John Berger (Ways of Seeing) has returned to London for a month-long celebration of his work. In an interview at the Guardian, he tosses out this observation on shared smoke breaks:
‘A cigarette’, he says, inhaling deeply, ‘is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared you are both in that parenthesis. It’s like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.’