After a few hairy moments with the Corpus Christi mag – including a worried phone call from the printers saying that their machine was chewing up paper of all colours except for white and did I mind Kalender having a white cover – it's here! Because it was printed on a different machine, the print quality is different from the Rogationtide issue. It's rougher, more 70s fanzine-like. The detail is far less obvious than it is on a computer screen, but I think it's OK for what it is and what I always said I was aiming at: a spontaneous, low-cost publication as a giveaway multiple.
I have to say I'm glad that Kalender is also up on the website as a downloadable pdf, as some of the photographs really are 'enigmatic' in its printed form!
I've worked in a completely different way this time: making images for Kalender and working out relationships on the page has triggered new ideas to take forward that weren't there before. Ideas arose from putting together the Rogationtide issue too, but the looming slash07 exhibition forced me to make something more tangible before I started. So I was able to select from work that already existed and organise it into something resembling a magazine. I've learned a lot from both approaches, but the difference here is that the new festival – the Midsummer Bonfires and Display of Relics – is already upon me and without the spur of the exhibition I haven't managed to physically make anything except for Kalender in between.
As it is, the first Bonfire has happened – last Friday – and here I am, still stuffing cellophane bags with sweet woodruff as the Corpus Christi free gift and working on a late-night rubber-stamping production line with Trevor while listening to 15th century music on CD. Madness!
More on the Bonfires as they happen, but here's evidence of the first one on St John's Eve – Midsummer Eve itself. I threw camomile on and the pungent smoke rose as it would have done 600 years ago. On the way round the church we saw a fantastic sight: a clutch of barn owl chicks, all different sizes, performing for us through an open window in the top room of the blocked off porch. Did their ancestors do the same 600 years ago? Trevor has read that where barn owls make their homes, the pellets pile up for hundreds of years, so it seems quite possible. After the brief performance and much shoving and squawking the chicks retreated and we didn't see them again while we were at the church. But later, we saw the pale ghostly flapping of a parent owl. It followed the line of the graveyard wall, but didn't swoop in. I don't suppose it sees many humans around at that time, or not live ones anyway.
