mimesis is a process of attunement to the more-than-human
mimesis is a meeting point, a space-in-between
mimesis is a way of directing attention to earth-others
mimesis is a method of thinking-with and feeling-with
mimesis is an embodied practice of becoming-with
[1]
From Greek, the term 'mimesis' can mean both 'imitation' and 'representation', and has a long history in the Western philosophy of art, originating with Plato, who discussed mimesis as an element of the dramatic arts and suggested that when actors impersonate characters in a play, they render themselves vulnerable to absorbing the qualities of those characters. I use the term to refer to a kind of imitation within music, movement and dance, specifically the mimesis of the more-than-human â mimesis of various critters, water, weather, and complex multispecies entanglements and assemblages.
Some years ago, in Southern Arizona, a friend advised me to beware of the desert's spiky plant life. Sure enough, wandering the zigzagging paths through the canyon, I found myself picking fine spines from my clothes and skin. Learning to minimise this risk, I started paying attention to the ground and noticed human trails intersecting with animal tracks â javelina, coyote, and especially deer. With no rain for weeks, hoofprints remained debossed in the dry earth, like chains of split hearts, or strings of letters. Where clusters of tracks had accumulated, it looked as if the deer had been dancing.
During that same visit, I came across a copy of the book Yaqui Deer Songs / Maso Bwikam: A Native American Poetry, edited by Larry Evers and Felipe S. Molina. Originally from the RĂo Yaqui, the indigenous Yaqui (or Yoeme) people now reside across the divided borderlands of Sonora, Mexico and Arizona, USA. I read that before setting out to hunt, their ancestors held a festive rite, enacting the wilderness world through a series of songs that address the deer, asking forgiveness for those animals that will die. Though hunting is rarely practised by present-day Yaqui, traces of the tradition remain extant in the Deer Dance, wherea single male dancer becomes the Maasoâ the deer â and, wearing a stag headdress, he imitates the movements of a white-tailed deer.
I was struck by the ways in which the photos of the costume bore a resemblance to some images I'd seen of the antlered headdresses found at Star Carr, a Mesolithic site in Yorkshire. Archaeologists have suggested that these red deer frontletswere worn in hunting rituals, allowing the wearer to harness antler effects, gaining access to the perspective of the 'animal-in-action'. Could this also be true for the Yaqui Deer Dance?
Pondering these connections, I recalled two dances I'd heard about in the British Isles â the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance of Staffordshire, believed to be a memory of a celebration of villagersâ hunting rights, featuringsix men bearing mounted antlers said to move like deer, and the Scottish Highland Fling, thought by some to have its origins in a warriorâs dance imitative of deer, with hands held aloft for antlers.
'Mimesis' â the imitation or emulation of the more-than-human-world â in traditional music and dance is something I've explored over the years, from Scottish Gaelic vocal imitations of birds, to the practice of embodying a river in South Indian Kutiyattam movement. I was keen to find out more and studythese three'deer dances' in tandem.What kind of deer effects are harnessed in these dances? Which deer behaviours are imitated and why? What do they reveal about our relationship with deer and ecology?
Over the next couple of years, I made numerous field trips to observe dances, interview practitioners, and learn steps directly from tradition bearers. Spending time observing deer, I consideredthe ways in which their behaviour is emulated in the dances and, learning about the ecologies of their habitats, I examined their relationship to hunting, stalking at Trees for Liferewilding estate in Dundreggan, and animal tracking in the Sonoran Desert. I was particularly interested in exploring the 'tacit' knowledge embodied in the dances. What could be discovered by 'learning' and 'doing' these dances, as opposed to just 'watching' them? What could be discovered in the body, through practices of stalking and tracking, instead of simply 'reading' about them?
Needwood Forest, Staffordshire...
I first went to see the Abbots Bromley Horn Dancein September 2017, and then again in 2018. This folk dance takes place once a year in the Abbots Bromley village, near to Bagot's Wood, an area of woodland just one and a half square miles, which is all that remains of the ancientNeedwood Forest. Like most forest in Britain, historically it was property of the Crown and, in this case, was once parcel of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Today the word 'forest' refers to an area of wooded land, but the medieval sense of the word referred to land set aside for royal hunting. The 'Royal Forest' included large areas of heath, grassland and wetland, essentially anywhere that supported deer and other game.Villages and towns that lay within it were subject to forest law, protecting the 'Beasts of the Chase' from being hunted by anyone except the king, safeguarding the habitat in which they lived. These 'beasts' were primarily deer, and included native red and roe deer, as well as non-native species such as fallow deer, introduced to England for the very purpose of hunting.
Every Royal Forest in England was overseen by a keeper who was appointed by the King, and whose position was often hereditary. Forest Law meant that it was illegal to hunt deer, chop down trees or underwood, unless permission had been given by the Crown. Penalties for offenses were severe, but by 1217, the death penalty for poaching had been abolished. This didn't stop some kings; during the reign of Henry VIII, a yeoman named Richard Horne was caught poaching deer in the woods and was hung for his crimes. His ghost, known as Herne the Hunteris said to haunt Windsor Forest, with antlers growing from his head and chains rattling behind him.
Within the structures of Forest Law, payment for access to certain rights became a useful source of income and local nobles could be granted a licence to hunt an agreed amount of game, giving forest inhabitants a variety of rights. As I mentioned, theAbbots Bromley Horn Danceis believed by some to be a memory of a medieval celebration of villagersâ hunting rights, possibly recalling the act of giving thanks to the local nobility for access to the Royal Forest. Others believe it was danced to ensure a successful hunt, or a good harvest. The forest itself was largely lost in the eighteenth-century due to deforestation. With all this in mind, I couldn't help but think that the Horn Dance was taking place in an imaginary landscape, in the ghost of a place that no longer exists.
The dance itself featuresten dancers: six deer-men carrying mounted antlers, a hobby horse, bow-man with his bow and arrow, Maid Marian (or man-woman) with their stick and ladle, and the fool with his pig's bladder. The antlers are mounted onto carved wooden deer heads at the end of sticks, reminiscent of a child's hobby horse toy. Surprisingly the antlers are not native; carbon dated to 1065, they came from reindeer, long extinct in Britain.
At eight in the morning, after collecting the horns from the church, the ritual begins. Moving in procession, the horn dancers exit the church yard and, on a street corner in the village, they perform a sequence of steps, circling and winding in time with the accompanying music performed on melodeon and triangle. Though stylized, particular movements are especially mimetic. Recalling the rutting behaviour of a number of species of deer, the dancers move together in a parallel walk, and then face one another, moving towards and away, passing through, as if clashing antlers during a fight. Followed by villagers and visitors alike, the horn dancers and their musicians proceed to beat the bounds of the village, walking over ten miles throughout the day, performing at each farm and pub. Taking a drink at every stop, as you might imagine, banter follows, with jokes erupting at every turn. The music is constant and consistent and, soon enough, I found myself humming along with the tunes. The sound of the triangle was particularly affecting, cutting through the cacophony of sound.
At Blithfield Hall, the tone changes considerably. The hall, a Grade 1 listed country house owned by the Baggots, has been in the family since the 14th century. The horn dancers perform on the lawn outside and when the music stops, they stand in line and wait. The Lord and Lady of the house then proceed to shake each dancer's hand, while the audience looks on from across the boundary wall. In a legacy of class inequalities, the memory of a celebration of hunting rights becomes particularly visible. Back in the village, the dancing finishes at about eight pm, when the horns are returned to the church, to be hung on display until the following year.
During the dance, I met Jack Brown, a tradition bearer and local historian, now in his nineties, who was dressed as a fool in yellow tails. He explained that he had "played all the adult parts" in the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance â deer, hobby horse, fool, man-woman and musician â and invited me to visit him at his home, a treasure trove of photos and objects, including props from the dance â a pig's bladder, triangle, bow and arrow, and stick and ladle. Jack shared with me his memories and knowledge of the dance's history and gifted me a pamphlet on his interpretation of it.
The horn dancers themselves are also very generous, opening up the floor â or ground â to participation, and over the two years I visited, I took part in a number of dances, giving me direct insight into the movements, shapes and step formations, as well as an embodied understanding of the sheer weight of the horns. Weighing between sixteen and twenty-five pounds, it is physically difficult to dance with these objects, to carry and move with them. Reindeer antlers are larger than red deer â our biggest native species â and if, as it has been suggested, they were imported from Scandinavia, perhaps we could say that the dancers of yesteryear were attracted to their size, in order to 'harness their effects'. What are these effects, I wondered? The size and weight of the antlers certainly enhances a performance of physical strength, perhaps showcasing 'heroic' abilities of endurance. During times when hunting was commonly practiced, these were presumably important attributes.
The props are most deer-like during the 'fighting sequence' when the antlers become like weapons between three pairs of rutting deer-men, albeit in an incredibly stylized rut. Some folklorists have posited that the Horn Dance was a fertility ritual; the antlers in this case would be symbolic of the male sex organ. Was this a mimetic display of the stag's bravado? Certainly, at some point, multiple powerful effects were being harnessed.
Back in the studio, I began to make sketches, tracking the shapes made on the ground by the dancers in a series of visual scores. Returning the following year, I showed my score sketches to Jack, and to Jim, a deer dancer whose family, the Fowells, have been performing the Horn Dance since 1914 after it passed to them from the Bentleys â interestingly, the Bentley family were historically the foresters of the local woodland. Checking the shapes and patterns on the page, Jack and Jim approved my visual notations, confirming their accuracy.
My notation process was also supported by a surprisingly fortunate booking! Reserving a room in a local B&B that looked down onto the area of the final dance, I was able to film it from above and compare the footage with my scores.
Caledonian Forest, Scotland...
The Caledonian Forest, characterised by Scots Pine trees, was once a huge forest stretching across Scotland. About 6,000 years ago, as the climate became wetter, some of the forest began to disappear, but the impact of human beings was even greater; trees were felled for ships, buildings, fuel, and to make way for agriculture. By the 1700s, the Caledonian Forest remained only in the most remote places and much of the wildlife that depended on this habitat was lost through hunting, or simply because there was not enough forest left. The last wolf is said to have been shot in Scotland in 1743, which meant that by this point, all of the predators had been wiped out. In fact, all of the largeanimals had gone, leaving only the red deer. Since then, this animal has come to symbolise the Highlands.
In the 19th century, as deer stalking became fashionable, large tracts of land were dedicated to deer, allowing their numbers to increase, and âdeer forestsâ, which are essentially open hills managed for deer, doubled in size. Today, many Highland estates still maintain large deer populations for stalking purposes and the current number is estimated to be 350,000 individuals. Through their excessive numbers and overgrazing, deer are often seen as the problem that prevents the regeneration of the Caledonian Pinewood, however, the ecological imbalance between native forest cover, numbers of grazing deer and lack of natural predators has been caused by humans, not deer.
Trees for Life acquired their Dundreggan estate in 2008, and since then, they have been rewilding the land, planting new trees in places, such as higher mountainous areas where it is difficult for trees to establish on their own, and reducing grazing pressure to allow the forest to recover and regenerate, which, inevitably, involves the culling of deer. In 2017, I went to stay in Dundreggan, and went out stalking with Allan Common, the lead deer stalker on the estate. It was autumn, which in the red deer calendar, meant this was the time of the rut. Meanwhile in the stalking calendar, it was the time for hunting stags. I wasn't sure whether this seasonal stalking tradition was due to the fact that a rutting stag, full of high levels of testosterone, was less alert and easier to hunt, or whether it was because this hormone surge meant that the stag was now adorned with a large mane and antlers, and so more desirable as a trophy. Doug Gilbert, the operations manager at Trees for LifeDundreggan suggested that perhaps it was a mixture of the two â a legacy from the stalking craze.
Dressed in a ritual costume of wax jacket, gaiters and tweed deerstalker hat, at 7am I was met by Allan and two of his friends. Up on the hill, he instructed us to move as one body, then, as we got closer to the deer, he showed us how to lie on our bellies and remain hidden. At the edge of a ridge, we stopped to look down into a bowl-shaped area. The distant sound of roaring stags reverberated into the cold morning and, for a brief moment, through binoculars, I watched as two mature stags walked in parallel, checking each other out, before lowering their antlers, initiating contact. Throughout the morning, Allan, or one of his friends, would position a gun, then using its view finder, take a shot. Sometimes this awkward movement alerted the deer to our presence, so to counter this, Allan skilfully mimicked the bellow of the stag with his voice, to keep the stags interested. It worked! â at one point, a mature male drew very close, standing only a metre or so away. Concealed safely behind a boulder we listened to his spine-tingling roar. My heart beat fast.
While staying with Doug and his partner Joyce, a fundraiser at Trees for Life, I learned more about their work. In order to regenerate the Forest, as well as the practical task of planting trees, they explained that there needed to be a shift in values, from "seeing the land as a place for deer, to seeing the land as a place with deer in it". On the estate, it does feel as though this is happening. When I asked Allan what the biggest changes have been in his job as a stalker, he explained that it was his shift in perception; he used to think the deer were the most important thing, but now he values the land in itself, the ecology as a whole. He told me about an earlier job, working for a sporting agency, where people pay money to go shooting, but had realised some time ago, that he didn't like this 'trophy culture'. He preferred instead to have a relationship with the place, and recounted lying on his back, watching as a golden eagle flew over him, just metres above his body. His most treasured memories were not to do with stalking itself, but a connection with the more-than-human world.
In February, when I returned to Dundreggan, there was heavy snow on the ground, and the deer tracks looked as though they had been debossed, not in earth but in thick white paper. It was the season for stalking red deer hinds, which, like the stags, were hunted in the morning. Night time was reserved for stalking the sika deer, an 'invasive' species from Japan. Being nocturnal, with a tendency to stay hidden under tree cover, they were difficult to spot. Allan used a combination of traditional tracking and an infrared thermal camera to find them. I began to reflect on the relationship of technology to the traditional costumes worn in the various dances, specifically in relation to the red deer frontlets found at Star Carr. Archaeologist Chantal Conneller has posited that these frontlets extended the body of the wearer, allowing them to "harness the animal in action", expanding their perception, essentially becoming-with-deer in order to hunt them. The user of the hunting rifle, with telescopic view finder and infrared thermal imaging also extends the body and perception, augmenting and expanding the senses, extending what is possible as a human being.
Allan may have used up to date technology, but he didn't appear to display any of the macho behaviours I had expected. His friends, however did, and on occasion, I felt uncomfortable. One ex-military friend, in particular, was keen to tell me all about his rifle throughout the stalks, even making me pose for the camera after a successful shoot. This macho sporting chat is not unusual in Scotland, in fact, it is part of mainstream stalking culture. After all, on most estates, the land is maintained as a 'wilderness' resource for deer, which supports an elite hunting economy for the privileged few â mainly rich cis white men on shooting holidays, collecting their trophies. This macho aspect of stalking is reflected in the language; the 'monarch', for example, is a term used to describe a mature stag with sixteen tine antlers, and thus the most prized trophy. Similarly, the language of animal behaviour studies is also gendered, and arguably problematic; the word 'harem', for example, is used to describe a group of female deer sharing a single mate.
Deer stalking itself is steeped in myth and folklore. Geographer Hayden Lorimer writes: "The pursuit of deer, both as a pastime and as a livelihood, has a long history in the Scottish Highlands. Celebrations of these activities, preserved through several centuries in native Gaelic folklore, oral ballads and apocryphal yarns, were seized upon by the authors of stalking guidebooks, histories and personal reminiscences." Scottish 'deer' folklore was mined and appropriated by the cultural elite, giving deer stalking culture seeming authenticity.Â
The Highland Fling seems to be part of this process of appropriation. The story goes: Legend tells of a boy who encountered a stag; his father asked him to describe what he saw and, lacking adequate words, he danced the animal instead, his movements imitating capering, his hands held aloft for antlers. Becoming popular as an authentic dance of the highlands, it seems that deer mimesis gave the Fling credibility, but after some digging, I discovered that the story is more than likely a bit of 'fakelore' and probably invented by an eighteenth-century, Lowland dance teacher as a caricature of a 'wild' highland warrior who imitates deer. I couldn't help but think that this 'fakelore' shares striking parallels with the romanticisation of deerstalking, itself a mimetic performance of hunting traditions, reinterpreted and distorted into a form of macho display by landowning classes.
In Spring 2018, I began my studies in Highland Fling, taking lessons with dancer and teacher Sandra Robertson in Kinguisse. Sandra gave me a pair of leather ghillies â soft shoes traditionally worn in Highland Dance. Strangely, the word 'gillie' also means 'hunting guide' or 'male servant to a Highland chieftain'. The shoe's name is thought to be a type originally worn by Scottish hunting guides, who were servants to the lairds â there it was again: the working-class highlander at service to the landowning class and to the elite hunting economy.
