The castle has been standing over the crossroads town for eight centuries, while the people and the businesses, the streets and the houses spring up and fade away like flowers at the foot of a great tree. The castle has a timeline, as the life of the town below flickers by.
Down in the streets, just after Samhain, when the barriers between worlds break down, a switch is thrown, and visions take up their places in the shop windows. As you drive by you see the shifting shapes. The car stops and you turn your head to see a glimpse of a film where you had expected to see Autumn fashions. It may stay with you until the next traffic light or for ever. The films disappear in the daylight and return in the dark, living from dawn to dusk like ghosts or dreams .
Switch illuminates the art of our town .We see anew the creations of the shopkeepers who dressed the windows for the seasons, of the craftworkers who sculpted the cornices and of the artists who painted the signs. The shop windows are born again as cinemas and the shops without a film are stark.
We watch the films and are shown different ,original ways of seeing our worlds .
We see a toy showing the endless trials of creating balance between all the tasks and elements in our daily life.
A hero searches for a house, or maybe a home. A dog goes for a walk, or is it a plastic bag? Found objects become toys, or maybe toys are found .
One window introduces us to Heimat; the memories and sensations of our youths, a word and a film for something we always knew existed but could not describe.
The windows evoke sensations in us. A lot of these sensations are based on continuity, on the awareness that time goes on.
One remembers that a period of one’s life has an irrecoverable past in one window. In another a gale from the West makes us think of time passing and the timeline of natural things.
Our town is urban, rural, old and new. What is it? Every street has two or three different names, and McDonagh street is the Dublin Road and also Spout road in memory of a Revolutionary, a destination and a well. The main street is, of course Castle Street, and a few other things and the square is a diamond named for a pagan Goddess.
The Castle knows. It stands, like a giant sandcastle, while time washes past it. Maybe it dreams of the future; the summer, when swifts will return to their nests in its walls and the Castle field will host a music festival on its birthday, or the past, beyond all human memory. We can touch the past, maybe, with a piece of intricate lace filmed in a shop window.
This is a Market town, a Fair town, a crossroads meeting town. It is magical in the twilight. Is a wave a field of corn, or a place to swim? A cheeky unicorn in a swimming pool looks up. It knows all about castles, their lore and magic.
Everything changes. Are the people at the market cross really there, lit by the streetlights, or are they the ghosts of cornerboys? Is a toy a lost object or was it a toy all along?
We walk the streets just after Samhain, watching the films of Switch in the half light, the streetlights, the window lights. Before the Christmas lights are lit we have the windows and the flickering shadows, the visions and the half-light. We have Switch.
Pat Harrold
Pat Harrold is from Nenagh Co Tipperary. He writes columns for the Irish Times and The Medical Independent. He runs a Family Medical Practice in Nenagh and is a Lecturer in UL Medical School.