Beach-combers logbook / knowing what to take away / knowing what to leave behind
This week I've been artist in residence at Chalkwell Hall with Metal Southend and I've been spending some time doing research on the beach and in the water. Each day I collected small tokens beach-combing my way from Chalkwell beach to Southend pier.
What follows here is the result of five days looking, finding, collecting and writing.
shell 1. Noun hard outer case of nut-kernel, egg, seed, fruit or animal such as crab or snail or tortoise; framework or case for something, walls or framework of unfinished or gutted building, ship, etc ; explosive projectile for firing from large gun etc; hollow case containing explosives for cartridge firework, etc ; light rowing boat for racing, 2. Verb take out of shell, remove shell or pod from; fire shells at.
In computing, the Unix operating system has a program called "shell". It is the program in which you can write instructions which allow you to access the fundamental systems of the computer. It is an interface layer for the heart of the computer, which protects the computer systems from direct interference but still allows communication.
A shell can protect something soft or explosive by covering it with something hard and/ or strong. It may contain and encase some potential for life, the living, or the ending of life. A shell may keep you afloat or protect you from the elements by creating a chamber, hull or facade. A shell can be an empty vessel carrying nothing but the scent of the sea.
Collecting on the tide-line Chalkwell beach is made up of a thousand fragmented memories, each shell a small sea-worn souvenir. Here I find my preferred trinkets, away from the gimcrack the beach shops sell. Each shell is a clue to the creatures hidden in in the mystery of their tidal world as their debris is revealed by the ebbing water.
Here they enigmatically hand us evidence of their existence, only in revealing themselves once their short lives have past they cast their bone-like exoskeletons onto our shores. The flesh of these creatures have melted into the sea, leaving behind for us to find these tokens of existence. Their secret lives lived beneath our feet in a world of unconsciousness, of movement ruled by the watery moon and set to a clock that shifts its schedule to the gravity of the heavenly bodies.
As one of our first experiences of collecting as children, we walk along the sand or shingle and collect tiny pieces of creatures which have disappeared into the watery underworld that rises and swells, slackens then recedes. Archaeologists found that as far back our Neanderthals ancestors we collected shells, using them as mixing pallets for pigments and paint to be used for decorative and ritual purposes both on the walls of their caves and as body paint. Perhaps today it is another unmentioned rite of passage when we walk with our parents, grandparents and alone, collecting shells, picking up the lost pieces of our ancestors out in the landscape and taking them home to hold close to our hearts.
Here I dream of the flood, of a car being washed away as the sea rises below my window. And with it memories are flooding back, waves of loss and the past being processed... the shells and bones of the past year have been washed up at my feet for me to pick through, to draw, hold, line in rows and sing over.
The tide is low, and tomorrow there is a new moon. There is a great distance between high and low tide in the silt estuary and I walk the distance it has receded down across rickety planks laid out like a tram track down to the water. Here as I walk, eyes half down the shape of a heart catches my eye down in the shingle and shell. I pick it up and in wonder I realise what the treasure I hold in my hands is - a fossilized sea urchin, like the one my mother had given me some years before. A charm used to protect houses against lightning. After deliberation a friend tells me its either a sea potato, or a heart shaped sea urchin, I know which I would prefer its name to be.
Low tide is a magical time, when creatures hidden by the tide are revealed to us, their shells tightly clasped and locked rigid when touched or disturbed. Giant oysters bigger than any I've ever seen, clumped together in barnacle festivals. Mussels who have lost their anchors, and the empty shells of cockles signalling their presence deeper in the mud below.
This night I dream of rummaging through second-hand shops, looking at knitting needles and crochet hooks. I picked them up and consider the options, all the different sizes and colours, grey and brown plastic. I was looking for one for my mother, I was looking to buy one for her for whatever dreaming reason, that's why I was here. I picked up one made of wood and knew this was the right one for her. And that was all, a simple task completed during my sleep.
When I wake I think about the women I'd seen down on the beach, walking out from the high tide she carried the sea in her pockets.
