The Comfort of Things

The ‘comfort of things’ by Daniel Miller is a book written about a social experiment. Daniel Miller listen and learns from a completely normal street to see what really matters to people and how they live their lives.

It reveals their worries, troubles and stories of the people behind the doors.

We were given a task to read a certain chapter from this book, mine was Portrait 1 Empty. This told the tale of a seventy-five year old man who’s life has never began. I found this text depressing and very uneasy to read.

Here are a few sentences from the text:

“During our time in the street we heard and encountered many tragedies, people who faced all manners of diseases and degradations, who nearly died, who actually dies, whose children had been killed. There is no escaping the horror and tragedy in the interior of peoples lives. But it was particularly after meeting George that we found ourselves in tears after leaving his flat. Because in every other instance there was a sense that, at least, that person had once lived. With George, by contrast, one simply couldn’t escape the conclusion that this was a man, more or less waiting for him time on earth to be over, but who at the age of seventy-six had never yet seen his life actually begin. And, worse still, he knew it.”

George's flat was described as being empty from personal touches.