I put the shoes on over my thick red socks and Sandra showed me some basic steps. Having done ballet up until the age of 19, I was accustomed to jumping, but the first thing to get used to was landing on the balls of my feet. This took some practice and on the evening after my first session, my shins were agony. Slowly, with time, I got used to it, and before long, I had learned six steps: shedding, rocking, toe and heel, backstep, crossoverand last shedding. It took me months of practice to get through the whole dance without stopping â it was exhausting! Anyone doing this dance regularly, had to be extremely fit.
To help with my learning, I made visual scores of the dance, replacing arm positions with red deer antlers, and human foot fall with red deer tracks in a notation of the steps. I also began to experiment with blind debossing, inspired by seeing the tracks in the snow.
Romanticisation aside, learning the Highland Fling, I could understand why the story of deer imitation stuck. While dancing with deer in mind, the arms, when held high, felt like antlers. The steps, such as toe and heel, backstep and rocking were delicate and deer like, yet powerful and athletic. Two of the steps sheddingand last shedding seemed even to reference the stag's antler shedding, which happens once a year. I could imagine that if a dancer of the Fling performed well, it might make them feel powerful and elegant. I wondered how it might feel to perform this dance if I were a man?
Sonora Desert, Arizona and Mexico...
The indigenous Yaqui, or Yoeme tribe are originally from Sonora in northern Mexico. Seeking refuge from persecution by the Mexican Government in the 19th and early 20th centuries, some of this community were forced north of the border. Their descendants in the USA call themselves the Pascua Yaqui, and in 1978 they were finally recognised as an official tribe. Today, the Pascua Yaqui have eight communities in Southern Arizona.
The Yaqui Deer Dance is a small but important element in the modern Yaqui ceremonial cycle, a ritual involving dance, music, pantomime, and poetry, in a complex blend of catholic and indigenous beliefs. Yaqui traditions speak of the Deer Danceonce being part of a rite performed before the hunting of the deer, but today that connection is only a memory.
Supported in part by the University of Arizona Poetry Centre, in March 2018, I went back to Arizona to begin to make connections with the Pascua Yaqui community. I met with Larry Evers, who co-authored the book on Yaqui Deer Songs mentioned earlier. He was about to retire from his role as a professor between the English and American Indian Studies departments at the University in Tucson, and when I visited, he was clearing out his office. Generously, he gifted me a pile of books and papers on Yaqui culture, as well as a set of DVDs with hours of footage of a Deer Dance ritual performed in Mexico in 1976. Of particular relevance to my research was an old type-writer written thesis, in which the writer Susan Burton explores the relationship of the Yaqui Deer Dancesteps to the movements of real deer and, using the 1976 film footage, notates the dance's vocabulary with labanotation.
Larry was excited by my research, though warned me that I would have many boundaries to cross. Firstly, my gender â the Yaqui Deer Danceis strictly a male domain â and secondly, my ethnicity as a white European. As with many First Nations people, the Yaqui tribe have been consistently ill-treated by various outsiders throughout history, from the invasion of the Spanish Jesuit missionaries and the Mexican Government's persecution of indigenous tribes, to the early American anthropologists misquoting traditions, and the US authorities' mistreatment of anyone who is not white. Understandably, the Deer Dance, and Yaqui culture more broadly, is rarely discussed outside the community.
I was readying Donna Haraway's book 'Staying with the Trouble' and the following passage resonated:
"Indigenous peoples around the earth have a particular angle on the discourses of coming extinctions  and exterminations of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. The idea that disaster will come is not new; disaster, indeed genocide and devastated home places, has already come, decades and centuries ago, and it has not stopped. The resurgence of peoples and of places is nurtured with  ragged vitality in the teeth of such loss, mourning, memory, resilience, reinvention of what it means to be native, refusal to deny irreversible destruction, and refusal to disengage from living and dying well in presents and futures."
I wondered if it was possible to foster a meaningful dialogue and cultural exchange? To open up possibilities, Larry put me in touch with his long-term collaborator Felipe Molina, a Yaqui tradition bearer, teacher and translator, from Marana, Arizona. We exchanged emails and, though Felipe was interested in my research, he was too busy with his Easter commitments as a Deer Singer. We agreed to be in touch again later in the year.
During the Easter ceremonies, the Yaqui Deer Danceis held on two occasions, at the Pahkoâ an all-night Fiesta â and then again on Easter Saturday. Seeking permission to attend these, I contacted Daniel Vega from the Language and Culture Departmentof the Tribal Council at the Pascua Yaqui Reservation. At our meeting, I explained how I was exploring the imitation of deer across cultures in order to better understand their relationship to ecology and, sharing a little about my research so far, I was delighted when he showed a particular interest in hearing about the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. He explained that the Yaqui tribe perform their various ceremonies as healing rituals, not just for the Yaqui, but for everyone around the world, so, if I went with respect, I was welcome to attend the Easter ceremonies at Old Pascuaâ the old village in South Tucson. He warned me not to take photos, make sketches or any recordings â this was strictly forbidden â and that I had to keep my cell phone out of sight.
Not quite knowing what to expect, on Friday evenings I began to attend the Lenten ceremonies, participating in the processions of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, following the various church groups who sang and prayed at each of the crosses positioned around the Old Pascua village. Also partaking in the processions was a ceremonial group called the Fariseos, who are said to represent those who persecuted Jesus. Within this group were the Chapayekasâ masked figures who symbolise evil. One of the Chapayekas'ritual functions is to deride the procession and distract the church groups by silently mocking them, beating time with swords and daggers, and shaking the deer hoof rattles around their waists and moth cocoon rattles on their ankles. My initial reaction was to laugh at their pantomime-esque performance, but as the sun went down and the procession continued in darkness, they really felt quite sinister. I soon discovered that it is taboo to stare too closely at a Chapayeka.
On Palm Saturday, I attended the Yaqui Pahko. Though I'd read so much about it, nothing could quite prepare me for the experience of this multifaceted, powerful night-time ritual. Approximately two hundred performer-participants, divided into about twelve groups, each with a distinct role and music, carried out ritual processes and costumed dances representing the various overlapping forces of good and evil. There was only one Deer Dancer though; at the Ramada, a structure symbolising Huya Ania (the wilderness world), the Maaso(the deer dancer) emerged as a timid fawn and, dancing alongside the Pahkola(a group of clown-like animal-esque figures), he slowly grew into a virile adult male through the night, before predicting his own death and concluding his dance as an animal spirit.
During a break in the ceremonies, I chatted with someone I'd met in the 'audience' who made a striking observation about how the Maasoalways has his torso tilted forwards, like the enigmatic Palaeolithic âsorcererâ cave painting of the Trois-FrĂšres caves in Southwestern France. I hadnât made the connection before, though I had stuck an image of the âsorcererâ in my sketchbook. The visual similarity is uncanny â was this how humans become-with-deer?
A similar sequence of Deer Dances took place on Easter Saturday, another complex, multi-layered ceremony, where, in a battle against evil, the powers of the more-than-human world were harnessed. Dancing Matachiniswore flower streamers in their hats, processing Angels waved branch-switches in the air, trickster Pahkolas wore animalesque masks, and, the Maaso (Deer Dancer), in his final dance, charged at the Fariseos, threatening with his antlers. Finally, when evil was defeated, the Fariseoswere ritually âkilledâ by 'flowers', symbolised by paper confettithrown at them, and a straw âJudasâ was burned in a fire, along with all the Chapayekamasks and swords. Bells rang out from the church and celebratory music was played. With so much colour and joy, I felt like I never wanted to brush the confetti out of my hair!
In a closer examination of the Deer Dance itself, the combination of the dancer's movements and costume seems to span a spectrum of mimesis, from iconic deer imitation to something more stylised. The deer's headdress enhanced the sudden sharp-to-still deer-like movements of the head; soon enough, I found myself watching not the dancer's eyes, but the deer's eyes, partially hidden beneath the cloth. The long line and tension of the tilted torso suggested a deer's back, and the white cloth joining the dancer's head and deer head gave the impression of a deer's neck and shoulders. The flexed feet were reminiscent of the animal's hind legs, while the gourd rattles suggested the front legs, the movements of which gave the impression of a deer's speed and agility. The footwork itself â the choreographed steps â seemed less iconic and more stylized. I wondered if I would be able to meet and learn from a dancer some time...
The dance is traditionally accompanied by three musicians who sing and play instruments: the hirukiam,notched rasping sticks resting on half-gourd resonators said to represent the deerâs breath or the scraping of the antlers against the brush, and the baâ abwehaâi, a water drum made from a half gourd floating in a bowl of water, representing the heart-beat of the deer. Sitting on the floor during the dance,I could feel the vibrations of the water drum in my chest, and I imagined that the dancer might be tuning his heart into a deer's heart beating.
The songs accompanying the dance, are sung in Yoem noki(the Yaqui language) and describe the Maaso(the deer) and his encounters with other animals, birds, insects and plants, especially flowers, which hold a spiritual significance. The Yaqui believe that there is a close communication between all the inhabitants of the Sonoran Desert, which they call Huya Ania. This could be translated as 'wilderness world', but it is worth pointing out that the word 'wilderness' here, does not mean a "neglected, uninhabited, or inhospitable region" like it does in the Oxford Dictionary, but a living, connected community. This ecology of the Sonoran Desert appears in the traditional songs, which become like scores, or a script to the dancer who, as the deer, also becomes, for a moment, the badger that is being described, or the hummingbird, or the mountain lion.
Later that Summer, I returned to meet with Felipe and, over a number of meetings, learned more about the dance. We shared our perspectives and he generously answered my sprawling questions, teaching me about aspects of Yaqui culture, including some Yoem nokiwords. Felipe explained how the Deer Dance was a way for people living in the city to connect with Huya Ania (the wilderness world) and Sea Ania (the flower world), and as he described how the songs are lessons for listeners to learn about ecology and Yoeme ancestors, I began to think of the Yaqui Deer Dance as a form of activism.
I was honoured when Felipe invited me to give a talk to his students, a class of young Yoeme adults, who were learning about their culture at the Yaqui tribal chambers on the reservation. I shared a little about my work with vernacular traditions, specifically Scottish Highland culture and language, and about the history of the repression of Scottish Gaelic and the current resurgence of the language. It was good to hear Yoeme perspectives. Though the Yoem Noki language is under threat of dying out, people like Felipe are out there doing the work of preserving and passing on knowledge.
Felipe and I began to make plans to visit a Deer Dancer in Mexico later in the year and, in November, over a number of days, we went back and forth by foot across the Mexico-USA border, to work with Indalecio âCarlosâ Moreno Matuz, a young Yaqui Deer Dancerfrom Vicam, Sonora, in the Yoeme homeland. We worked in Carlosâ hotel room, where I interviewed him and learned about the physical and symbolic aspects of the dance through demonstrations and diagrammatic drawings, while Felipe translated from English to Yoem Noki and back again.
Felipe and Carlos explained that the dance had only ever been performed by men because they were the ones who traditionally went hunting. Interestingly,the deer behaviours imitated were less about the bravado and display associated with the rut, and more about alertness and agility as a form of defence. This corresponds with the fact that in Yoem Noki, there is no word for 'buck' or 'stag'; Maasosimply means 'adult male deer', though his other song names are displayed here. The only time the Maasodisplays aggressive behaviours, such as charging or threatening with lowered antlers, is when he is being attacked or provoked by other figures in the ceremonies.
The white-tailed deer â and coues-white-tailed deer â live in areas of the Sonoran Desert â a land that rambles over 320,000 km, across two countries. It is home to about 130 species of mammals, more than 500 kinds of birds, 20 amphibians, 100 or so reptiles, 30 native freshwater fish. There are perhaps as many as 2500 native species of plants and 4000 in total. It is also home to at least 17 Indigenous cultures as well as many others who have adopted it.
The tribal lands of the Yaqui have been irreversibly damaged, initially due to the European invasion and colonisation, and latterly by the rapid growth of capitalism and climate change degrading the ecology. Along the Yaqui River in Mexico, eight tribal villages have no water due to drought and the actions of agricultural corporations and, every year, people battle with wild fires caused by rising heat levels and invasive grasses spread by cattle. Although the culture of the Yaqui Deer Danceis being preserved, the ecology of the wilderness world is seriously under threat.
Wild-deer-ness
Throughout the process of exploring these dances, I considered how a body of work might emerge from my research. By conjuring the antlered male deer, the dances evoke images of wild nature, but I realised there is a disconnect between what is encoded in their movements and the reality of local ecology. I was also acutely aware of the striking relationship between our cultural perceptions of 'wilderness' and ideas of 'masculinity'.
How could I honour these folk traditions and histories, yet simultaneously critique and de-stabilise constructed problematic narratives? How could I address contemporary intersections of ecology, gender and class? How could I touch on the complex relationship between indigenous cultural knowledge and the appropriation of vernacular culture? What did I want to explore and communicate?
I spent time writing, thinking, dreaming and in my note books began to distil my research into words:
From Palaeolithic cave paintings, to Landseerâs Monarch of the Glen, throughout time, artists have made representations of deer. Whether as staples to hunter-gatherers, icons of power and empire, or the focus of sport, deer have long been central to human cultures.
In popular imagination, deer remain etched into peopleâs consciousness as emblems of the 'wild' â the word wildernessitself, derives from the Old English wilde, wild, and doer, deer â and our relationship to the idea of wild-deer-nesshas shaped the landscape. Transported across continents, some species, such as fallow and sika deer, transformed ecologies with the establishment of royal deer forests and parks â hunting grounds belonging to the Crown. Other species, such as the reindeer of the arctic tundra and white-tailed deerof the Sonora desert, face threats of habitat loss caused by climate breakdown. In Scotland, the overpopulation of red deer due to human made environmental change impacted greatly on the degradation of Caledonian pinewood ecology.
And so, it follows, although they are perceived as powerful, deer also embody vulnerability. Constantly alert to the threat of a hunter or predator â or the âghostâ of an extinct predator â they inhabit vulnerable places. It could be said that deer do not live in wilderness, but in ghosts of places that no longer exist.
Across timescales and cultures, our relationship with deer as a totemic and ideologically powerfulanimal has contributed to a construction of wilderness as an imaginary landscape, setting 'nature' apart from 'culture'. Is it possible to shift our relationship to the world and renegotiate these dichotomies?
The dancers at Star Carr, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, the Yaqui Deer Dance and the Highland Fling are separated by geography and time, yet there is a commonality in these seemingly disparate cultures, which find echoes throughout history, fromthe ritualised carrying of stag heads condemned by medieval European church leaders, and Herne the Hunter, the antlered ghost of a royal gamekeeper in English folklore, to the Tibetan stag-headed Chamdance and Shishi-Odorideer dance of Northeast Japan.
Evolving over generations, each dance is mimetic in some way, with movements that imitate male deer behaviour and gesture, from the frolicking of the fawn and the alertness of the adult male, to the bravado, display and aggression of the rutting stag.Costumes also play a significant role, and often, but not always, feature elements of attire made from animal parts. Another common feature is that they are (or were) traditionally performed by men and, with their displays of muscular strength and athletic endurance, they are all thought to have their origins in (or associations with) hunting ritual practices.
As traces of hunting rites, how are these dances to be understood within a contemporarycontext?
How does the mimesis of male deer behaviours inform a 'performance' of masculinity by male dancers? What are the implications of these gendered performances in society today?
Returningto the animal tracks that obsessed me, back in the studio, I finished scoring the three deer dances I had studied, tracking the steps of the dancers, replacing human foot-prints with deer hoof-prints: red deer for the Highland Fling steps, white-tailed deer for the Yaqui Deer Dance steps, and reindeer for the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance steps. Working with Edinburgh Printmakers, I developed these into a series of blind debossed prints.
Becoming-with-deer
Considering different approaches to choreograph from the scores, I decided to draw upon the most mimetic aspects of what I had learnt and adopt fragments of steps to make something entirely new. But who would perform this? Drawing on multiple layers of my research, I began to conceive of a series of characters, each one a constructed assemblage of aspects drawn from a male-deer/male-human spectrum, playfully dissolving human:animal binaries. Making sketches of these figures, I gave each of them names borrowed from archetypal male characters found within traditional theatre, as well as deer and deer stalking terminology: monarch, warrior, young buck, fool and old sage.
To get to know them with my body, I decided to attempt to become each deer-man myself. By queering these figures, I hoped to challenge our constructed ideals of masculinity and question the mythologies that give authenticity to gendered behaviour. Having experienced some of the more negative and toxic behaviours of the heroic-hetero-male in my day to day life â let's call this thecrisis of masculinityâ I also wondered if, by becoming these characters, I could release myself from their impact on me as a queer woman, and simultaneously bring to the foreground the impact of these behaviours â the crisis of ecologyâ on vulnerable and damaged habitats.