No longer stranded – cut loose, the sea temperature has risen and I walk down to Chalkwell beach walking along the boulevard just before high tide. I see no-one in the water yet... so I keep walking until I do. Down at the end of the beach there are some older women sitting on towels in swimming costumes and some bobbing around in the water. I wander over and as I pass them I ask the lady I'd just seen emerge from the water – 'Hows the water?' and she replies, 'yes rather nice its the first time I've been in this year.' Feeling bravened by this reply, having dipped myself into the sea, river and rock-pools several times this year at any available opportunity I set down my things and changed into my swimming costume. I got into the water slowly, breathing out in short bursts, as there was a large temperature difference between the hot sun filled air and the cooler water. I could feel my heart rate change as my blood cooled and I edged in. For fear of going into shock I always get into water very slowly, having suffered a lot from being a very skinny child who would turn blue fairly easily. I splash my shoulders and chest to slowly introduce my blood to the change and to be gentle with my heart. Once in and swimming the water was lovely, and I swam up and down the beach calmly with joy in my heart.
Back on land a lady who has just arrives asks me how the water is as she changes into her costume and swim cap and we find common ground mouthing the names of places that had been my homes and haunts in far away Cornwall - Helford, Lizard, Falmouth, Coverack.
Here I begin my beachcomb, and after the cool clarity of being in the water I am drawn to the pieces of sea glass. Later I visit Shoeburryness at low tide with Rob and collect more, finding dark blues and greens and small pieces of ceramic including the handle of a tea cup with a small brown stone wedged inside its curve.
That night I go to sleep with the full tide and a heavy heart, I feel myself in fragments. I think - when I wake these sharp edges will be worn smooth by the flow of water and time as the tide comes in and then rushes away.
This day was interrupted by inactivity, and even the practice of beach combing was not very effectively exercised. Worn down by emotional tides I had very little energy to do anything but drift up and down to Leigh. Clare joined me in coming in for a dip off Chalkwell beach which distracted me, telling me about interviewing wild swimmers and installing the recordings in the changing rooms of swimming pools. She told me about her birthday ambition to swim around burgh island in Devon, the place I once visited with Dylan and Sophie, where we watched the tractor emerge through the mist across the receding waters.
Down in Leigh the seafood stalls where about to close as I looked at their array of cockles, whelks, winkles, potted shrimp, mussels, sprats and prawns. I bought 5 enormous shell on prawns for £4 and sat in the baking sun near the Endevour – an old cockle boat that had been beautifully restored. It was hot and I dipped back inland on the way back to seek the shade of the lime trees along the residential streets picking dog-roses in little nowhere patches.
Walking down to Leigh I picked up fragments of shell easily seen in the brown and grey of the shingle and the silt, objects that reflected white, like the light of the moon. The sky is very clear and I look out before I draw the blinds to see the stars shining brilliantly in the midnight sky. I don't go out to greet them though I feel like I should. Tonight marks a change in the lunar cycle, the beginning of a new one and in astrology it marks a time for clearing and healing to be able to move on and plant new seeds in the next cycle. Its difficult to fall asleep but eventually I do, I can hear a sound which is almost like the sea, perhaps its the wind turbines, or maybe it is the high tide reaching the shore. Maybe the wind has picked up again. In the morning my dreams have fled and I can't remember them, all I find is a mosquito bite on my leg and the bright sun of a new day flooding in.
Beach combing is similar to dreaming, if you try too hard it just doesn't work. I pretend to myself that I'm actually just walking across to the cafe, I'm not looking for anything – honest. Its like magic, look with the edge of your consciousness and you'll be rewarded.
I like to watch the ships go past from the top windows of Chalkwell hall and down in the sand. Here I sit and write in a little cafe right on the beach, they've removed some of the windowpanes for the sun and sea foam to enter the space and greet the customers as they sip their beers and coffees.
The ships flow though the mist of the estuary back and forth across the almost invisible line of water. I'd like to look at an Admiralty chart and see where they are going, to meet the crew in the pub there, to find out where they've been and where they're going next.
The waves breaking down on the shore below are hypnotising as the wind picks up and they dash themselves against the tarred stones. When its like this in the water the rhythmic waves become something you just have to adjust yourself to, stepping and moving in-time with each one, like tuning into the sea's heartbeat. Either join her song or struggle against it- bracing yourself you try to catch your breath while being slapped wet in the face and geting salt in your eyes.
dailybridgerton
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
germansingergirl
prguitarman
baratheonpilled