A welcome day of sun so we took advance with a group cliff walks – and then a visit to town for shopping and preparing to be on our own for the weekend.
I tested my performative reading along the cliffs – finding it worked best when telling it to the sea. There is a sweet futility in this action – speaking, reading, and telling a life story to the audience of rolling waves. The strong winds come along at times and carries off fragments of speech.
Questions arise about auto / bio – graphies: who are they for? why hold on to these stories? is it for the teller or the audience? if you don’t know the person do you care, or why do you care? I cried at the end of reading of Fryn’s biography – was it reading her life from start through to its finish? does it need to have the full narrative for people to know her, or invest emotion? how else can biographies be share honestly? how to ensure it doesn’t become illustrative?
Day of getting on undistracted in the studio.
Trying to remember an old native American rug of my grandparents and re-draw it; reflecting on a live performative reading to a mirror; aspects of lives crossing over; titles have emerged today; words rediscovered; fact and fiction are blurring; imagined and remembered can be the same; while also reading Thich Nhat Hanh “How to See”.
Thinking a lot about Haunting – not with its negative connotations but from its origins from Old French hanter “to frequent, visit regularly; have to do with, be familiar with; indulge in, cultivate” (12c.) And how one can be ‘haunted’ by their childhood and/or past in this manner.
Also thinking about Ghost in relation to its other meanings: a slight trace or vestige of something and a faint secondary image caused by a fault in an optical system, duplicate signal transmission.
And finally Heirloom with its origins in early 15c. (ayre lome) a hybrid from Heir + Loom – in its original but now otherwise obsolete sense of “implement, tool,” piece of property or equipment that is passed down with the real estate.
Today I got on in the studio – beginning to plan out thoughts and ideas for my time here. We had an in-depth tour of the house, learning more about its history and objects within; we even got a cheeky tour up the tower! Before dinner, the group shared our individual interests and the work/thoughts we’ll be engaged with during the residency.
Key thoughts that came from the group: community, personal narrative, speaking with and through the absent other, conversations and silence, letting go and moving on, mending, care-taking, archival, history today, importance of understanding, seeing and looking, pedagogy, text – words – non-words, re-making re-doing re-understanding, writing and re-writing, ghosts, communication,
On a beautiful sunny day, we sorted out studios and had a tour of the wider house. Some wonderful, interesting and exciting rooms are on hand to use alongside the studio set up I now have within the studio block.
Thoughts from the day: Conversations, writing as scores for the reader, collation of music and conversations, importance of harmonics to groups dynamics, silences as part of the conversation, levels of engagement and collaboration, where ideas meet, a repeated portrait, Fryn, editing, detail, wonderful food, narrative and fiction intermixed with fact, weaving biographies with Autobiographies, speaking through others words, life stories, pattern, fire, architecture, sun and sea.