My plan became to create a moving image and sound work, performing each character in a choreography-to-camera. I began to collaborate with two performance artists: Peter McMaster and Will Dickie, who both practice at the intersection of live art and dance, and whose past work had, in various ways, explored tropes of masculinity, ritual and ecology. Peter collaborated with me on the film's dramturgy and Will became the movement director, helping to devise the choreography. Together, we discovered and developed the characters.
To begin our process, in October 2018, we spent a few days at Trees for Life, workshopping ideas and watching deer. We also went out deer stalking with Allan. This time I was very sensitive to his movements, almost reading him as a dancer, and was struck by the ways in whichhe took on qualities of the animal of the hunt, harnessing deer-perspective.Like the deer, he was quick to register distant movements and sounds and, on getting close to the animal, to remain hidden, he tilted his torso with bended knees, a pose strikingly similar to the Yaqui Deer Dancer's basic posture and cave painting of Trois-FrĂšres.Will made an interesting observation about how the deer stalk appeared to be carried out in clearly defined ritualised stages. Beginning casually, walking upright and chatting, we slowly grew tighter as a pack, becoming quieter and more focused, tuning in to our surroundings and, as we drew near to the deer, we got close to the ground, not moving or making a sound, our bellies up against the heather. Before taking a shot, Allan spoke about a moment of stillness â a stillness of breath and of thought.
In a similar way, each dance that I had been studying, sat at a different stage in the ritualised drama of the hunt: the Yaqui Deer Dancetraditionally took place before hunting, allowing the hunter to access the perspective of the deer; the Highland Flingwas a dance of triumph, a dance to feel powerful and in control; and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dancewas a celebration after the hunt, to give thanks. With gestures that ranged from iconic imitation to stylized metaphor, these rituals of the hunt were clearly mimetic of the rituals of the deer rut. But how could the dramaturgy of my film address what felt urgent to me: the interconnections between the crisis of masculinity and the crisis of ecology? We slowly began to realise that if Deer Dancer was to function as a ritual space, perhaps the characters would have to stalk each other to the death...
Early the following year, Will, Pete and I worked together to discover the five characters from the inside, developing their movement vocabulary and training exercises and, as we explored the relationship between them, a story emerged. I began to conceive of a two-channel film and sound work that would play with, and attempt to destabilise narratives found both the within anthropology documentary and wildlife/nature documentary. To prepare for the filming process, I created a story board for the two screens, and composed and recorded a multi-layered vocal composition to perform to.
Utilised technology to 'extend my body' and expand my vocal range into 'male' and 'stag' pitches, I worked with my voice to imitate drum sounds. Recalling my experience of the Yaqui water drum, and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dancetriangle, my intention for the sound was to affect the viewer-listener on a body level, sometimes in a way that is unsettling, at other times like a heart-beat of low vibrations in the chest or belly. Alongside the process of developing the characters physicality, and the vocal score, I began to design and make the costumes and props, with invaluable assistance from my partner Lydia Honeybone, using an assemblage of materials, from ribbons and sequins, to bullets and hunting horn. I also worked with naturally cured deer hide, hooves, antler and skull, specifically for the cod pieces, and the weapons, hinting at the relationship between the posturing of male sexual bravado and violence.
We filmed over three days in Glasgow University's theatre against a black curtain. My director of photography Andrew Begg lit the space, and followed the story board shot by shot, filming each character one by one, then, in post-production, with editor Laura Carreira, I then pieced together the jigsaw puzzle.
Introducing the characters...
The Monarch is a mature, dominant male, who holds his head high, displaying his sixteen-tine crown and enlarged neck. Over his hide, he wears gold. His stance is wide and a bulbous codpiece with tassels enhances his majesty. Belling loudly, he asserts his authority, warning off rivals to his harem of hinds. But he's growing old and his limbs are becoming stiff. Soon he'll be past his prime.
The Warrior is highly alert, his senses tuned into his surroundings. He tracks and hunts, defending himself on attack with antlered spears that extend from his shoulders. He's in his physical prime; his chest is hard and strong and over his tartan loins, he wears a sporran and bullet belt. When he hears his rival, he sounds his horn, displaying his power.
Though the Young Buck has reached sexual maturity, he's still a spiker, yet to win his own harem. But he's looking. Dressed in tweed trews and protruding codpiece, he taps the ground, addressing potential rivals. He is lustful, cocksure and trigger-happy, challenging anyone in his close proximity. Breathing heavily, he's on the hunt for a hind, on the hunt for a fight.
The Fool, small in stature, avoids the dominant males as they proclaim their authority during the rut, bawling and displaying his white behind in fear. Wearing ribbons, bells and a modest codpiece, he carries a broom with antlers, a hobby stag that appears to push and pull him into combat. Haunted by ghosts, this skittish staggard is bewildered by his own inner conflict.
The Old Sage is a spirit of the wild hart and ghost of a man. Haunting the wilderness with skull and ragged horns, he relives his life tending the land with hooves and hands. He also relives his death. Only perceived by a few, he sees all.
Deer Dancer
In the resulting work, the costumes, movements and music work together to tell a story, with the visual scores acting as hidden keys to the work. In the 'pop up theatre space' of the gallery, we meet the five characters in an imaginary wilderness world. This wilderness world is not rooted in a particular ecology, but is place-less, black and empty, allowing the viewer-listener to construct and project their own wilderness into the space.
A dynamic emerges between these deer men, and slowly they begin to stalk one another.Then, in a face-off, they lock eyes, take a bow and the deer dancecommences. With movements that signify both the deer rut and a pre-hunt ritual, the characters face one another, performing their ritual dance, with fragments of steps from the three dances. In the visual scores, these steps are delinieated in gold foil on the debossed tracks â interestingly, the word 'foil' also means 'animal track'.
Then, coming to a stop, one by one, the deer-men draw their weapons, and we see each one lying in their death pose, with blood flowing from their body, signified by slow moving red ribbons. As bodies disappear (or decompose), the costumes remain as relics of culture to be performed again. Bit by bit, they too disappear, until then reappear on my body, piece by piece, reconstructing each character in a queer assemblage. And then it begins again...
Stuck in a perpetual loop of learned behaviour and appropriation, these stag-men are ultimately condemned to self-destruct. Humankind has left a footprint so deep that we are only now beginning to grasp the immensity of the calamity. In a small way, I've come to think of Deer Dancer as a contemporary life-crisis ritual for a damaged planet. But when the balance has been set right in ritual, the question becomes how do we really address the damage?
This text was originally written and presented as a talk at Edinburgh Printmakers in September 2019, to accompany Tuulikkiâs Deer Dancer exhibition. Â
Deer Dancer credits: Performed & directed by Hanna Tuulikki; Character development and choreography by Will Dickie, Peter McMaster and Hanna Tuulikki; Dramaturgy by Peter McMaster; Movement direction by Will Dickie; Sound composed and recorded by Hanna Tuulikki; Sound mixed with Pete Smith; Director of photography by Andrew Begg; Edited by Laura Carreira; Costume fabrication assistance and wardrobe management by Lydia Honeybone; Production management by Amy Porteous; Costumes and print works by Hanna Tuulikki
Developed through conversations and interviews with tradition bearers and academics, Felipe Molina (Yaqui tradition bearer/ translator), Larry Evers (American Indian Studies, The University of Arizona), Jack Brown (Abbots Bromley Horn Dance tradition bearer/ historian), Doug and Joyce Gilbert (Trees for Life); by observing a number of dances and participating in rituals, including the Yaqui Deer Dance (Pascua Yaqui Easter ceremonies, Old Pascua, Tucson, Arizona, March 2018), Abbots Bromley Horn Dance (Abbots Bromley, September 2017/2018); and direct learning with Sandra Robertson (Highland Fling), Indalecio 'Carlos' Moreno Matuz (Yaqui Deer Dance), Gary Faulkenberry (animal tracking, March, July 2018), Allan Common (deer stalking at Trees for Life, Dundreggan, autumn 2017/2018).
Commissioned by Edinburgh Printmakers, funded by Creative Scotland. Research and development supported by Magnetic North's Artist Attachment, funded by Jerwood Foundation and Creative Scotland. Additional support from Hope Scott Trust, The Work Room, University of Arizona Poetry Center, Trees for Life, University of Glasgow, Glasgow School of Art, and CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.
I have been reflecting on Donna Haraway's thinking around storytelling: that our ways of relating, knowing, thinking, worlding and telling stories are through and with other stories, worlds, knowledges and ideas; that all cultural practices across the science-art spectrum are themselves forms of storytelling with multiple tentacular threads; and that in today's climate, for which we have multiple terms or definitions â each one a 'story' in itself â we have response-abilities.
In Staying with the Trouble, Haraway writes:
"It matters which stories tell stories, which concepts think concepts"
"...we need stories (and theories) that are... big enough to gather up the complexities and keep the edges open... for surprising new and old connections".
The scientific study of lichen tells the multispecies story of symbiosis,of making oddkin across species, teaching us that we are all lichens, in that we are all (either consciously or not) engaged in processes of becoming-with, through multispecies entanglements and assemblages.
Operating outside settled categories, Haraway's tentacular way of thinking has, over the years, resonated with some questions that I've been exploring in processes of art-assembling, performance-making, or musicking â for want of better expressions â processes that are most definitely forms of storytelling.
Shaped by my own experiences of researching and making, I thought I would share these questions, in the hope that they will resonate...
How can I work with my sounding body to excavate and activate the layers of stories entangled within a particular place? â of histories and memories, of ecologies and topographies, of traditional or vernacular knowledges contained within poetry, dance and song?
Where do my response-abilities sit within these processes? Who am I listening to and why?
How can I unearth mnemonic topographies of place â the land encoded in the song, the lore embedded in the land â to communicate stories of meetings and enfoldings across past-present-future naturecultures?
Can the process of art-making be one of making kin â with other humans, with other critters?
If I encounter a person, or a group of people, can we improvise with our voices in a musicking process, to form non-verbal connections, transforming one another, becoming-with one another?
Can I augment my voice to inhabit my co-singers pitch range, their tone or vocabulary, to find common ground?
Can I extend my voice beyond my human edges into a space where species meet? Can I sing bird? Can I sing water?
As someone born into the cyborg litter, can I work with technology to extend my ears, to slow down the song of a songthrush or a blackbird and glimpse something of what it might feel like to hear as one of these birds? Is this possible?
Can I utilise technology to augment my vocal range into 'male' and 'red deer stag' pitches?
What happens to my way of thinking â my edges â when I reach my ears and my voice into these spaces?
Can I sing witha cuckoo? Can I make oddkin with cuckoo? How can I become-with-cuckoo? What happens to my imagination when a cuckoo flies towards me and begins to sing in close proximity with (or against) me? How can I think-with cuckoo? Â
What are the various threads of knowledge contained within folk narratives and lore about a particular species? What is, for example, the cuckoo's relationship to madness, trauma, sexuality, gender, death, loss and grief, to season change and climate change in various naturecultures? How can these entangled knots of knowledges be shared through performance making, with consistent sensitivity to history and place?
What can be learnt from exploring musical traditions of sound mimesis across cultures â that is, for example, the imitation or emulation of other critters within human vocal music?
What can be discovered by working alongside an ornithologist and Gaelic song tradition bearer, within the various fragmented and hidden traditions of the mimesis of birds within Scottish Gaelic song poetry? Â How can these co-discoveries be woven together into a textural tapestry of sound and gesture that brings to life the complex eco-poetic and mytho-poetic stories of multi-species entanglements within the western isles archipelago?
Can a performance reanimate relationships between bodies of knowledge â stories of ecology, community, gender, work, belief and myth?
What about movement traditions? What forms of tacit knowledge are encoded within embodiments of more-than-human within traditional gesture and dance?  What can I discover by learning and doing these dances, as opposed to simply watching them?
What does it mean, for example, to see, feel and become a river in the Kuttiyattam tradition â a form of storytelling through movement in South India. Or, what does the emulation of deer movement or behaviour across cultures reveal about constructions of wilderness as the site for the cultivation of heroic hetero masculinity? And how can these narratives of the body be woven together in such a way that is sensitive to the custodians of these traditions, in queer multispecies entanglements that unearth old and create new connections?
If I practice these forms of sympoesis* in my day to day life, what happens to my understanding of thresholds? What happens to my perception of constructed binaries: of human-and-more-than-human, human-and-machine, male-and-female, ancient-and-contemporary, of self-and-the-world?
And finally, how can I stay with the troubleand contribute to the hot compost pile of ideas, that may, as Haraway writes, "ignite multispecies recuperation and maybe even flourishing on terra"?
* making with
This text was originally written and presented as part of an introduction to a screening of Fabrizio Terranovaâs film portrait, âDonna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survivalâ at the University of Glasgow, School of Culture & Creative Arts in February 2019.
images: (1) Still from âDonna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survivalâ; (2) Women of the Hill, live performance, 2015 (Photo by Simon Groom); (3) SING SIGN: a close duet, two-channel film & sound installation, 2015 (film still); (4) cloud-cuckoo-island, single channel film & sound, 2016 (film still); (5) Away with the Birds, live performance, 2014 (film still from documentation by Daniel Warren); (6) SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY, audiovisual installation, 2016 (film still); Deer Dancer, research image, 2018, (photo by Lydia Honeybone)
tidesongs is a short composition for multilayered voice and vocal processing, exploring tidal languages of the East Coast, co-composed and performed with vocalist Lucy Duncombe. It can be listened to and downloaded here.Â
The piece is crafted from elements of words and phrases found in minnmouth, a book of poems by Alec Finlay exploring local sea-and-energy-related expressions, anchored in place-names, from the Out Stack of Unst to Great Yarmouth. Written in various regional languages and dialects of the East Coast of the British Isles, the poems bode the inshot and ootshot tide: sea rise, coastal inundation, and the promise of marine renewables. tidesongs also refers to ebban anâ flowan Alecâs earlier primer on coastal language and marine renewables.
(drawing, books &Â visual poem by Alec Finlay)
Animating coastal mimesis.
Reading Alecâs poems, notes, and poem-drawings, Lucy and I were struck by how many coastal place-names and regional sea-related words heâd chosen to work with are mimetic â that is, they imitate environmental phenomena. These include onomatopoeia, where the words sound like the referent, such as oobin, Shetland Norn for the âmoaning of the seaâ, and swaa, Orkney Norn for the ânoise of the sea in the distanceâ. In linguistics and language evolution studies, this mapping of vocal sound onto perceptions of environmental phenomena is known as iconicity. However, iconicity is not limited to sound imitation, but also holds for cross-sensory connections, such as movement, action, colour, touch and even taste. These words evoke vivid impressions of sensory perceptions, and are known as ideophones. In the case of minnmouth, and ebban anâ flowan, most of these ideophones, such as efja, ebbe, flo, strom, swaal, and swelchie deal with movement, from the motion of waves, the ebb and flow of the tide, to streaming currents, and swirling whirlpools.
In our composing, Lucy and I were inspired to take the listener on a journey from mouth to sea and back again, animating this coastal mimesis through a synaesthetic intertwining of vocal soundscapes and imagined land-sea-scapes. We were interested in releasing language from its source, to flow and flood into hybrid spaces of sound-sense, and abstract-representation.
Weâre all synesthetes â except we donât know it. Cross-connection is the rule for all brains.
â Richard Cytowic, neurologist
Liquidity is a principle of language; language must be filled with water.
â Gaston Bachelard
The journey of tidesongs: from mouth to sea and back again
The composition comprises six interlinked sections, a journey which I will attempt to outline below, along with visual score sketches.Â
1. MINNMOUTH 00.00 â 02.07
The first part of the composition is inspired by the title of Alecâs book minnmouth and poems of the same name. minn is a recurring term in place-names stretching from Banna Minn and Score Minni in Shetland, down to Minsmere in Suffolk, and is derived from Old Norse minni and mynni, meaning âmouthâ, âbayâ or âinletâ. In Scotland, this meaning flows into associations with mothering â mynne in Old Scots also means âmotherâ and âa childâs instinctive utteranceâ; minni in Shetland Norn, means âa childâs wordâ. The babyâs first mnnn nmm nmmm mnnnn represents its seeking for the breast, and in his poem, Alec conjures the sound-image of the infantâs murmurashen, Shetlandic for murmuring or discontented muttering.
