Well, no reply at all from Orford Ness so I think it unlikely that I’ll be able to do any work there this year, at least. I was at Dungeness the other day as part of a workshop entitled Atmospheric Pressure which was all about responding to the weather through performance. We were based in Folkestone and made the trip from there to Dungeness. Wonderful place. Reminiscent of Orford Ness in its nature, shingle beach, dangerous tides, interesting plant-life and wild-life. Instead of bomb-testing derelict buildings as at Orford Ness, we have a nuclear power station. Derek Jarman’s lovely garden and cottage is there too, with a beautiful poem by John Donne on one of the walls, a poem I have always thought was magnificent. The one about lovers in bed who don’t want to get up, and the line that goes “days, months, weeks which are the rags of time” or as near as I can remember.
At any rate, I need to devote much of the rest of the time of this project to Greenham Common. I want to go there this week, and was hoping to go tomorrow, but my voice needs a rest after a lot of talking and even singing at the weekend. I’ll go on Friday. There is lovely autumn weather at the moment. Bright, but not too hot. I spent this morning sorting out songs to sing at various locations on the common. For example at the rusty fireplane, which is really quite something, I’ll sing a WW2 song “Coming home on a wing and a prayer” (I need to learn the melody for this), and at another location I’ll sing a Jacobite song “O’er the water tae Charlie”.With words by Burns and a good melody, this should work well. If I can find the bomb overgrown bomb storage places in the wood across the road, which was previously part of the common, I’m going to sing a WW1 song “I don’t want to die, I want to go home…” . My ex-partner used to sing this for me in the days when we were close. That’s how I learnt it. There are some other songs, one is Psalm 149 which is apparently one that the Roundheads used to sing going into battle against the Cavaliers (there were two battles of Newbury in the English Civil War.) I’ve written a slightly different final verse (still based on Psalm 149) and the tune will be Hanover. Plus another one about ww1 Called “Trenches” by Brecht and Hans Eisler I think, Dagmar Krause sings it really well. I’ll have to just do my best!
I’m struggling to get a good song for the Greenham Peace Camp period. I’ve found one which is a version of “Which Side are you on…” but the words written by the Peace Camp participant don’t scan very well so I might need to slightly adapt this to Pete Seeger’s music (which is where it all came from in the first place.) Also there’s a good verse in it which has the line “Are you on the side that calls me cunt” so that’s probably narrowed down the places where this can ever be exhibited or installed!
All this is to testify to the military role played by Greenham Common over hundreds of years, of which only some fairly recent traces remain….as well as the anti-militaristic feelings of many participants in conflicts.
Once I’ve gone and recorded the songs, I’ll try to persuade Lynn to come out there and film what she feels interested in. She’s just finished editing the previous parts of this project ie. the Yew Tree, and the first one we did, set in Scott’s Grotto.
Tonight am off to take part in an underground singing project in the tunnels in the Brunel Museum near Rotherhithe in South London, with another session on Wednesday night.
A day of song practising and learning coming up tomorrow!
