Encounters – Page 3 – Murdo Eason

Above the City: Leaving / Returning

a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time

Patrick Geddes

and the resourceful creatures see clearly

that we are not really at home

in the interpreted world

Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies

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Above the city

as if the cloak

of air, on wings,

weighs too heavy.

A need to

take flight,

defy gravity

soar, for

a moment,

and return.

Photographs taken looking towards the roof of the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, 6th February 2016.

Watching the cycle of leaving and returning. Leaving and returning.

Now playing: Grasscut – Everyone Was a Bird.

From Hill to Sea – Book Update

From Hill to Sea: Dispatches from the Fife Psychogeographical Collective, 2010 – 2014 is published by Bread and Circuses Publishing.

After a successful launch at the Edinburgh Independent & Radical Book Fair, copies of the book are now available from Word Power bookshop in Edinburgh and by mail order. See the Publications page here.

The Foreshore Shaman

Enter through yellow eye

into bird mind of

the foreshore shaman.

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Come inhabit the spaces

between water

earth and sky.

How long have you got?

I’m just biding my time

sitting still, tuning in.

Listen to the wind;

wave pulse, lapping

on stone. Feel, sun

and moon movements.

Observe worlds formed

in rock pools, constellations

of barnacles, breathe in

sea salt air.

I see through reflection

beyond the mirror.

Sense the movement

that precedes

the moment, to

step forward

stop time, poised

with calm intent

to pierce the void.

In one movement:

from the depths

a fish –

……………….Ensō !

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Heron Shaman encountered at Black Sands, Aberdour, Fife, Saturday, 16th January 2016.

Now playing: David Behrman – On the Other Ocean

In Still Winter Air

Gothic lungs, breathe

still, winter air

Arms outstretched

movement in stasis

a silent cry

sounded in ink

Now Playing: Laura Cannell – ‘Banshee’ from Swooping Talons Remixes (Charles Hayward and Merlin Nova remix).

Aberdour, Fife, 16th January, 2016.

Three November Skies

Two divining rods

dowsing the sky

A fragment falling

pooling at my feet

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Looking from Leith Walk, Edinburgh, on 25th November towards the vestiges of the Shrubhill tramway workshops and power station. The power station opened in 1898 and housed the haulage engines for cable-tramway operations. By 1922 the power station had closed with the tramway workshops continuing in use until 1956.

The site was also once known as the Gallow Lee where a gibbet stood for public executions. There are numerous accounts of murderers, Covenanters, warlocks and witches being executed and buried on the site between 1570 and 1752.

Waves of molten lava

breaking – on

the blue shore

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An early morning sky over Limekilns, Fife on 25th November 2015. The sky as apocalyptic beach.

View from the train – take that #BlackFriday

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On the East Coast mainline. Taken and posted on Twitter on 27th November 2015.

Now playing: David Torn – Only Sky

Underneath the M90

Up above, the sound is like a collision of thunder arriving from north and south. Traffic heading to unknown destinations, running up and down the asphalt spine of the M90 motorway. Here, underneath the flyover, the concrete walls have become vast, abstract-expressionist assemblages. Layer upon layer of weather effects, pollution spray, pigment and human mark-making. It is only the walker who will notice these. Why, would you dwell, to look, if travelling in a car?

Has any disorientated walker followed the arrow east TO DIVIT, or west TO THE RO?

Unusual names – DIVIT, THE RO.

Consulting any official map will be of little help. There will be no record of these places. Perhaps we are standing on a territorial boundary line. DIVIT being a local name for Inverkeithing to the east. THE RO is Rosyth to the west. That human compulsion to establish borders and territories. Points of entry or exit. Lines pronouncing otherness, even when invisible and local.

Not far away, a universally recognised symbol. How many times has a heart shape been inscribed on a surface across time and space? From Cro-Magnon cave walls, via the ancient Greeks – a symbol of life and morality and possibly an association with Dionysus and love – to the more familiar symbol of romantic love emerging in the 1200s. Anyone using social media will recognise ❤ ❤ <3.

Under this motorway flyover, a black heart in brush stroke, partly over-painted in white. The shape immediately recognisable, a symbol we can all ‘understand’. But does the nuance of its meaning remain with the mark maker? We connect through common language but subtleties of difference always escape, to be either celebrated or repressed.

Is that a human figure we see enclosed within the heart? Possibly kneeling? Who can say?This small detail, on the patina of concrete canvas, remains a daub of mystery. A symbol as elusive and remote from the casual observer as the Pictish symbols, found further up the Fife coast, carved in the Wemyss Caves around 600 – 700 AD.

The difference between the who and the what at the heart of love, separates the heart. It is often said that love is the movement of the heart. Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity, or because I love the way that someone is?

Jacques Derrida

Now playing: Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto – Love, Love

View from the Bridge

View from the bridge

Always different,

always the same

Now playing: Ralph Towner – Blue Sun

Following the Falling Water

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Images taken from a short walk on the Water of Leith, between the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Stockbridge on 27th June 2015.

Now playing: Kevin Drumm – Reverse Osmosis

10 x Time Placed Sketches

Under a silent sky

the breathing forest.

Walk in

Devilla Forest, Fife.

Another shadow

of time passes.

Seasons come

seasons go.

.

Tuilyies standing stones (Bronze Age). Near Torryburn, Fife.

III

Ephemeral time:

a dragon’s breath

blown across

the sky?

“Time Cuts Down all

Both Great and Small”

Anticipated time

never arrives.

2 ROOMS available

1 taken, 1850.

Dunfermline Abbey Churchyard, Dunfermline, Fife.

Only traces of

thresholds passed

time closed

arrested flows

Merchant City, Glasgow.

Disruptive time

tears the tongue

of Ouroboros

New York City

VII

Wood and water

time stored flows

Storage vessels

of city dreaming?

New York City

VIII

Time passed

time remembered

the time of now

a time to come

Bench outside St Marks in the Bowery Church, New York. In memory of Greta C. Ghee

Elemental time

a quiet creation;

In process

a living roof.

Devilla Forest, Fife.

Time stacked

seasons circles.

Stored memories – of

sun

the wind

rain

the saw.

Devilla Forest, Fife.

Now playing: Marilyn Crispell / Gary Peacock / Paul Motion – Nothing ever was, anyway. Music of Annette Peacock.

Last Light

Conducting the last light of 2014

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Now playing: Keiji Haino/Jim O’Rourke/Oren Ambarchi – ‘A New Radiance Springing Forth From Inside The Light’ from Now While It’s Still Warm Let Us Pour In All The Mystery.