The composition unravels and plays with these sounds and meanings. Breath is our anchor, and beginning with a sounded inhalation, this first section undulates between two intervals suggestive of the seaâs motion in the bay. From the outset, proprioception is key â by this I mean how the body senses its own motion, especially that of the mouth, in relation to the movement of the sea. A hummed mm / mm unfurls into minn / mouth, before ending with in / out â sounds contained within minnmouth. The contrasting open, low vowels of the ou, and the closed, high vowels of the i create a literal opening-and-closing of the mouth â as well as a littoral one â the mouthâs shapes echoing the movement of the tides and the lapping of the waves. Overlaid onto this, murmuring voices float from east to west, hinting at that first instinctive utterance of the child, or the sound of murmurashen hidden in the waves.
2. FLO-FLOOD 02.07 â 03.57
Across a number of languages, similar sounding terms deriving from the Proto-Indo-European *plow, for âflowâ, share similar meanings. FlĂž means ârising tideâ in Norse, Flod is âhigh tideâ in Danish, Floo is âflowâ in Orkney Norn, and Floe is the âseaâ in Shetland Norn.
In the second part of the compositionâs journey, we imagined the flooding movement of tidal water up an estuary. Beginning with a sounded exhalation, followed by a single drone, constricted fff- sounds open out into planes of ascending harmonies created from flo- related words. The tones flood sonic space, and high notes soar like wind, propelling the music onwards.
3. EBB-SWELL-FLO 03.57 â 05.25
The next stage of the compositionâs journey evokes the feeling of the sea departing land, inspired by the place-name Evie, or the Sands of Evie in Orkney, which Alec translates as âoffingâ. The name refers to the strong tides, and can be traced back to the Orkneyinga Saga where it is known as Efiusund. Derived from the Norse efja, meaning âback-currentâ, and middle English ebben, meaning âto offâ, this relates to a number of similar sounding indo-european words for ebb, such as Eb and Ebb (German), Ebba (Old English), Ebb (Old Frisian),  Ebbe (Middle Dutch and Danish), and  Ebbiunga (Old Saxon).
Lucy and I worked rhythmically with these ebbing sounds to emulate the waves as they roll back from the shore. To suggest the water-swell as it pulls away, slow ascending glissandos are blended together, from the Orkney Norn terms â swaal, meaning âsea swellâ and swaa, meaning the ânoise of the sea heard from a distanceâ. Beneath this, the flo- flood- harmonies return, resolving with a pure high tone, to evoke the opening out of a panoramic seascape.
4. STREAM-SWIRL 05.25 â 08.30
From this oscillating horizon, we drift out to sea and encounter a tidal-current â a stream of sound â created from processed particles of st stro strö... These sounds, from words such as strĆm (Old Saxon), ström (German and Swedish), straumr (Orkney Norn), appear across many indo-european languages, and mean âstreamâ or âcurrentâ. A number of place-names are derived from this, for example Stroma, an abandoned island in the Pentland Firth, Stromness on Orkney, and Stromfirth, a farm by Loch of Strom, Shetland.
Near Stroma in the Pentland Firth is a whirlpool known as Swelchie, from the Norse svelgr for cauldron. It is associated with a Norse myth about a giant quern stone in the sea that grinds salt. In minnmouth, Alec beautifully describes this as a foundation myth for marine renewables.Â
Mixing with the current, and over a low ominous drone, Lucy and I created a sonic whirlpool, from multiple ascending and descending glissandos using swaa, swaal, swell, and svel sounds. As the microtones meet, they oscillate, suggesting a kind of energy production between the voices. At this point in listening back, even I feel sea sick!
5. BOES 08.30 â 09.40
After escaping the swirl, we drift on the horizon-tone, to encounter submerged rocks. The place-names Bods, a reef near Shetland, and the Rock of Bosker, a reef near Orkney, come from Old Norse bo- and bod, meaning two things: âa sunken rockâ, and âthe waves breaking on a sunken rockâ, also relating to booi, meaning âa shoal upon which the sea breaksâ, literally a boder or forewarner. Here, the reef and the motion it creates are interwoven.
Though less mimetic than some of the other sounds, Lucy and I worked with bo- sounds in an improvised hocket between the two voices, using stepping interval changes to suggest different levels of rocks disappearing beneath and reappearing above the horizon. At the beginning of the hocket, the voices have a slightly detuned effect to create a sense of foreboding, before gradually becoming more and more human.
6. CURLEW-HAVEN 09.40 â 11.15
In response to the place name Snape, a Suffolk village by estuary saltmarshes, Alec wrote a poem about the curlew, and the way its call mingles with the wind â a nod to Benjamin Brittenâs Curlew River. These words became lyrics for a short final song, soaring over trilling voices and harmonies created from fragments of words associated with havens, harbours and hopes. We return to land.
tidesongs is available to listen and download here.
(Listening through headphones or quality speakers is recommended.)
Composed and performed by Hanna Tuulikki and Lucy Duncombe, derived from poems by Alec Finlay, 2017. Produced by Hanna Tuulikki; mixed with Pete Smith. Supported by North Light Arts (Dunbar) and Hull 2017 UK City of Culture. Thanks to Kat Jones, Steven Bode, Susie Goodwin, Jenna Corcoran and Amy Porteous.
minnmouth is available here.
Read Alec Finlayâs blog here.
The work is being exhibited at 'Somewhere Becoming Sea', a Film and Video Umbrella curated exhibition in Hull, April-June 2017; and at 'FLOERS', a joint exhibition by Alec Finlay and Hannah Imlach at North Light Arts, Dunbar, June 2017
A photo diary documenting my Saari Residency, in Finland, March/April 2016, beginning research and development for a new project exploring the evolution â and construction â of Finnish identity within forest-lore, at the heart of which, I intend to create a composition for voice and musical saw, composed from fragments of Finnish forest-related songs.Â
Thanks to Hanna Nurminen, Iiris Lahti, Pirre Naukkarinen and Kone Foundation for the opportunity and support; Leena Paaskoski and Reetta Karhunkorva for access to the incredible collection of lumberjack song-manuscripts at the Lusto Forest Museum; Risto Blomster for guiding me through the extensive song recording archives at the Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki; Markku Nieminen and Ville Nyman at Juminkeko centre for Kalevala and Karelian culture for the recordings; the AlajÀrvi family for your hospitality and kindness; and my fellow artists-in-residence for your good company.
2 March 2016: studio for the next two months
2 March 2016:Â heating up the sauna
4 March 2016: here hare
5 March 2016:Â Slowly settling into life at 'saari', in residence with this lovely group of artists, writers, dancers & composers.
6 March 2016:Â the view from my desk
notebook extracts: roots as narrative, framework: the Finnish art review
7 March 2016: safety precautions
9 March 2016:Â the shore marsh meadow, beginning to thaw, waits for the birds
9 March 2016:Â This morning, while walking in the forest, I called out to the raven and he replied! He told me that spring will come soon. Listen to our conversation here
10 March 2016:Â a new moon outline to be completed at full moon (lintutorni, mietoistenlahti)
10 March 2016:Â The great thaw has begun. Is this a lake or a field? All will be revealed soon...
11 March 2016: Gerry Loose's tree circle sanctuary in the spring sunshine at Saari residence
12 March 2016:Â last season's scarecrow
notebook extracts: the question of karelia â framework: the Finnish art review
13 March 2016:Â shadow on wallpaper
13 March 2016:Â every day more green is revealed
14 March 2016: emerging green
15 March 2016: receding white
15 March 2016: Packing my bags and heading east tomorrow for a few days, to visit Lusto MetsÀmuseo (Lusto Forest Museum). I will be researching finnish forest-related songs in their archive. Here is a pic from their photo collection
16Â March 2016: straight lines, from the train across the countryÂ
16 March 2016: notebook extract â forest is perceived as wilderness but in reality is production landscape
16 March 2016:Â Borderlands: passing through South Karelia on the train. It is pitch black outside so I can't see a thing. But I know that to my left is Finland and to my right is Russia. One day I'd like to cross this border...
17 March 2016: It is still winter in the east. A man fishing on the ice.
17 March 2016: Just had a wee chat with this guy. Here he is mid call, flying over my head. The sound of his wings sent shivers down my spine.
18 March 2016: In the archive of Lusto forest museum, this huge pile of manuscripts contains hundreds of forest-related and lumberjack songs... I certainly have my work cut out for me!
18 March 2016: Lusto Forest Museum Archive film â peeling the bark from felled tree logs, in preparation for floating the timber. Watch here
18 March 2016: Lusto Forest Museum Archive film â transporting logs across land. Watch here.
18 March 2016: Lusto Forest Museum Archive film â floating the logs. Watch here
18 March 2016: sunshine through the pine
Lusto Forest Museum have published a collection of lumberjack and forest work songs, along with archive photographs, in this beautiful book.
19 March 2016: a diagram showing the various ways humans utilise trees. (lusto forest museum)
19 March 2016:Â A forester's portable cabin, a space for rest, food and sleep. (lusto forest museum)
19 March: Seventeenth century engraving â a Finn hunting a bear (lusto forest museum)
notebook extracts: from Tree People, Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo â tree of life / sacred trees
German priests felling sacred trees of Estonia, 19th century drawing based on a 13th century story
notebook extract: forest spirits
Trees that look like people wrapped in blankets. Photo is by Ritva Kovalainen & Sanni Seppo.
20 March 2016: This wee lassie is getting ready for Virpominen - a folk tradition on Palm Sunday, where children dress as witches, carrying decorated willow branches door-to-door, reciting spring blessings, receiving chocolate eggs in return...
20 March 2016:Â Virvon, varvon, tuoreeks terveeks, tulevaks vuodeks; vitsa sulle, palkka mulle! /Â Here I go a-waving willow, wishing you a healthy green year; here's a willow wand for you, now a treat for me!
20 March 2016:Â a five year old artist's decorated eggs
notebook extracts: forest cover, from Tree People
Antti Lohilahti has taken the forest prisoner and is calling the cows out of forest cover, 1917
from Tree People
Binding the forest to escape forest cover, 1955
20 March 2016:Â Kantele player in Ilomantsi, Karelia - as depicted in a drawing by Gustaf Retzius from 1878
karjan kutsuhuuto â Cow calling song, from Savo, the area in Finland where my mother is from. Calling the cows in from the forest. Link to extract of film here. Complete film here.
Mum's family on both her mother's and father's sides were farmers. Here is my Mummo (Finnish for Grandma) milking a cow and my mum and aunt in the background. Mum remembers her aunt calling the cows in from the forest, and the sound of their cowbells.
20 March 2016:Â Various Finnish company stamps, marking sawmill timber Lusto Forest Museum)
21 March 2016: sauna
22 March 2016: A basket of rye grass (rairuoho) beginning to grow, brings springtime into the house.
23 March 2016:Â filling in the chalk moon at full moon (lintutorni, mietoistenlahti)
25 March 2016: Reading Material â On the train north to visit my kin, getting stuck into this crackin' book on Karelian oral poetry...
notebook extracts
26 March 2016: Naava (old man's beard)
26 March 2016: Kokko OulujÀrvilÀ (bonfire on the oulu-lake) - a fire festival on the ice to bring in the spring (near Kajaani)
27 March: In Iisalmi, slightly dewy-eyed after lighting a candle and laying flowers at my mummo's grave (my grandmother) alongside my ukki (grandfather) and setÀ (uncle) who both died before I was born.
27 March 2016: In iisalmi watching people fishing in the ice, at Poro Selka (reindeer's back) as the ice begins to melt.
28 March 2016: morning light in Kajaani
28 March 2016: Ahma juoksi takkarannassa jÀrven jÀÀllÀ!!! Just now a wolverine ran close to the houses at takkarantta! I missed seeing him/her close up, but here are the tracks.
28 March 2016:Â joutsenen siipi - whooper swan's wing
29 March 2016:Â Just had an amazing afternoon at Juminkeko - a centre for Karelian traditional culture and the Kalevala - based in Kuhmo, Kainu. I was gifted with wonderful recordings from their sound archive. Jussi Huovinen (pictured here) is the last living runo singer in Viena Karelia.Â
30 March 2016: leppÀ - alder
30 March 2016:Â birch timber
30 March 2016:Â loom
31 March 2016: Arrived in Helsinki, to visit the sound archives at the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki
31 March 2016:Â Inside archive heaven at the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki
1 April 2016: Song hunting in the sound archive at the Finnish Literature Society
4 April 2016:Â Remember this view? Turned out to be a field.
4 April 2016:Â Beginning to play and compose with fragments of Finnish forest-related songs
5 April 2016: Nain iloiten vain ma laulelen (just like this I sing rejoicing):
7 April 2016:Â a new moon outline to be completed at full moon (mietoistenlahti)
7 April 2016: Another name for pokasaha (frame saw) is nÀlkÀviulu (hunger violin). The photo was taken in the 1950s and is from the Lusto forest museum archive.
7 April 2016:Â ice formed in the curve of a boulder
12 April 2016:Â "I roamed the great forests as a wolf, magnificent wildwoods as a bear" - song fragment collected in 1906, in Soikkola, a former village in Ingria
Karelian Embroidery
15 April 2016:Â last night's sunset glow
22 April 2016:Â filling in the chalk moon at full moon (mietoistenlahti)
In August, I returned to Fort Kochi for a month-long residency to develop my work for Kochi-Muziris Biennale, continuing to explore the relationship between cultural perception, lore, place, and land. The starting point for the project was Indiaâs mnemonic landscape, in particular, river-systems and how they are represented within the languages and traditional performing arts of South India. On an earlier visit in February I met Kapila Venu, a leading practitioner of Kutiyattam, a form of Sanskrit theatre practiced in Kerala, in which narratives are told through stylized and codified gestures of hands and eyes. It is one of India's oldest living performing arts, originating more than 2,000 years ago, and is officially recognized by UNESCO.
During my February visit, Kapila had demonstrated a sequence of gestures from the Kutiyattam tradition, known as Nadi Varnana â River Description, which represents the river cycle as a sequence of codified movements. I was struck by the flow-between states of stillness and action. It seemed that every movement began and returned to a place of attentiveness, with each gesture appearing to represent the act of watching â be it a mountain, the rain, streams or river â before the performer became a mimetic embodiment of these observations. Still gaze and motion.
This kind of mimesis of the more-than-human-world feels familiar to me from my previous work on the imitation of birds within the Scottish Gaelic song tradition, and I was immediately drawn towards learning more about this gestural embodiment of rivers. As an artist with a voice-centred practice, Iâve become interested in shifting the initial focus of my process from purely vocal sound to proceeding from body movement. I wondered if this tradition, and the Nadi Varnana sequence in particular, could form the nucleus of my project for Kochi?
After a couple of these introductory lessons, Kapila began to teach the river sequence. At first we worked with the eyes only, for in this tradition they are the source of all movement. Seated on the ground, Kapila explained how I must visualise a high mountain ahead of me, slowly taking my eyes to the summit, and once there, wait for the rain to fall. It was a purposeful meditation and, in his book on Kutiyattam, Kapilaâs father G. Venu writes âThe acting is done in such a manner as to make the presence of the absent object felt realistically in the mind of the viewersâ. What was required was beyond âimaginingâ, but to really see and feel the single raindrops falling, to see and feel the river, and thus become the rain and river, transforming the eyes into raindrops and flowing water.
The ultimate intention was to create the presence of a river for an audience, and I realised the eyes in kutiyattam could be compared to film-projectors, âprojectingâ the river in front of an audience â so, in a sense, kutiyattam informed the concept of using film.
Gradually, Kapila integrated hand movements into our morning lessons and, before long, I was learning how to work with my whole body; to see, feel and become a river cycle, from the first rain on the mountaintop, and rivulets becoming mountain streams, to fast flowing river, and, the completion of a slow meander to sea.
Embodied within this particular aspect of kutiyattam is the recognition â or tacit knowledge â of a continuum between human and more-than-human, that dissolves the separation between self and other. After class, I worked in my sketchbook, combining poems and drawings as a way to represent this continuum, creating a series of instructions for my eyes and hands for each stage of the river formation. Â When I returned to Scotland I continued to develop these sequences for eyes, and hands, and they would later form the two visual scores in my installation.Â
Kapila was a patient and encouraging teacher, guiding me through a process of awareness and discovery. As we shared our differing practices we found points of connection and, over the course of the residency, became good friends. At the end of the month, I travelled north to a small village called Medhe in Maharashtra, to see her perform at a Krishna Janmastmi â a celebration of the Hindu deity Krishaâs birthday. The performance was spellbinding. Kapila shape shifted between different characters, miming their actions and embodying their fluctuating emotions with facial expressions â especially with her eyes. I was taken by her mimesis of animals, in particular an extraordinary man-lion character. The accompanying percussionists described the action â the stab of a weapon could be heard as well as seen â and heightened the emotional impact, creating a kind of felt internal drama through variations of rhythm, speed, volume, and pitch. Though I couldnât follow every thread in the codified narrative, I was able to sense more than I understood, and the audience, myself included, were palpably moved. I would dearly love to bring Kapila over to Scotland to perform. Of course, Iâd also love to work together again and deepen our exchange, perhaps even tell a story from the Scottish tradition through the means of Kutiyattam.
