That time of day in December when the last flicker of light gives way to shadow and smothering darkness
The sea a dark mirror, pulling down the sky
Time of the Vanishing ( )
.
Time of retreat
≈≈≈
From the shore at Limekilns, 3rd December 2016, around 16.50.
Now playing: Loren Connors – Blues: The Dark Paintings of Mark Rothko
We could eat this sky.
Stretch up, scoop out
handfuls; smear our faces
and taste the fanfare
of sunset.
II
Out of red earth
lines of olive trees, vines
and quarried stone.
Centuries of building,
dwelling, tending
the land, goats
and cattle.
Another cyprus tree – rooted
in tangled narratives
of departure
vivid light
and shadow play.
No neatly packaged hay bales in the uncanny rural. Creatures of twilight, sit hunched in the corner of smallholdings, backs turned. In fading light, walking past these halo-skewered field dwellers: was that a lengthening shadow? a sigh? a suggestion of movement?
IV
They would appear in the adjoining field at around 7.00pm each evening. A symphony of bells heralding their arrival. We never did see where they came from. They would feast in the field for around half an hour, a clanking cacophony of movement. Occasionally, one would come over to eye us up, usually the smallest with the highest pitched bell. Curious young eyes stared us out. Yet, these eyes tapped into something much older. Some fundamental rhythm of the land. Jaws rotating in perpetual motion and then, as they do, leaping into the air as if the earth had administered an electric shock to their hooves. A display of exuberance and delight in contrast to the slow, deliberate movements of the herd elders. They kept their heads down, chewing, chewing, chewing. After a cycle of time, which we were not party to, the deepest, most sonorous bell started to sound out a rhythm. The largest goat of the herd was calling time and starting to amble away. Gradually, the other goats began to follow, bells around their necks congealing into a moving mass of sound. A few short explosive trills as the stragglers ran to catch them up. We watched as the herd turned a corner and listened as the bells faded into the distance.
V
A visit to the small hilltop town of Motovun and very surprised to meet this straw giant and his dancing acolytes. Staring us out with his silent gaze, he must have been over twenty feet tall, At his feet, some folk ritual or dance taking place, arms thrown open to embrace the sun. Something of the Wicker Man about it all.
As far as I could find out, his name is Veli Jože, a giant who lived (lives?) in a local truffle-rich forest. Local stories suggest that he has been known to enter the town and physically shake the church tower to sound the bell.
To reach Motovun, it is a steep walk up the hillside to reach the town perched on top. Whilst not religious, was touched by the care and beauty displayed in the construction of this minimal roadside shrine.
Motovun sits is on a hill in the Mirna valley and evidence of human settlement dates back to prehistoric times when it would have been surrounded by water. The river Mirna is Istria’s longest river and legend has it that Jason and the Argonauts fled down the estuary after having captured the Golden Fleece.
.
VI
Another hill-top town, this time with a twist. Dvigrad is a relatively well-preserved mediaeval ghost town in the Draga valley. The population was initially decimated by the Black Death in the 16th century and finally abandoned completely in the early 1700s. As the town was unoccupied, it was spared from the destructive ravages of war which were a constant feature on the Istrian peninsula. Today, the town gates still exist, and it is possible to walk around the town walls. The defence tower still rises to cut the blue sky and interior room structures of the 200 odds houses are clearly visible.
.
VII
Aura of the town walls: return of the gaze:
To perceive the aura of an object, we look at, means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return … when this expectation is met … there is an experience of the aura to the fullest extent.
Walter Benjamin
.
VIII
Amongst the networks of rural paths and tracks.
Always the walls:
Stacked
Held
Holding
.
IX
Entropic Futures.
An alien structure in the rural landscape:
the new, never having ever been.
We were staying on the Istrian peninsula in what could best be described as an agricultural hamlet, mostly comprised of smallholdings and cottage style dwellings. These were all constructed in a similar style with what looked like local quarried stone. A network of paths and tracks connected up to other nearby hamlets which were also of a similar architectural style. When we stumbled across the half completed building above, it looked as alien to its surroundings as finding a mountain bothy in the middle of Las Vegas.
The scale of the building was completely out of proportion to anything else locally. The pick and mix collision of architectural styles created a bizarre postmodern mash-up with a tear shaped swimming pool or fish pond, bizarre minaret style columns half-built on the roof and Italian style interiors. What was clear, was that the building was the new that had never been. We wandered around the half completed rooms, bare wires hanging out of walls, yet opulent installed marble bathrooms. Work had clearly stopped some time ago with the extensive grounds already starting to be reclaimed by nature. It was as if we had walked into the film set of a Ballard adaptation, where the crew had disappeared.
Of course we had to construct some sort of narrative as to what had happened here. Ms A came up with the one that we settled on. The remote location, stilted opulence and rather garish tastes indicated that this could have been a low-key hideaway for some gangster or Mafiosi. Work on the property was well underway when they were either rubbed out, banged up, or cleaned out of money, leaving this rural fun palace to slowly begin to merge back into the Croatian countryside. The new that had never been.
