“I and You”

“I and You” is the result of a 1-year project. For one year, at the end of every session, I wrote down one sentence spoken by the patient. Each day, I collated that day’s sentences—depending on the number of sessions, eight one day, say, nine the next, seven the day after. Each days’ collated sentences seemed to resemble a verse. And each of the verses, in turn, seemed to be “spoken” in a single, enigmatic, voice and not in the multiple, unrelated, voices that were their source. These enigmatic verses constitute an unusual, yet powerful, way of linking patients’ sufferings and desires to a common source, as though to a shared, underlying voice employing a single reservoir of words, of yearning. “I and You,” in pointing toward that single reservoir, binds patients together in unexpected union. When we listen, we join that union, all of us circling the same common well.