FIELD TRIPS
Outside, the August rains were short but frequent. From my rooftop-garden-come-temporary-studio, I practiced the movement of my eyes while watching the rain fall, mindful of its steady pulse drumming on corrugated metal.
To help with my visualisations, I also undertook field trips to a number of local rivers â Chalakudy Puzha and Paniyelli Poru at Periyar River â watching and listening to the flow of water. Back in the studio, I spent time picturing rivers familiar to my mindâs eye, especially those known to me from childhood, such as the Cuckmere in Sussex, which winds its way through the valley to meet the English Channel, in a series of inker-linked S-shapes. In my version of the Nadi Varnana sequence, I visualise the Cuckmere in my final meander out to sea.Â
INNER FLOW
The Sanskrit word Nadi literally means river, or channel where water flows, but the word is also associated with Ayurveda, a holistic medical system developed more than 3000 years ago. The nadis are considered channels or tubes in the human body, and they carry the prana â energy or life force. Of course, one of the main principles in Ayurveda is that the mind and the body are inextricably connected, so nothing has more power to heal and transform the body than the mind.Â
Earlier in the year, from March onwards, I had been ill with recurring acid reflux and chronic fatigue. It felt to me like a valve was not closing properly between my stomach and food pipe. I went for a consultation with my GP and was told by him that my valve was just fine, and that I simply had too much acid, perhaps from my diet. I was dubious, as the sensation in my body was distinct, and so months went by trying various dietary exclusions and acid reducing prescriptions, but nothing was any help. After some months I had an endoscopy, and in July I was finally diagnosed with hiatal hernia â almost identical to my initial, intuitive diagnosis.
Reading about ayurvedic nadis, I wondered if I had experienced some kind of block on my energy brought on by stress. When I returned to Kochi, my friend Zuzana Zwiebel took me see Dr. Venugopal, an Ayurvedic doctor in Thrissur. His diagnosis was rather different to my GPâs: he didnât think it had anything to do with diet, as there was so sign of this on my skin and, instead, he proposed that it could indeed be an energy blockage. He explained that as I was an âartistâ trying to survive in the world, Iâd probably built up an accumulation of external pressures â in other words stress! According to Dr. Venugopal I didnât need any medication, just do things that gave me joy and reconnect with my flow. So I did!
Parallel to my work with the body, I considered how to develop a vocal composition that might work alongside the choreography. In Sanskrit, nadi, meaning âriverâ and nada, meaning 'sound', originate from the same etymological root nad, meaning 'to flow'. In my final Kutiyattam lesson these meanings were brought to life, as I had the opportunity to perform the Nadi Varnana sequence with the musicians who normally accompany Kapila in her performances.
The drums began with a steady pulse, as if announcing the sequence. As I began to move I noticed the musicians were dovetailing with my movement â they were so gifted that I couldnât work out if they were following me, or I them? What impressed me most was how mimetic their playing was; how much like water they sounded. Their rain plashed in sparse ripples, forming delicate trickles and undulating streams, before gushing with the spating force of a river in full flow.
Returning to my studio in Edinburgh, when I listened back to my recording of their performance, I realised that I could compose a piece of music by layering multiple recordings of my own voice, drawing out the most mimetic aspects.
Another sonic element in traditional kutiyattam performance is the unaccompanied singing, or chanting, of the narrative expressed in the mudra, usually carried out by the actor. I took on this role, composing a song inspired by this style of chanting and based on the texts I had written for my visual scores. I hoped the result would be an incantation that described the instructions for eyes and hands I performed in the film.
SILVER
In previous works Iâve always created costumes that accentuate elements in the work, and become part of the visual language. I didnât want to appropriate the traditional Kutiytattam costume, but, wondering how best to approach this, I read an interesting paragraph about the female characters and meaning of their costumes in a book by G.Venu, âThe female characters of Kutiyattam are conceptualized as Devi â Goddesses â and wear the same costume. The head gear include a snake hood â a symbol of the presence of the snake God and Goddesses, in the tradition of the Mother Goddess worship.â
One of my reasons for focusing on rivers in the first place was their importance across India. Purifying and life-giving, rivers are venerated as holy places, representing liquid Shakti â female energy. Some are personified as female deities, most famously Ganges, the goddess Ganga. Interestingly the river Dee in Scotland, and the Sanskrit word for Goddess â Devi, share their etymology in the proto-indo-european root 'deiwos', meaning 'celestial' or 'shining'. Of course, rivers do shine, rippling and catching the light.
Wondering if my river could embody a celestial shining, I experimented with silver body paint and some beautiful raw silk that I bought in a fabric shop. Back in Scotland, I worked with designer Emily Millichip to create a bodice and trousers that emphasise the mountain-like shape of the pose made by the legs and, to draw attention to the eyes, I experimented with traditional eye makeup techniques.
SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY
I began to conceive of an installation that combined three things: a series of interlinked films; vocal compositions; and a sequence of visual scores. I realised the idea of the river flowing from source to mouth could be the key metaphor to hold these different elements together.
In all traditions, there is flow from teacher to novice, along what Hamish Henderson called âthe carrying streamâ. But importantly this sourcemouth metaphor could also be applied to the practice of kutiyattam itself â the observing eyes as the source, flowing into embodiment. In my case, if I wrote a song made from instructions for the body, the score would also flow into performance, the body giving corporeal expression to the lyrics.
For the biennale, the space I had been assigned is made up of two rooms. I wondered if one area could be a kind of source, the other the mouth, with each one being activated at different times within a repeating cycle.
To confirm the concept I revisited other artistsâ work for inspiration, including Samuel Beckets famous dramatic monologue Not I from 1972, featuring a disembodied mouth, and Norman McLarenâs Pas de Deux, an experimental film from 1968 that uses a step-and-repeat printing technique, to multiply two dancers across the screen, tracing their movement. McLarenâs film draws on early photographic experiments in chronophotography, a Victorian technique that captured movement in several frames of print. For the film I would translate this method into digital moving image. In Nadi Varnana, the culminating full-bodied gesture that represents a strong current and then slow meander to sea, could be repeated and layered, creating âvisual echoesâ merging into a single liquidbody. I would film each stage of the river formation and combine them to create the line of a river.
For the installation layout, I decided on three films split across two rooms. One room with a large screen would portray the full river sequence, opposite a smaller screen showing a close up of the eyes situated above the central door. Through this doorway, in the other room, would be the third screen portraying the disembodied singing mouth.
In September, back in Scotland, I continued my daily morning rehearsals at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, enjoying the discipline of an early start before anyone else arrived in the building. The rest of my time was spent composing and recording the vocal compositions, and preparing for a film shoot in October.Â
The shoot took place over two days, on the stage of the theatre space in Glasgowâs CCA, with regular collaborator Daniel Warren behind the camera, and Amy Porteous to help get into costume â itself an art in its own right, taking a good couple of hours each time!
In November, after editing film with Daniel, and creating a final sound mix with sound designer Pete Smith, I was ready for installing. I looked forward to returning to India, to realise SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY as an audio-visual installation in Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY was commissioned by Kochi-Muzirs Biennale and made in collaboration with Kapila Venu (Kutiyattam mentor & choreography); Daniel Warren (film); Pete Smith (final sound mix); Emily Millichip (costume maker); Beinn Watson (production consultant); Amy Porteous (production management).Â
Supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland, The British Council, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and CCA Glasgow. With special thanks to Kapila Venu, Di Ball, Mahin Manu, Zuzana Zwiebel and Alec Finlay.
Another blog to follow soon, with images from the installation.
Earlier this year, I was commissioned to write a choral composition for Cappella Nova, in response to a twelfth century Orcadian hymn fragment entitled Nobilis Humilis, dedicated to St Magnus, patron saint of Orkney.
Written for two parts, with harmonies in thirds, the seven Latin stanzas celebrate the life of the earl-saint, Magnus Erlendsson, who was martyred in 1115. The lyrics emphasise his gentle and pious nature.
Nobilis humilis, Magne matir stabilis
Habilis, utilis, comes venerabilis
Et tutor laudabilis tuos subditos
Seura carnis fragilis mole positos
O noble, humble, great and steadfast martyr,
Gentle and helpful, we revere You
Venerable protector of our fragile hearts
Placed beneath the burden of frail flesh.
The same portrayal of Magnus as a peaceful soul appears in the Orkneyinga Saga, as the young earl refuses to take up arms during the Battle of Anglesey, remaining instead on board ship singing psalms. Historians debate whether this account is accurate â it may well have been written into the saga for political reasons â but, fictional or not, I was drawn towards the anti-war sentiments of the tale.
Inspired by the account in the Orkneyinga Saga, I have composed a piece in three sections, which re-imagines Magnusâ sea voyage to Anglesey and his refusal to fight.
Section One: from the sea is composed with lyrics from Orkney Norn (O) and Shetland Norn (SH), using words relating to the sea, inviting the vocalists to inhabit the sibilant sounds of sea swell, and the pull and push of waves and wind.
sju (SH) : sea
swaa (O) : noise of sea heard from a distance
swaal (O) : sea swell
laar (SH) : light steady breeze
swap (O) : sudden gust of wind
The words are from a collection of tidal-related terms, mostly from Jamieson and Marwick dictionaries, which Alec Finlay recently published in Ebban anâ Flowan.
Section Two: psalm adopts lyrics written after psalm 77. The lyric is woven across the parts in a non-linear fashion. I invite the vocalists to imagine they are Magnus, sitting in the boat, hearing the sound of the sea storm and battle, feeling fear, awe, and then the beginnings of hope. I worked from the original text, modernising and emphasizing the sense of an animate seascape.
when the waters saw you
fearing the deeps trembled
fearing the seas wavered
when the waters saw you
in heavens oâer the ocean
skies burst with rain
earth shook with wind
in heavens oâer the ocean
your voice thundered out
hail in the storm
arrows in the clouds
your voice thundered out
guide us through the sea
on a path âtween tides
your steps go unseen
guide us through the sea
Section Three: to the sea returns to the waves, echoes the beginning. This section leaves the human action of the battle, which the sea is indifferent to, and comes back to the more-than-human sphere.
Reflections on process:
As is usually my practice, I began my process of composing by singing, and recording small vocal sketches, to create a rough demo of the whole piece. Normally, I would spend time with vocalist-performers, workshopping my sketch, to choose which sounds suited our particular voices, personalities, and musical journey. But this time, having never met the choir, I have had to imagine their voices. Of course, in the classical tradition, this is quite normal, and so I embraced this imaginary space, enjoying experimenting with pitch shifting my own voice to lower tenor and bass registers.
The kind of notation required for this project was also less familiar to me. I have some experience of conventional scoring, but in my previous work with vocalists I create simple mnemonic scores as learning aids, to commit the parts to memory. This time it was necessary to notate the music accurately â there will only be one short rehearsal before the first performance, so I needed to get it right. Luckily I had helpful guidance from a composer friend, Emily Doolittle. Now that sea psalm is submitted I look forward to attending the rehearsal and hearing the final outcome.
Cappella Nova is a Scottish choir specialising in early and contemporary music.
The piece is part of the Echoes and Traces project and will be performed at:
In February 2016, I was invited to Kochi, in Kerala, India, for a fortnight-long research trip, to begin developing a new place-responsive work.
Beginnings:
Sketchbook extract: Gaston Bachelard quoteÂ
Before my visit, seeds of inspiration for the new project were beginning to emerge. Recently I have been reflecting on the relationship of the human voice and flowing water â the âbabblingâ, âburblingâ voice as a kind of âliquidâ material that is capable of emulating a stream of water. This, in turn, nurtured my growing interest in hydronomy â the study of river-names Ââ given the ways in which ancient names embody and preserve historic perceptions of the environment. Scottish folklorist Hamish Hendersonâs concept of âthe carrying streamâ â the passing of songs from one singer to another, and one generation to the next, by way of the oral tradition â crystallized these ideas.
Sketchbook extract: Hamish Henderson quote
The catastrophic floods in parts of Scotland and across the rest of the UK focused my initial research, which I framed in terms of a vital question: how can we take better care of our rivers? Indian rivers are sites of religious attention and sacred observance and, in this context, I felt drawn to research beliefs, musical customs, and the vocabulary, imagery and languages associated with river systems in India.
During my trip, I was able to test and develop these thoughts by meeting people and getting a feel for Kochi.
A local man, Khalid, who sold cigarettes, came to sing a few songs for the visiting foreign artists at Pepperhouse. His voice was tender with age. With his hand he gestured the movement of an invisible harmonium on the table, playing out an inaudible flowing melody.
Kochi map, 1635
The origin of the name âKochiâ is thought to be from kochu azhi, meaning 'small lagoon' in Malayalam â the official language in Kerala. One thing that struck me about the city â Fort Cochin, to go by the old name â was a sense of multiple influences from cultures outside of India. These are immediately visible in the cityâs architecture. Its position on the coast, and safe harbour, transformed Kochi into a trading center from ancient times, through the pre-colonial era, when, for many centuries, it bloomed. Itâs power and influence grew after the Periyar river flooded the nearby port of Muziris in the C14th. Witnessing waves of migration from Arabs, British, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, and Syrians, the sea was, in this context, was a highway connecting India to the rest of the world.
Art talk
Talk at David Hall
On day two, I gave a talk about my practice at the beautiful David Hall, organized by the Kochi-Muziris Biennale foundation, and supported by British Council scotland. I focused on four recent projects: Away with the Birds, cloud-cuckoo-island, SING SIGN: a close duet, and Women of the Hill. The talk was well attended and, through it, I met some interesting residents of Kochi. The event even appeared in the press: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/50846272.cms
 Tributaries of language
Sketchbook extract: Dravidian languages family tree
A large part of my time in Kochi was spent meeting and talking with people. Annu, Gautam, and Edwin from the Biennale team were particularly helpful in extending my understanding of the culture(s) of Kochi, Kerala, and India. These conversations ranged from language, politics, and ecology, to archeology and religion. Through the discussions I began to think about language families as river systems, and I felt an image clarifying: Â flowing from the source to the mouth â languages, words, and sounds flowing and evolving from proto-language to contemporary usage. I was becoming more aware of the sheer diversity of cultures and languages in India, and realizing the sensitive divide between northern Indo-Aryan and southern Dravidian languages and cultures. I also learned about the plight of minority languages, particularly of tribal cultures being eroded by increasing homogenisation.
Sarasvati Goddess
Was there a way to celebrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of India, perhaps through river names? The idea of a vocal composition created through the flow of languages came into focus âa linguistic âconfluenceâ. Of course, I also had to reflect on my position as a white European visiting India, and, as I came to know the city a little, I could think more practically about the perils of cultural appropriation. What kind of process(es) did I need to undertake in order to make sensitive place-responsive work here?
 Carnatic music
Sketchbook extract: swara, carnatic mnemonics
One evening at my guesthouse, I could hear beautiful mournful sounds downstairs. Leaving my room, I sat on the stairs and listened to the gentle meander of a song that was being sung by Binu, the guesthouse owner. There was something about the way the notes twisted and turned â of course, I couldnât help but think of rivers... Later, I asked what he was singing and he told me that it was something heâd learnt at school. Could he show me? Yes, but first, he said, I needed to learn the scale. âsa ri ga ma pa dha ni saâ he sang. I recognized that this was a musical scale from the carnatic tradition â South Indian classical music.
Sujitha Pathur and HT
The next thing I had to do was find a singing teacher in Kochi who was willing to give me a class in Carnatic singing. Vipin, from the Biennale team, suggested his friend Sujitha Pathur, a wonderful singer currently studying for her PHD. She gave me a number of lessons at Pepperhouse. I would listen to Suji sing and then attempt to imitate â it was like trying to learn a new language and ever since then I have continued my studies with Suji over Skype.
Bob Cobbing: 'transcript for a new sound poem'
I thought more about a possible vocal composition created from river names, beginning at the source, and flowing downstream. In such a structure, could the rivers flow from historic proto-languages into contemporary names, or should I simply utilize literal geographic mapping? Or was there a non-linear approach â one that could reflect on unknown histories of language? Could carnatic musicâs mnemonic system be a key in this?
I remembered that Bob Cobbing had a poem, 'transcript for a new sound poem', that appeared to liquify language.
 Baul
Parvathy Baul and HT
The curator of this yearâs biennale, Sudarshan Shetty, was keen for me to meet the singer Parvathy Baul, as he felt I might find an affinity with her music. Parvathy is from and follows the tradition of the Bauls, the mystic minstrels of Bengal in the north-east. She now lives in Kerala, but often travels, performing around the world. In February, she was in the final stages of preparation for a festival celebrating womenâs music in Bangalore. She invited me to meet her there, and over a morning, we shared conversation, songs, and some tears.
