever to have progeny then I can start them off on this and insist they see it through to the end. It could be a condition of my will. Though probably all I would have left to give in my will would be my shoes, but it would be such an evocative work that it would be worth millions.
You’d also need to take photos of all your shoes in case any of them ever got lost, like the pair of trainers I had stolen from me on the beach in 1999 in Fiji (I did wear trainers pre-midlife crisis but only for sport and on holiday).
This would be the greatest work of art of all time. Or at least since I saw that condom in the baby carriage.
