The last festival of my medieval year has happened! It was Trevor's idea to repeat the first festival again at the end of the project, and I was very happy with the prospect. For one thing, Rogationtide is a three day event so there's plenty of time to really get into it. It's a significant commitment of energy too, but the rewards include an enormous feeling of achievement – and masses of material to work with later. Plus, I enjoy working with Trevor. He was magnificent! All the documentary photographs and video are his – I just had the ideas and performed them.
It was fascinating to see the differences in the landscape from last year. 'You can never step into the same river twice' said Heroclitis, and how right he was. Rogationtide fell earlier this year as it's linked to Easter, but the differences in vegetation and feel of the various locations seemed to go deeper than that, and not only because of the vagaries of the weather.
The first day was gorgeous sunshine, the second was kinda on and off, ending up quite chilly, and the third was sunny again, though incredibly windy.
Deciding what to do at each of the 14 crossing-points this time, I knew I wanted to incorporate sound, words, ritual activity and an action that involved taking something from one crossing-point and doing something with it at the next.
So, at each site, I played a note on my treble recorder. There were 15 of these (including the first crossing-point twice to seal the circle at the end), and this lent itself to travelling up the octave and back down again, finishing with the note I started with. I'm hoping to edit the result into a video. I chose a recorder as it's related to medieval instruments and also I liked the idea of 'charming the fields' like the Pied Piper. I held the note for as long as I had enough breath to do so, so the video will amount to 15 of my breaths.
Then there was the ritual pouring of a mugful of Festial Ale at each crossing-point. This looks quite strange in the video footage. I hope it evokes libations and other kinds of territorial marking(!). When it came to the last pouring the mark of the first was still visible on the road, and it felt very good to be able to hit the same spot.