Parvathy performed a Bhatiali, a boatmanâs song from Bengal, about a celestial river of the otherworld, traditionally sung while travelling downstream â the word Bhatiali itself comes from Bhata meaning ebb or downstream. Beginning with a longing and effortless exclamation, the high pitch-notes gradually descended, her voice moving like flowing water. We reflected that in music around the world, there is a common theme of longing in songs associated with water â we place our hopes, dreams, sorrows, and sins into the river, yearning for life on the other side.
Chinese net & fisherman, backwaters nr. Fort Kochi
In Baul music, there is a freedom of expression within the voice that I hadnât yet encountered in Indian music. I could relate to the searching quality of Parvathyâs voice. Explaining that she had arrived at a place in her life where she felt she had to abandon teaching, Parvathy told me she was now exploring the world âlike a childâ, and that she only knew where the song begins and ends â in-between was always unknown.
 River Research
18th century river worship in the Kangra valley.
Over the two weeks, much of my time was spent searching for river place-names experts. After what seemed like dozens of emails to various academics, all paths (or rivers) led me to Latha Anantha, a scientist and environmental activist based in Kerala. Latha runs the âRiver Research Projectâ. By good fortune she happened to be in Kochi for a conference, so we organized to meet one morning, along with her husband and fellow scientist Unni. Their passion for rivers was contagious, and together we translated a list of Kerala river names from Malayalam into English, and made a plan to begin to make a taxonomy of Indian river names â an area which has not been researched much in India.
A Kalighat painting from 19th century Calcutta depicting the river Ganges, personified as the goddess Ganga, riding on an alligator.
We discussed the ways in which traditional beliefs and practices in India are at odds with common environmental calamities associated with rivers. As a focus of religious attention, flowing bodies of water are perceived as purifying and life-giving, and are represented or dramatized in bathing rituals and funeral rites. Many rivers are venerated as holy places, and some are personified as female deities, most famously the Ganges, goddess Ganga â a belief found all over India. In my reading I found that this cross-cultural concept was adopted by politicians in the ârite of integrationâ (1983), attempting to promote sentiments of national unity among people of diverse regions, languages, and beliefs. Three trucks bearing vessels of ganga-water traversed the country, bringing the river to the people as a contemporary âritualâ.
Kochi beach
Yet Ganga is also famously polluted. We talked about the ways in which man-made problems associated with rivers are caused by development â intensive land management, industrial pollution, population increase, damming, and, increasingly, climate change. Colonialism has, of course, played its part, and its modern form, globalisation. The rivers themselves have been reduced to homogenous objects which can be subject to human exploitation without hesitation â a common problem around the world. Sadly it is often tribal river-dependant peoples who are most effected.
From âPlace Names of Southern Indiaâ by K.M.George
The names of rivers portray something quite different to their objectification. We reflected on the role of flow: in the same way that dams stop the flow of rivers and devastate eco-systems, homogenization damages the flow of cultures and associated languages. Latha and Unni explained to me how the names of rivers reveal a diversity of ecological systems and, relating to these, human cultures, which represent bio-regions, and hundreds of different languages, embodying a broad range of spiritual and material beliefs.
Some river-names are archaic and no longer in everyday use; others are still known within the everyday vernacular. The oldest names tend to refer to the quality of water itself, or to the shape of the watercourse, and sometimes originate in languages that are extinct. For example, in north India, the River Ganges, Ganga â âswift-goerâ in Sanskrit â has its roots in the Proto-Indo-European root âgwemâ â âto stepâ. Frequently languages within the same family contain names derived from a shared phoneme element, resulting in similar generics. For example, in the Dravidian languages of southern India elements meaning river, path, or road â âaruâ in Tamil, âaruâ or âarâ in Malayalam and Kannada, and âeruâ or âaruâ in Telegu â may possibly derive from the proto-dravidian âaru-â meaning âto approachâ, which possibly originally meant âthe channel in which water flowsâ.
Relating this back to my own reading in etymology of river names in the British Isles, where names like âAvonâ from âAbonaâ, are proto Indo-European, and commonly include an â-aâ phoneme or â-naâ suffix, I wondered whether the appearance of similar phonemes across linguistic families, such as the Dravidian names, represented a kind of embodiment of water â the sound-sense of flowing bodies of water, with the open vowels suggesting the water itself. In the act of naming a river, people related directly to and identified with a particular body of flowing water.
River-names also embody human and more-than-human relationships. Though many names are still spoken, the meaning is perhaps regrettably of no consequence, if one considers that the erosion of cultural meanings goes hand-in-hand with environmental crisis.
 Kutiyattam
Kapila Venu
Because I have a growing interest in the role of gesture within my performance work, Sudarshan also recommended that I met with Kapila Venu, a practitioner of Kutiyattam â a form of traditional ritual theatre practiced in Kerala. Kapila explained that Kutiyattam is one of Indiaâs oldest living performing arts, and a synthesis â or confluence â of local Dravidian aesthetic and classical Sanskrit drama. Grounded in the stylized and codified theatrical language of gesture â of hands and eyes â and nine emotional states, the focus of a Kutiyattam play is to magnify an idea and emotion, in a sense, a zooming in on the detail of a moment. We discussed the relationship between mimetic and stylized movement and sound, the twenty-four basic mudras, and the role of stillness or âshantamâ â the peaceful neutral state or emotion, the place, or stance where we begin, and return to.
Kutiyattam performance at NatanakairaliÂ
Kapilaâs father, G. Venu, is also a performer of Kutiyattam, and her mother, Nirmala Panicker, is a teacher of Mohiniyattam dance. Along with her parents, she runs the Natanakairali school at Irinjalakkuda, Thrissur â a research and training center dedicated to Kerala's traditional art forms. One afternoon I was invited to visit and Kapila demonstrated a sequence of gestures associated with a river. Later that evening there was a performance of Kutiyattam in their theatre. I was struck by the flow-between between states of stillness and action. It seemed that every movement began and returned to a place of observation or attentiveness, followed by a kind of embodiment. At the beginning of the river sequence, the movements appeared to represent the act of watching the river gather itself on the mountain, gradually morphing into actual embodiment of the river itself.
I reflected on this flow-between in relation to the act of naming places, after all, arenât names often the result of observation followed by representation, capturing the essence of a specific place?
Back at home
While I reflect on the different elements of my research, I am now making plans to return to India in August, to further collaborate with some of the people I met. I will follow the river flow.
Kochi â Edinburgh: Sujita Pathur gives me carnatic singing lessons over skypeÂ
This residency was supported by British Council Scotland and Kochi Biennale Foundation. Special thanks to Juliet Dean.
 mnemonic topography:Â
 the land encoded in the song
 the lore embedded in the land.
During my Saari residency I plan to begin developing a project that re-traces mnemonic topographies in a Finnish context, exploring the relationship between the community and the forest, a concept which has underpinned the evolution of Finnish identity. I am inspired by the possibility of analyzing and (re)animating this relationship, from a contemporary âeco- poeticâ, âbioregionalâ, and musical perspective.
Covering 65 percent of the land, the forest is etched into peopleâs consciousness as the magical, spiritual and cultural wellspring of Finland. During the nineteenth century, the development of Finnish art, literature and music returned time and again to this motif, and it was the connection between this symbolic âforestâ and folklore that helped to define the nationalist movement which led to independence. Continuing into the twentieth century, the forest sector formed the basis of the Finnish economy. If the forest can be understood as the birthplace of Finlandâs national identity then it has also to be admitted that indigenous forest has, in the twenty-first century, given way to managed plantation â what, I wonder, are the implications of this shift socially, culturally, emotionally and ecologically? This is my journey of discovery.
Embodying these questions critically and creatively, I intend to create an innovative site-specific contemporary composition for an ensemble of vocalists and musical saw players, reflecting on the theme of the forest; more specifically, I want to tackle this shift from indigenous woodland to plantation, by devising a piece which will eventually be performed (on a date after the residency) in an area of plantation which is harvested. In this performance the musicians will be seated on tree stumps, producing ghost-like sounds that resonate through the clearing and float off into forest.
I plan to compose the piece from fragments âharvestedâ from melodies that I will source from traditional and popular forest-related songs. The isolated fragments are cut from their song context, like felled logs. These collaged fragments are changed in terms of meaning, but, spliced together into a circular composition, the results are respectful, and the effect is akin to a generative eco-system. I imagine phases of melody repeating and weaving together, like the birdsâ dawn chorus, or like intertwining branches.
As much as this project will investigate cultural origins, it will also be an exploration into my own personal history: my mother is from Iisalmi and I grew up bi-lingual, with a strong connection to the country and its traditions. As I have grown older, I feel I have lost touch with this part of my identity, and my language skills have faded. This projectâs journey is also an opportunity to reconnect and Iâm exited by the possibility of immersing myself in my motherâs culture, which has always inspired my creative identity.
Thoughts in preparation for a residency at Saari, MynÀmÀki, Finland, 1 March - 30 April 2016, supported by Kone Foundation.
After a busy year leaping from one project to another I am looking forward to editing a short film in spring, cloud-cuckoo-island, made in response to the Isle of Eigg. The project currently comprises a cycle of poetic texts and solo performance-to-camera improvisation, exploring madness and mythology, trauma and psychology, in relation to âwildnessâ and âwildernessâ. Before shaping the material I have spent some time reflecting; this blog begins in Summer 2013, when I first visited Eigg.
Making cloud-cuckoo-island, reflections on process:
The island was in hyper-green mode, its vitality palpable in blazing wildflowers â ladyâs smock, bluebell, ragged robin, red campion, orchid, and yellow flag â lining the ditches and burns with colourful bunting; the air intense with a broad band of birdsong â blackbird, warbler, thrush, wren, a percussive corncrake, and insistent soloist, the cuckoo, ringing out its disyllabic âcuc-ooo cuc-oooâ, hour after hour, over the long midsummer days, like a pendulum marking time. Though his voice was amplified by the basalt ridge, we scarcely saw him.
Being a dabbler at vocal bird mimicry I couldnât help joining in, calling out a clear, punchy âooo-ooo, ooo-oooâ. It sounded quite convincing, if a little loud. There was a pause, then, from afar âcuc-ooo, cuc-oooâ. Excited by his reciprocation, I called back, keeping it going for longer âooo-ooo, ooo-ooo, ooo-oooâŠâ The bird catapulted out of nowhere onto a nearby branch âcuc-ooo, cuc-ooo, cuc-oooâ. Was he talking to me? More to the point, was I talking to him? Not sure of the phraseâs meaning, I responded âooo-ooo, ooo-ooo, ooo-oooâ â silence â heâd gone. What did he perceive? A super-cuckoo on his patch? Had I scared him off? Without intending, had I claimed his territory, like a clumsy bird-human giant?
I was reading Seamus Heaneyâs translation of the story of Sweeney, the Irish King who became deranged in battle. Fleeing his familiar surroundings, the poet lived on watercress and was comforted by belling stags. According to Heaneyâs version, Sweeney carried his trauma off to the wilds, stopping off on the isle of Eigg for a few weeks, staying in a cave loaned to him by St Donan.
What Iâd been hearing morphed: the manic invisible cuckoo became a wandering bird-man âgone cuckooâ, leaping awkwardly from tree to tree.
On my walks a couple of place-names caught my eye. Down by Laig farm, Na SĂŹdhean, The Faerie Mounds, and SĂŹdhean na Cailleach, The Faerie Mounds of Cailleach, combined two âotherworldâ figures in Scottish folklore: Cailleach and the faeries.
As a child, I learnt that although fairies donât exist, if they did they would be small, pretty, winged creatures, darting around hedgerows, bathed in an aura of light that now seems sickly and cloying. The âfaerie peopleâ of Scottish folklore, the sĂŹdhichean, are sinister compared to these Victorian figures. They lurk in shadows and dwell underground, in conical-shaped green hillocks known as sĂŹdhean. It was believed that the ancestral dead lived among them; archeology proves some sĂŹdhean were burial mounds, giving rise to the theory that the sĂŹdhichean were a memory of a pre-Celtic culture. In the Nineteenth century, two cists containing bones and a stone axe were found inside the SĂŹdhean na Cailleach on Eigg.
The sĂŹdhichean are rarely seen, but their malevolent presence is felt. There are stories describing how a human infant, or an adult, was âswept awayâ to the land of the sĂŹdh, and replaced by a changeling. Sadly, these abduction tales were sometimes used to explain physical and mental disabilities and illnesses. I thought of the cuckoo, that parasitic bird, which invades nests to lay eggs that hatch into a bird-changeling, a gigantic freak compared to the other chicks in the nest, raised by unsuspecting parents. In Gaelic, one of the folk-names for the cuckoo is eun-sĂŹdhe, âthe faerie birdâ. During winter he dwells underground, within the faerie mounds, until the old woman of the hill, the Cailleach, sets him free to usher in spring. In some bird lore traditions the cuckoo shape-shifted into a sparrowhawk for the winter months â no doubt due to their similar appearance. Scientific studies suggest that cuckoos evolved their plumage patterns to assume a hawk-like appearance, to scare the birds whose nests they invade.
In the Scottish tradition, the Cailleach, Gaelic for âhagâ, is the ancient crone goddess, a giantess who shaped the land. She gives her name to mountains, knolls, rivers, and caves. As the Winter Queen, ruler of the dark months, she personifies the wild and elemental forces of nature and has the ability to metamorphose into birds and animals, most notably raven, crow, and deer. As a protector-ess of deer â her âfairy cattleâ â she can shape-shift into a beautiful young woman to lure the hunter.
Perhaps a female creatrix was too much for Christianity? Her matriarchal lore was shattered into fragments â dramatized in stories of witches and wise-women, outcasts who were fossilized in Gaelic place-names. At Laig, she is associated with two low breast-shaped mounds: SĂŹdhean na Cailleach, The Fairy Mounds of Cailleach â pap-shaped landmarks are often named after her.
Walking along the beach, these correspondences between the human body and the landscape became suddenly all the more striking, for, looking up, the profile of a face formed itself in the skyline at the head of the island â complete with basalt eyebrows and nose. Could this be Cailleach looking out to the spear-shaped Askival on Rum? I could never have discerned the form from the map and there are no surviving place-names for âbrowâ, or âheadâ, but nearby, Guala MhĂČr, The Great Shoulder, and Guala Thoinisteir, The Twisted Shoulder, have survived. A spine-like basalt ridge extends south from here, and perhaps it isnât going too far to say that the thin wisps of cloud, which often shroud the rock, is like the long white hair of an old woman. In my looking, the island had become itâs own original name Eilean nam Ban MĂČra â The Isle of the Big Women.
Eigg didnât feel like a hag: it was a fertile mother, oozing with peaty abundance, brimming with amorous birds. But romance is fleeting: after the passions of summer come the dark months of winter and the departure of the cuckoo; then his return heralds spring, harbinger of cuckoldry, false love and true love.
On the other side of the farm I stumbled upon the entrance to a hidden lochan, known as âThe Giantâs Footstepâ â but to me the watery footfall belonged to a giantess â Cailleach! Enclosed by basalt and green slopes, the pool felt like a natural amphitheatre, and the wee rushy islets in the water, a stage. On impulse, I decided to sing, throwing my voice at the cliff in short, loud, and high pitch sounds. The effect was amazing: the echo bounced back, not once but twice. The cliff was singing back at me.
Iâd experienced something similar up on Skye singing cuckoo-like calls at a small hill in Kilbride. There I shifted into more complex melodies in a long drawn-out improvisation, and the site became another performance Women of the Hill. Here at the lochan footstep I drew on the cuckooâs repetitions of two intervals, repeating âooo-oooâ again and again, calling and responding to the echo, mapping the acoustic characteristics of the site with my voice. I knew that the following year I would have to come back and develop a new piece.
And so I did, returning in May 2014 â cuckoo-season â for a weekâs residency at Sweeneyâs Bothy, snug under the Cleadale cliffs. I was full of good intentions, with seven days to focus entirely on the new vocal composition, but something else happened. A Sweeney-style madness came bubbling to the surface. I spent much of my time helpless, in the throws of dark and sometimes manic depression, plunged into a brain-fog. I couldnât do any work, no matter how hard I tried, and the more frustrated I got, the more my knotted-up I became. Nothing would flow. I felt trapped and it seemed as if the sky was heavy and looming. My body temperature was all wrong, my head ached or I spaced out, and I lost my sense of joy in the land. I hid away, even though I have friends on the island. Every time I began a new approach, a simple thought, or the seed of an idea, a malevolent voice boomed out in my head: âyou canât do thatâ, âitâs a stupid, worthless ideaâ, and âyou arenât good enough to be hereâ. The guilt spiraled into self-accusation.
