Returning late on Tuesday evening from a music festival on Dartmoor, I wasn’t sure how ready I felt for the next day’s festival of a rather different kind.
I had the bare bones of an idea of what to do for Festial’s fifth festival, Assumption. This was an important medieval festival, one of four special Mary feast days that fell (not co-incidentally, I feel) during each of the seasons. This one was popularly known as ‘Our Lady in Harvest’ and I had this in mind, as well as the physicality emphasised in the belief that Mary had been bodily (as opposed to spiritually) lifted up to heaven after her death.
Unusually, probably uniquely, for me, the work was also to have a gender element. This is surprising as I have a particularly vocal dislike of work centring around so-called ‘women’s issues’. But I’m interested in the fact that women had a very raw deal in earlier medieval times despite their skill and knowledge in healing, but after the cult of Mary took hold they were given far greater respect.
So, on Wednesday morning I went up to Wood Dalling church for a reccy to see if my vague plans were viable. Deciding that they probably were, I returned that afternoon and spent several hours photographing, filming, making an elderberry ‘rosary’ and generally hanging around to see what else would happen. As usual, it ended up as a race against time and failing light.
I hadn’t nearly finished when the keyholder appeared with a wheelie bin and the enormous church key. Responding to my shocked negative reply when asked if I was ready for her to lock up, she kindly said I could stay as long as I liked and pop the key back through her letterbox. Emboldened, I asked whether it would be OK to come back later, after dark, to do some sound recording. ‘Oh yes’, she said, ‘as long as you return the key by 7am tomorrow as there’ll be a service in the church then.’ (!)
What an opportunity! Later that evening we loaded up a collection of seemingly bizarre objects (luckily under cover of darkness) including laptop, mic, cello, singing bowl, jar of water, drum and reindeer-hoof rattle. The full moon meant that visibility in the church shouldn’t be too much of a problem even if there was no electric light.
In the event, we discovered that there is electric light in the church, which made operations more practical if less romantic. I had hoped to see a bat or two, and despite the light a few of them did break cover to flutter around atmospherically.
Trevor asked me to walk around the church playing the various instruments to see where they resonated best while he sorted out the technicalities of sound recording. This was a memorable experience. But the session can’t be called a resounding success as we were unable to resolve the technical difficulties and eventually had to call it a day.
That’s not the end though, as Trevor has ideas for alternative recording methods so the envisaged video soundtrack is still a distinct possibility.
