Canongate Wall Analysis

Analyzing the way each individual letter was carved into the stones on Canongate Wall, all coming together to form such beautiful lines of poetry, song, and literature, so permanent, so idealized, so intwined into Scotland’s identity, I couldn’t help but notice the parallel between my own body and the building laid out before me. On the left side of my body is a tattoo, a quote taken from the Harry Potter books, “It does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live.” Earlier in the day, before visiting the parliament building, we ate lunch at the Elephant House, the coffee shop where the author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, may have written the very words carved into my body. So, while gazing at the lines of literature tattooed into what could very well be considered the physical body of Scottish government, I felt a deep sense of understanding as to …show more content…
This is where I felt the strongest understanding of the words written into Canongate wall, as I too have chosen to place literature upon my body. Democratic government is meant to be representative of all a nation’s people, so if we consider a government's most important building to be its physical body, we consider it to be the collective people’s body as well. As if Scotland only held one giant person, and they sat there upon that hill. Getting a tattoo is as much an internal declaration as an external one, it’s one person saying, “Look here, this is what I believe, this is who I am. I want to remind you all of that, but I want to remind myself of it as well.” That understanding I have of a tattoo being as much for yourself as it is for other people is what helped me that most in contemplating the vast importance of those words on Canongate wall. A story to foreigners of who the Scottish people are, but also a reminder to the Scots themselves of who they were, have been, and want to