What made things even harder was that the Away with the Birds performances were in the final stages of preparation. They would take place on the Isle of Canna, which lay nestled just out of sight, behind Rum. It was my most ambitious project and the accumulation of many yearsâ work; a âcoming of ageâ that I was prepared for in terms of the production, but now the thought of it actually coming to life felt emotionally charged. Without expecting it I was terrified, not so much by the performances, but out of the blackness, I realised I was confronting permission. The world seemed to be saying âyesâ in a way it never had before and my inner critic was echoing back, ânoâ, insistently, âNOâ, again and again.
Just like Sweeney, I came face to face with trauma. It was not as extreme as his mythic crisis but I recognized the anxiety and dissociation and, for that week, I embodied madness, sinking low, sleepless, and utterly exhausted.
Unlike Sweeney, after the crisis drew to a close, when I left the island, I would find my way out of the spiraling fears.
I felt compelled to honour the experience, terrifying though it had been. And so I began to write.
The cuckoo became my guide â calling out of the fog, calling onto the page â and I hopped, from branch to branch, from the real to the mythic, from myself to Sweeney, and back again.
From a failed work, a new work was born. The cycle of poems that resulted, describes cloud-cuckoo-island, a world that resembles the real bioregion of Cleadale. The landscape is âpeopledâ by symbolic archetypes: the otherworld is ever-present; lunacy is one step â or fall â away from the euphoria of spring; plants spell out the passage of time in a manic green clock; topography assumes the form of a gigantic womanâs body.
Characters shape-shift: the sparrowhawk is King Sweeney before his spiral into madness; the goddess Cailleach has the power to transform king into fool, hawk into gowk, predator into changeling, taking revenge for humanityâs ego-driven violence.
The final poem sees the mad king and wild woman meet at the lochan shaped like a Giant â or Giantess â footstep. Cailleach, in trickster guise, probes Sweeneyâs wounds and brings his psychic torment to the surface. In a contest that is both lamentation and flyting, Sweeney keens for the loss of his family back in Ireland, and Cailleach mourns for the severance of humanity from the wild earth. She ups and takes flight in the form of a crow and disappears. Sweeney, mad as a cuckoo, is left under the cliff calling after her, as the island echoes back. In that mirror of loneliness there is an invitation: Sweeney could listen and, in hearing the island calling, be present, bearing witness to the buried wounds which sustain his madness.
What of my own spiraling? Writing helped me to understand that if I was to fully realise this work, I had to become Sweeney. I may have identified my âinner criticâ long ago, as âmaleâ, or, in Jungian terms, a ânegative animusâ, but knowing is not understanding, and now it dawned on me that if I could embody Sweeneyâs distress, perhaps I could then, finally, attend to my own trauma, and grow beyond my old hurt self to be, like Sweeney, present in the landscape. And so I made my plan to return to Eigg the following Spring and sing Sweeneyâs cuckoo-call to the cliffs.
In May 2015 I landed on cloud-cuckoo-island, in the good company of two men, my regular collaborators film-maker Daniel Warren and sound-recordist Pete Smith. With my breasts strapped down to disguise my female form, I wore menâs white thermals and a wig-beard made from hair-moss and a birdâs nest. For sure, I looked absurd and I felt ridiculous, but there was healing to be had sitting on a boulder, singing a wordless âooo-oooâ at the cliffs, playing with my own echo.
The grass-covered rocks echoed my voice, bouncing back my sound and everything I was feeling. Sonic repetitions punched through the air, peeling back layers of emotion. What started out as preposterous comedy, slowly morphed into vulnerability, to the point where I felt a lump in my throat and tears form in my eyes. There it was, a feeling that could be named: grief, that familiar often repressed emotion. I stayed with it and as my voice went higher and grew louder, I found there was space for a new feeling: acceptance. Here I was, singing my heart out. And it was OK. It was allowed. Iâd given myself permission, who else? My voice: an echo of the land.
Coda
After shooting the film on Eigg, I was delighted to hear from Alastair McIntosh that an Eighth century sacred Tibetan text, The Cuckoo of Awareness, teaches that happiness is hidden deep within us all through the total presence of mind.
Photos by Hanna Tuulikki and Alec Finlay
Film stills by Daniel Warren
Drawings by Hanna Tuulikki
Bibliography:Â
Aristophanes, The Birds
Edward A. Armstrong, The Folklore of Birds
Angela Bourke, âMore in Anger than in Sorrow: Irish Womenâs Lament Poetryâ; essay in Feminist Messages: Coding in Womenâs Folk Culture
John Chester, The Birds of Eigg
Mark Cocker, Birds Britannica
GearĂłid Ă Crualaoich, The Book of The Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer
John Gregorson Campbell, The Gaelic Otherworld
I.F.Grant, Highland Folk Ways
Camille Dressler, Eigg: The Story Of An Island
Alec Finlay, Sweeney on Eigg
Marja Gimbutas, The Living Goddess
Francesca Greenoak, British Birds, their Folklore, Names and Literature
Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishmanâs Flora
Seamus Heany, Sweeney Astray
C.G.Jung, The Red Book
BreandĂĄn Ă MadagĂĄin, Keening and Other Old Irish Musics
Michael Newton, Warriors of the Word
Anne Ross, Scottish Folklore
Sweeney's Bothy is tucked under the magnificent cliffs of Cleadale on the Isle of Eigg, hosting a range of residencies and public rentals. Created by The Bothy Project in collaboration with artist Alec Finlay as part of Creative Scotlandâs Year of Natural Scotland 2013. Visit The Bothy Project website here.
Laig Beach Bothy is a family sized bothy on the edge of Eigg's  Laig Beach, Laig Beach with views out to Rum, available for public rentals here.
cloud-cuckoo-island is part of Mnemonic Topographies, a new series of works investigating the land encoded in the song, the lore embedded in the land, supported by a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary. A residency at Sweeneyâs Bothy on Eigg was supported by the Bothy Project. Thanks to Daniel Warren, Pete Smith, Lucy Conway, Bobby Niven, Saira Renny, George Carr, Michael Newton, Alastair McIntosh, Amy Porteous, Frances Davis, and Alec Finlay.
Retreating from the hive of festival activity in Edinburgh, I set off to Outlandia in Glen Nevis, for a weekâs residency. This charming architect designed tree-house, is an artist-studio come field-station, suspended above ground in a thick fir plantation. With a birdâs eye view, its window looks out onto the woodland floor, nearby campsite, and the hill Meall an t-Suidhe â The Seat Tump. Inspired by the possibility of the tree-house as a calling platform my intention was to create a new vocal piece, as a solo study that would respond to the local sound-world, creating a performance-to-camera.
Exhausted from the effort of lugging all my heavy gear up the steep track, I lay down on a mat outside the door. Looking up, I watched branches sway, and absorbed the pleasant scent of pine needles and damp moss. Attempting to tune into the sounds around me, I closed my eyes and listened.
I discovered that in August the glen is filled with the sounds of visitors. From where I was lying, in recovery mode, a blanket of traffic lay on top of everything, making it difficult to hear the subtle texture of the woodland around me. Ben Nevis was amplifying the thrum into a continuous drone, punctuated by an occasional motorbike zipping by, or a chainsaw growling in the distance.
Stumped, I wondered about exploring these drones, and began singing toned breaths, one after another, but, the next problem was that every half an hour or so, someone would arrive down the boardwalk, interrupting my supposed isolation in this hideaway, taking pictures with their cameras and phones. Outlandia felt cosmopolitan and not so far away from the Edinburgh I had left behind.Â
So I went inside, closed the door, and firmly locked it. Every time I heard footsteps approaching and the inevitable knock on the door, I went quiet, like an animal â I was tired of constantly explaining what I was doing there. On one occasion even this became too much for me: after the usual bang on the door a group of lads decided to try and kick it in. I froze, heart beating fast, while the whole tree-house swayed. That was enough. I would have to leave and find another place where I could make work. I packed my bags, loaded my body up like a mule again, and walked back down the hill.
The following day, leaving recording equipment behind, I headed off down the glen with only my smart-phone and a set of headphones. I walked, sitting every so often, to listen, taking in the waterfalls, the river, small areas of woodland, open meadow, tourist buses and human chatter in a multitude of languages, until I reached a group of beech trees tucked in by the river, guarding an old burial ground. There was a stillness here that I hadnât yet experienced in the glen. Perhaps it was simply inside of me. Whatever the case, I wanted to attempt to create a vocal sketch of this place, a spontaneous, intuitive response to being here. With my voice, I could suggest the sounds â the birds, the river, the wind â and capture the movement of the flickering leaves and dappled light. Sitting down with my back hard against bark, I absorbed my surroundings and opened the recording app on my phone.
Pressing record⊠listening⊠singing, layering track after track.
Through this process I felt a sensuous connection with my surroundings. A wind had gradually picked up throughout the duration, animating in me a desire to bend and swoop my voice, like the branches bowing back and forth. Yet I also experienced a strange sensation of my vocal sounds affecting the air â it was as if my singing was contributing to the windâs force. Of course, rationally, there was no way that this could be the case, but to me the line between what was affecting what felt blurred.
Listen here to voice sketch: Ach na Con - Field of the Dogs
I was still determined to find a way to make a deeper connection with Outlandia. Wondering how the soundscape would change at different times of day and night, I decided to return to the treehouse, in the evening and again early at dawn.
At 8pm, there was a gentle drizzle. In the shelter of the trees next to the crooked wooden path, I sat in my waterproofs for as long as I could bare the midges and the damp. The carpet of moss appeared to be omitting light. Soon, drizzle turned to downpour and I dashed for shelter inside. The sound was enormous. Heavy raindrops gathering in the branches above the roof were falling onto the wood, and the glass skylight, drumming in a myriad of pitches and rhythms, each droplet articulating a single note in a typically Scottish summer lullaby. As the rain settled into a lighter pitter-patter, I began to record, imitating the sounds, sketching the irregular patterns with my voice.
Listen here to voice sketch: rain at dusk
At dawn, the traffic was barely noticeable. Instead a chorus of treecreepers, tits and robins, seeped into the treehouse with their song. The woods were alive, and busy, with every other tree flickering with wings. Moving between open window and door, I watched and listened. Two treecreepers sped up a trunk, and two stoats tumbled over one another in a play fight.
Listen here to voice sketch: treehouse at dawn
During my wee residency at Outlandia, I had to come to terms with the realities of tourism in Glen Nevis and my own limitations as a solo practitioner. Iâm delighted to have found a way of making improvised mini voice sketches that can grow out of an immediate response to specific places, serving as a personal document of my experience, and as material which will no doubt feed into future compositions. Perhaps most pleasing of all, is the fact in future, I donât need to lug mountains of equipment around with me. Hurrah! OnwardsâŠ
new moon (oracle, arizona, winter solstice, 21.12.14)
full moon (oracle, arizona, 4.1.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 20.1.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 3.2.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 18.2.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 5.3.15)
new moon (the old brig oâdee, invercauld, spring equinox, 20.3.15)
full moon (the old brig oâdee, invercauld, 4.4.15)
new moon (corriemulzie, deeside, 18.4.15)
full moon (corriemulzie, deeside, 4.5.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 18.5.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 2.6.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 16.6.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 2.7.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 16.7.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, blue moon  31.7.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 14.8.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 29.8.15)
new moon (high pasture cave, kilbride, isle of skye, 13.9.15)
full moon (high pasture cave, kilbride, isle of skye, 28.9.15)
new moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 13.10.15)
full moon (the water of leith, edinburgh, 27.10.15)
new moon (the long bridge, cuckmere valley, sussex, 11.11.15)
full moon (the long bridge, cuckmere valley, sussex, 25.11.15)
new moon (st.bernard's well, the water of leith, edinburgh, 11.12.15)
full moon (st.bernard's well, the water of leith, edinburgh 25.12.15)
new moon (ferragudo beach, algarve, Portugal, 10.1.16)
full moon (ferragudo beach, algarve, Portugal, 24.1.16)
new moon (pepper house, fort cochin, india, 8.2.16)
(sadly, februaryâs full moon was never filled in)
new moon (lintutorni, mietoistenlahti, finland, 09.03.16)
gill russell filled in april and may 2015
caroline dear filled in september 2015
amy porteous filled in october 2015
rowan forestier filled in november 2015
out of
 the
   rock
into
 the
   moon
alec finlay, new moon, solstice 2014
with thanks to gill, caroline, amy, rowan and alec
Heart-stone and bell 2014 (photos: Hannah Devereux)
Bronze bells cast from a stone found in the River Lyon, with cord of hair moss
Making heart-to-heart, reflections on process:
The River Lyon winds through the glen like an artery. Alluvial deposits nourish the valley, and, in among birch woods, sitka plantations, and hidden orchards, there are remnants of the ancient pines of Caledon. Glen Lyon is said to be named after the Celtic sun god Lugh. Today, in August â Lughâs sacred month â with sunshine filtering through dappled green, letâs call the glen The Valley of the Sun God.
Heart-stone (photo: HT)
Wading in wellies by the old arch-bridge at Chesthill, I watch rays and eddies play on the riverbed. My eyeâs caught by a heart-shaped stone, light-filled patterns of blood vessels undulating over grey: could this be a heart from the otherworld â that mysterious Gaelic otherworld concealed just beneath the surface of things? Reaching in, breaking the meniscus, my hand launches ripples, cold wavelets shivering up my arm, I pick the stone out from its setting. The heavy heart is in my hand. Its body is smooth and, exposed to the air, light lessens its rippling play; for moments the sparkler is a gemstone, or a piece of molded metal, then, warmth absorbs the wetness and its complexion changes, fading to a dry stane of this world.Â
Gleann Cailliche map (photo: HT)
There are sacred sites scattered throughout the glen â the Fortingal yew, standing stones, saintsâ stones, ancient dĂčns and Adomnanâs bell. On either side of the river, they align with each other and the surrounding mountains. Most intriguing of all is Taigh na Caillich (literally House of the Old Woman, sometimes known as Tigh nam Bodach - House of the Old Man) a stone structure in an adjacent glen, north-west of the Lyon. Gleann Calliche has a higher altitude and less forgiving environment, and it is the only glen in Scotland named for the Old Hag creatrix Cailleach, goddess of winter. The taigh, Gaelic for âhouseâ, was once part of a shieling where women would drive the cattle to pasture and stay the summer. This practice of transhumance allowed the valley to replenish and crops to grow. The shrine, or âwee houseâ as some call it, resembles a miniature bothan airigh, a sheiling-bothy, with low stone walls and a turf roof. It houses a âfamilyâ of âdumb-bell shapedâ river-worn stones that resemble human forms: the calliach, her husband bodach, and their daughter nighean, along with four other âchildrenâ â the number varies with a new one said to be added every 100 years.Â
Taigh na Caillich, August 2013 (photo: HT)
These figurines and their wee house are associated with fertility and the old Celtic calendar, which revolved around the agrarian cycle. On May 1, Beltane, the taigh is opened and the stones are washed and placed outside the doorway. Before Samhain, November 1st, they are put away for winter, and the entrance is sealed. Marking the cyclical seasons, it would seem that this ceremony has remained unchanged for thousands of years. The ritual was believed to bring good fortune to the crops and protect the animals of the glen.Â
HT, Gleann Cailliche, May 2014 (photo:Â Hannah Devereux)
Having walked out to the Taigh in different seasons, I am struck by the character of the two glens: Caillich, colder, wilder than the gentle Lyon; when May-warmth blooms in Lyon, Callichâs mountain-tops are still snow-covered and, in October, lacking the woods of her neighbour, Caillich feels bleak. In August I crouched in the Taigh while a storm blustered over.
Allt na Callich, August 2013, Photo: HT
A few steps from the Taigh, the Burn of Cailleach, Allt na Callich, rushes by. Swollen with snowmelt, so white that the riverbed is often hidden, it gouges its course south-east, to its confluence with Allt Meurain, Branching Burn. The rivers form a single blood vessel feeding Loch Lyon, which feeds the arterial River Lyon, and disperses minerals through the glen. Since the construction of a hydro-dam in the 1950s, the lochâs outline has changed: the heart-in-a-mountain-torso, harnessed for its generative power.
Figurines, May 2014, photo:Â Hannah Devereux
The significance of this fluvial movement from the heart of one glen to the heart of the other, suggests the fertility ritual at Gleann Calliche was â still isâ intimately connected with the seasonal regeneration of Glen Lyon. Were the figurines guardians of this process? Was the creatrix hag, Cailleach, nurturing the sun god, Lugh, bringing vitality to his valley?
