Final notes extracted from journal:
17 Nov, later
I walked to Porth Ledden (round the corner) where there are mine ruins at the beach.
It’s a rough sea and I hoped for good pictures. A small river, fuelled by yesterday’s downpour, rushed along the valley with me, and, after dithering about I finally found a way across so that I could walk home across the cove. It was harder than I imagined – the cove was piled with rocks of all kinds and the sea
(which was supposed to be going out) was at times menacingly near. The scramble took me an hour,
and when I finally gained the flatter beach and felt safe again, I took more photos, and watched a lone seal, who watched me with a curious eye. He was in his element, he knew what the underneath was like when the waves curled and crashed – I envied him so much! Not for the first time I wished
I’d learned to dive.
Today was a unique experience for me – it will settle like sediment into my store of memories to inform my work.
I downloaded all my videos onto my laptop, and all my SLR pics. I took 180 today.
18 Nov – Here I am, a week later. A week that has been more than interesting: hypnotic, at times, scary, stimulating, relaxing. I have loved being alone. I have only spoken to two shop assistants, the lovely receptionist in the Tate, and a couple of people in coffee shops. That’s fine – I can’t small talk anyway, and it’s good to be silent. I have enjoyed this time.
I wonder why the sea is so important to me. Why do I dream it often, and in different forms?
Today I walked to Cot Valley, for my last day of shooting. I’ve looked through the 100’s I’ve taken and can find only 2 or 3 that excite me, that I ‘want’ (what do I want though?)
Cot Valley has a river, similar to Porth Ledden, but its steeply banked sides are covered in brown bracken, and the river is pretty, shallow, and runs across a gravelly bed. It’s very peacefull, no sound of the sea until you are nearly there and once more hear the roar of the waves, which are very high today. (I’m mindful that I don’t know this coastline, and the sea probably gets a lot higher and rougher than I’m seeing it now).
I take 400 pictures, many continuous shots – for the last few days I know I’ve been obsessed with the feeling that the ‘perfect shot’ escapes me, so I keep trying, nearer and nearer the edge, but I know it’s not near enough, that my equipment is inadequate to my aspirations. I climb up out of harm’s way onto a rock to capture more inadequate video. In the end I run out of memory and card space and have to retreat, beaten. (They don’t have this problem on Frozen Planet!) I finally drag myself away, feeling that after all this I haven’t succeeded in capturing the perfect wave, and why did I hope to?
The walk back is easy – I stop briefly to fix a view in my mind, if that is possible, to feed on over the coming winter months.
19 Nov – I pack up. Sorry to leave. I feel that I was just beginning to get into my stride, just getting used to being alone, to being able to think only of my work.
As I eat breakfast I savour this last silence. There are only the little sounds, pouring coffee, stirring it round the thick white mug. The scraping of honey onto toast. My pen tapping across my notebook, my hand brushing its pages. It is as if I hold my breath to hear something more – the rocks being pulled across the ocean floor, the dark empty spaces cut out by miners, under our feet, under the sea. Spaces echoing with the movement of tides, dripping water, while up here the sea foams into an ice-blue mass and rushes to the shore, into the cove.
The waves are huge today, just a few more pictures should do it.