.
X
Walking a line
an iridescent alchemist
pulls the sun
across the sky
.
XI
XII
That night, an absence of city light and gravity. We fell from earth, lost our breath, immersed in that plunge pool of dark sky. We learned to gather stars, eat planets for sustenance, grab comet tails to move. The dawn light made us heavy again. We fell back.
≈≈≈
Now playing: Maja S. K. Ratkje – Crepuscular Hour
Perhaps just another graffiti strewn doorway but the phrase “Good Times = 2016 =” called out. I doubt that there are many people I know who would readily conflate 2016 and ‘good times’. So just a throwaway action with a spray can? irony? a small act of resistance?
Possibly it was just a coincidence but passed this doorway during the Edinburgh Festival. A time when the city opens its arms to the world in a celebration of all the performing arts, bringing together audiences and artists. Just walking the streets, soaking up the creative energy can bring sustenance. Good Times indeed.
And what about that figure on the bottom right?
Now playing: King Champion Sounds – To Awake in That Heaven of Freedom (Thanks to Teesside Psychogeography for altering me to this. Check out their excellent blog Smell of Water).
foreground / distance
fractured red diamonds
through scattered prisms
to grey horizons
Passing, at speed, on a train through the three red diamonds of the Forth Rail Bridge. The eye drawn to the foreground. Shards of red-painted steel, morph and distort, through shifting prisms of wind-scattered raindrops. The Firth of Forth, a grey blanket folded at the horizon beneath a brightening sky.
Now playing: Tim Hecker – ‘Prism’ from Virgins.
How many time have I walked down Dunfermline High Street and never noticed this all-seeing eye? (Thanks to my daughter for spotting it).
It’s located at the top of the current Clydesdale Bank building.
Another set of Masonic symbols can be found over the entrance to the abandoned Masonic Lodge in the New Row, Dunfermline.
MASONIC LODGE
MASONIC LODGE
MASONIC LODGE
MASONIC LODGE
MASONIC LODGE
MASONIC LODGE
The eyes are even seeping out into the streets.
A piece of graffiti found in Inverkeithing:
Now playing: Kayo Dot – Choirs of the Eye.
These images were ‘found’ beneath a section of the M90 Motorway; an elevated brutalist behemoth straddling ancient agricultural land, north-east of Rosyth. The sheer mass of concrete overhead creates an almost cave like sensation when standing directly underneath. Folded into artificial darkness, violent white light spills around the concrete edifice, flooding the hinterland of perception. Looking out from the cocoon of the dark belly, steel giants stalk the landscape. Above, the dull thud-thud of unseen vehicles passing.
Imaginary maps of this hidden microclimate are revealed in the concrete structures and the very land itself.
Compared to the verdant vegetation in the surrounding fields, the dry earth fractures into mesmerising worlds of ambiguous scale.
Concrete surfaces leach vivid patinas of oxidising colour.
Time, heat, moisture and the elements create an ongoing cartography of chance.
River deltas, mountain ranges, lagoons, beaches, sandbanks.
Topographies of texture and shade, revealed in light.
Encounter with the red-billed shaman.
A gull-like creature invites us to contemplate
the white void of falling water.
Head bowed, long neck. Wise knowing eye.
When looking up, feels like looking down.
For an instant, on the roof, a city underneath the gaze of a drone.
Aura of the walls.
Frescoes painted by gravity.
The staining sound of concrete stigmata:
drip
drip
drip
This is not an easy place to access on foot, although it is visible from the trains that pass along the Fife Circle railway line. The concrete supports are usually covered with graffiti but some recent activity has painted over all of this with white geometric shapes. It is unclear whether this is some clean up intervention by the authorities, or a Year Zero initiative from the graffiti community themselves.
Strangely, from across the tracks, tags still shout out for attention.
Emerging from the darkness, maps and imaginary worlds dissolve in sunlight as we head back west.
Across the fields, the lumbering concrete, traverses north and south.
The giant steel stilt-walkers are heading east.
≈≈≈
The original intention was to incorporate this material into another post that is presently being written on quite a different theme. As this particular encounter was the result of a serendipitous detour we have chosen to post it separately.
An earlier post, underneath a different section of the M90, can be found here.
Now playing: Kayo Dot – Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue.
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.
.
through the longest night
city lights nod
to the solstice moon
.
.
with a turning of the sun, weak
but stronger,
the eternal return
of expanding light
.
.
New beginnings, or
slow endings?
.
Sun warmed, stories
in the stones, record
new chapters, of
weather human writing
.
.
The Unbearable Loneliness of the Solitary Buckie Bottle
.
Now playing: Ralph Towner – Solstice
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
Always different,
always the same
.
Now playing: Ralph Towner – Blue Sun
Murdo Eason - From Hill to Sea 