Killin Stones, November 2013 (photo: HT)
In 2013, my partner Alec began working on a commission to create a National Organ Donors memorial at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Researching traditional healing practices associated with stones â his âorgansâ â such as those pictured above, in nearby Killin, he intended to create a living memorial, containing a collection of organ-shaped stones, which we had started to gather in August, in Glen Lyon.Â
Alec Finlay stone collecting from the River Lyon, October 2013 (photo: HT)
Wishing to create a place for families of organ donors and the organ recipients to remember their loved ones, a space that felt safe for reflection, he was drawn back to the Taigh and Glenn Cailliche, by its form, living turf roof, rites, and its use, as a place to keep stones safe. This might be the structure he was looking for?
Taigh na Caillich, August 2013 (label: AF, photo: HT)
Alec couldnât walk out to the Taigh â his pneumo-muscular illness prevents him from walking far â so, I offered to go for him, committing to memory what I saw, and photographing poem-labels. I was moved by my own walking for Alec, being his eyes and ears and by participating in a pilgrimage that stretches back hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Gleann Cailliche, August 2013 (photo: HT)
Making my way west, by the loch, I drifted between thought and sensation. After I had forded the river I could feel the regenerative power of the glen. The hills, a ribcage with breathing lungs and a beating heart; narrow capillary streams, red from minerals, running off the hills into Allt na Caillich.
How should I make a private performance, or gesture, to acknowledge the significance of this place â my own kind of healing rite, a sonic offering to the Cailleach of Glen Calliche?
Heart-stone (photo:Â Hannah Devereux)
Back in my studio, the heart-stone found a place on my desk. I had wondered if it should belong with the organ-stones that were being collected but, for now, I wanted to see if other meaning emerged. So it sat there for months, sometimes a paper-weight, sometimes lost under drawings. Occasionally it moved to the mantelpiece, joining the collection of stones, pebbles, and bones. Iâd pick it up and hold it, running my fingers across the surface smooth from water, noticing wee dents and marks, how it was flat on one side and curved on the other. Upside down, it looked like a hand-bell waiting to be played and reminded me of the taighâs dumb-bellshaped figurines.
Alec Finlay's taigh and wilding garden, National Memorial for Organ and Tissue Donors, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (photo: Hannah Devereux)
Alecâs memorial proposals had resolved: a dry-stone structure based directly on Taigh na Caillichâs, with the organ stonesburied under the turf roof. The artist Caroline Dear would create wrappings anda âshroudâ for them to sit on. He invited me to contribute a performance, maybe in Glen Lyon or Glen Caillich, celebrating the relationship of those places to the memorial in the Botanics.
Out of Away with the Birds, I was beginning to explore the âMnemonic Topographiesâ of place, unearthing the layers of âloreâ embedded in landscapes, animating resonant spaces with site-specific performance. Bewitched by Glen Caillich I was keen to compose something fitting for such a remarkable place.
Caroline Dear's ropes July 2013 (photo: HT)
My inclination was a vocal offering, drawing on the traditions of keening â a composition to sing the departed away â but I had sung, briefly, in Glen Caillich, and my voice vanished in the wind. Something less familiar to me was needed, and I thought of a votive offering for the rivers. Admiring Carolineâs work with natural materials, and her pieces exploring the figure of Bride â another Celtic goddess come Christian saint â I invited her to collaborate.Â
Bottle with water from Allt na Callich embedded within the Edinburgh Taigh's walls (photo: Hannah Devereux)
Walking back out to the Taigh at Samhain, Caroline and I collected a small bottle of water from Allt na Callich to be embedded in the walls of the Taigh at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, and chatted about what we knew of votive practices from different cultures. The possibility of making our own offering, meditating on the life-giving qualities of Cailleachâs glen, took shape. Perhaps a woven material form could be drifted along the carrying stream, like one of Ana Mendiataâs floating goddess sculptures, or, drawing upon the Scottish clutie well tradition, rag-wishes could be tied to the few rowan by Cailliachâs burn.
Caroline said something that stayed with me:
whatever we do
it has to come from the heart
Returning to the heart-stone in my studio, its bell-like guise suggested I cast a bell in bronze, transforming solid stone into a hollow that sounds, giving voice to rock. Often described in terms of the body, with lips and tongues, bells have long been thought of as having the gift of speech. In pastoral cultures bells are tied to herd animals. Around the world, bells are used in seasonal rites and festivities, as aids to meditation, calls to prayer, and warning alarms. Played mechanically, or by hand, bells sign phases and tell time.
Heart-bell (photo: Hannah Devereux)
The heart-bell cast could be modeled on a number of different types of small bells. Sounded by an internal clapper, or âtongueâ, hand and animal bell forms appealed. However, to work, they would require a specific structure â narrow at the top and wide at the base, so the heart would need to be turned upside down, losing its familiar shape. An alternative was the Tibetan âtingsha bellâ, traditionally used in meditation or, in my case, during vocal warm up exercises. Made from twin pieces of concave cast metal, threaded together with leather, they are played by striking the two halves together. The cast would need to be split in two, one half-heart sounding the other half-heart. Perhaps Caroline could make a thread, a connecting artery to link them?
This form could work well, the symbolism resonating with acts of donation, regeneration, organs, body, and land. But it was a risk: the stone wasnât symmetrical, and the Tingsha bell demands identical pieces; then again, the lack of symmetry might lend itself to acoustic discoveries.
Heart-bell (photo: HT)
On Valentineâs day 2014, I took the stone to Powderhall foundry, where the technicians made a plaster mold from the stone, and, splitting it in half, created two hollow bronze casts, a few millimetres thick. A month later, I went back to collect the finished objects. Lifting them from their mold, the half-hearts shone, their surface still untarnished by a defining patina. This would be added, wearing away the dark coating with a metal scourer, revealing the fine texture of the original stone.Â
Heart-bell (photo: HT)
First it was time for the real test: how did they sound? Holes were drilled into the body, and stringing the pieces together with a leather thread, I held them up and gently let them strike together, heart-to-heart. What a relief â they chimed beautifully, with two close but distinctive notes, ding ling⊠ding ling⊠ an otherworld heart beat, lub dub... lub dubâŠ
Caroline Dear making thread (photo: HT)
To join the split-heart together, Caroline made a cord of red Hair Moss, long enough to wind around the playerâs fingers and wrist, like veins or tributaries, transforming hands into hills and valleys. She also made a beautiful pouch, lining it with moss to keep the bell safe.
Caroline and Hanna holding the heart-stone (photo: Hannah Devereux)
At Beltane 2014, we made a return pilgrimage to Callieachâs glen, where, at the Taigh, we made our offering: including the heart-stone, wrapped in purple-moor grass, tucked into the wall, near the entrance, along with a small bottle of water from the Botanic Gardens, from the pond by the Memorial.Â
Ringing the heart-bell (photo: Hannah Devereux)
For our âsonic-offeringâ, we rang the bell over the burns and rivers that feed Loch Lyon from which the river flows.
vessel â heart â artery
We gave our well-wishes to the rivers, to the heart which replenishes the neighbouring valley, just as the gift of donation nourishes life.
Ringing the heart-bell (photo: Hannah Devereux)
The heart-to-heart bell-ringing was photographed by Hannah Devereux and filmed by Daniel Warren, footage of which I plan to edit into a short audio-visual work.
Caroline Dear, Hanna Tuulikki and Daniel Warren (photos: Hannah Devereux)
The bell was rung during the ritual laying out of the 'organ' stones in March 2014, and at the official opening of the Organ Donors memorial in September 2014, with one heart-beat to mark each person who has donated an organ or tissue.
Alec Finlay, Caroline Dear and Hanna Tuulikki (photos: Hannah Devereux)
+read Alec's blog Memorial: remembrancing
+buy the book that accompanies the memorial Taigh: A Wilding Garden
heart-to-heart is part of Mnemonic Topographies, a new series of works investigating the land encoded in the song, the lore embedded in the land, supported by a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary.
Made in collaboration with poet Alec Finlay, this suite of ten pen and ink drawings depict wild flora associated with healing: Dandelion, Dog Rose, Flag Iris, Foxglove, Heartsease, Heather, Honeysuckle, Meadowsweet, Stinging Nettle, Tormentil.Â
Commissioned by Ginkgo projects, for the new NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's (NHSGGC) New South Glasgow Hospitals (NSGH).
10x digital prints from original pen and ink drawings, 2014
Each botanical study is accompanied by a short poem by Finlay. The works explore flowers as emblems of cultural identity, celebrating the plant forms and âdoctrine of signaturesâ, where resemblances suggest remedies, and make reference to sayings, lore, and common plant names, from the Gaelic and Scots herbal traditions.
âJust as the intricacies of Celtic art are finely crafted, geometrically clever, and technically deft, something elusive remains, as if inviting a game between beholder and object. Abstract motifs trick us into a shape-shifting mood and the mind is diverted to an interplayboth humorous and mystical. So in the medicine, a noticeable humour and a certain mysticism intertwine with practical knowledge and skill.â Healing Threads, Mary Beith
Biography
Healing Threads, Mary Beith, Polygon, Edinburgh, 1995
Gaelic Names of Plants John Cameron, Blackwood, 1883
The Scots Herbal - Plant Lore of Scotland, Tess Darwin, Mercat Press, Edinburgh, 1996
A Modern Herbal, Maud Grieve, Jonathon Cape London, 1931
The Englishman's Flora, Geoffrey Grigson, Phoenix House,1955
Flora Celtica - Plants and People in Scotland, William Milliken & Sam Bridgewater, Birlinn, 2004
Golden Age of Botanical Art, Martyn Rix, The University of Chicago Press, 2012
  Alphabet 1, lithograph, 2014, from original pen and ink drawing, 2011
A Rose in the Dawn, lithograph, 2014 from original pen and ink drawing, 2011
Alphabet 2, lithograph, 2014 from original pen and ink drawing, 2013
A Wake to the Dream, lithograph, 2014 from original pen and ink drawing, 2013
This series of new lithographs were commissioned by GSA Exhibitions, on the occasion of âSpheres of Influence llâ at Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art. (A limited edition of signed Alphabet 2 prints are available to purchase . Please contact [email protected] for more details)
The exhibition provides an alternative reading of Alasdair Grayâs visual work, through the prism of othersâ works, both historical and contemporary, with pieces by Aubrey Beardsley, Oliver Braid, Eric Gill, Alasdair Gray, Peter Howson, Dorothy Iannone, David Kindersley & Lida Lopes Cardozo, Stuart Murray, Denis Tegetmeier and Hanna Tuulikki
The two pictorial alphabets above, were originally made for the artwork of albums by Hannaâs band Two Wings.
For each alphabet, a possible âmeaningâ is expressed in a phrase realised from the letterforms:
A Rose in the Dawn
A Wake to the Dream
Alphabet 1: Devised as the artwork for the album âLoveâs Springâ (Tin Angel Records, 2012), and inspired by medieval figurative alphabets. The characters are composed â or figured â from naked male and female bodies, unfolded in their full glory. The letterforms celebrate the human body, hinting at sexuality and sensuality, and the power-dynamic of loveâs inter-play.
Loveâs Spring (lyrics)
ask me no more
why the moon in my eyes waned
why when winter was over
the light of love did fade
for loveâs spring returned
and my heart still yearns
to feel the sun in your eyes
make the moon in mine grow full
ask me no more
why the thorn of sadness grew
why loveâs blossom did fall
when once it was in bloom
for loveâs spring returned
and my heart still yearns
to feel the rose of your lips
make the lily âneath my hips grow full
Alphabet 2: Devised as the artwork for the album âA Wakeâ (Tin Angel Records, 2014). Again, devised from naked figures, on this occasion carrying tools, celebrating the ordinary every day objects with which we make and remake the world. The objects carry practical and symbolic meanings:
The art of navigation: hope â telescope, lantern
The apparatus of rebellion: victory â gun, sword
The arts of design and construction: action â compass, protractor, saw, hammer
The arts of agriculture, horticulture, hunting: sustenance â watering-can, wheelbarrow, scythe, bow and arrow
Inspired by the lyrics of âA Wake to the Dreamâ, the alphabet is a wake for lost hopes and failed dreams, yet it also holds out the prospect of awakening, and the ultimate realisation of a kinder, fairer world.
A Wake to the Dream (lyrics)
come walk, come walk with me darling
and tell to me your true name
I am looking for the real thing
this isnât a game
I lost my dream on awaking
to the sound of the sirenâs scream
and the grinding of these many years
has worn my soul thin
and Iâll hold a wake to the dream we left behind
and Iâll hold a wake to the dream
we shared, shed and abandoned a long time ago
now although the land it is empty
itâs time for us to plough on
with scythe, sword and hammer
weâll dream the next one
so come join, come join with me darling
letâs overcome our own fate
and drink to the memory
before it grows late
and Iâll hold a wake to the dream we left behind
and Iâll hold a wake to the dream
we shared, shed and abandoned a long time ago
Members of Two Wings will perform acoustic versions of 'Love's Spring' and 'A Wake to the Dream' at the exhibition preview on Fri 21 Nov 6-8pm
Fall, pen and ink drawing, 2011, 568x748mm
Ascension, pen and ink drawing, 2011, 568x748mm
Linking to Alasdair Gray's 'The Fall of Kelvin Walker'(1990) and Eric Gill's 'Ascension' (1918), the exhibition also shows two original pen and ink illustrations illustrations 'Fall' (2011) and 'Ascension' (2011).
These drawings reflect on the familiar themes of fall and ascension, setting aside the traditional Christian axis, which places the earth in the centre (Hell-Earth-Heaven), for one that places the sun in the centre (Earth-Sun-Sky). In Ascension genderless naked bodiestranscend their human form. Emerging from the dark earth they clamber on top of one another and learn to co-operate, creating a human ladder, in order to reach to their common goal Ââ the sun, source of light and life. The same genderless naked bodies, this time pictured with wings, dive out of from the constellations of the night sky and reach towards the sun, in Fall.
Alasdair Gray Season: Spheres of Influence II
22 Nov 2014 â 25 Jan 2015 (gallery closed 24 Dec 2014 - 4 Jan 2015 inclusive)
Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 164 Renfrew Street, Glasgow G3 6RF
Aubrey Beardsley, Oliver Braid, Eric Gill, Alasdair Gray, Peter Howson, Dorothy Iannone, David Kindersley & Lida Lopes Cardozo, Stuart Murray, Denis Tegetmeier, Hanna Tuulikki
Preview: Fri 21 Nov 6-8pm
The Alasdair Gray Season celebrates Gray at eighty years old. This exhibition is part of a season focusing on Alasdair Grayâs visual work, with exhibitions and events across venues including The Glasgow School of Art, GOMA, Kelvingrove Museum and Glasgow Print Studio. âSpheres of Influence Iâ is at Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow.Â
New commissions and event programme funded by Outset Scotland in association with YPO
With thanks to Jenny Brownrigg, Frances Davis, Kirstie Skinner, Ben Reynolds, Lucy Duncombe and Alec Finlay
A composition for violin and cello, inspired by Heartsease (Viola tricolor). Entwining together the flowerâs rich assortment of common names â mostly associated with love in its many forms â and applying these directly onto the musical stave, the visual score is an invitation to the players to abstract words into sounds, interpreting speech through physical gestures of bowing, transplanting language into music. Read more on the composition process here and view full visual score in detail here.Â
Written for string duo High Heels and Horse Hair, as part of TRANSPLANTED, a series of new works inspired by James Oswald's Airs for the Seasons.
In 1755 Scottish Baroque composer James Oswald published a remarkable compendium of 96 duos for violin and cello, each written on a single side of paper, depicting a different plant or flower. Following the same criteria, eight composers in Scotland have written a new miniature exploring the characteristics of our native wild plants and their many uses and meanings in society over the centuries.
The collection will be premiered at the CCA on 17th September 2014, with works by David Fennessy, Martin Kershaw, Stuart MacRae, Eddie McGuire, Chris Stout, Hanna Tuulikki, David Ward and Judith Weir.Â
Transplanted places the new works alongside a selection of Oswaldâs Airs, taking listeners on a seasonal journey celebrating the rich diversity of Scotlandâs music and flora. Award-winning string duo High Heels and Horse Hair with their fresh dynamic playing will bring the works to life, with plant portraits by celebrated nature photographer Laurie Campbell providing a stunning visual backdrop.
2014 Concert Dates
17th September Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow
10th October Threave Garden Visitor Centre, Castle Douglas
12th October Greenbank Gardens, Glasgow
18th October Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
19th October Dunfermline Arts Guild
25th October Birnam Arts Centre
26th October Ardkinglas House, Argyll
22nd November  Music Centeral, Huntly
27th November St Bride's Parish Church, NewtonmoreÂ
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