Spaces of Silence

1876

Out of the silence of centuries, discrete words will, one day, surface for us …

Edmond Jabès

 

 

text without words

 

 

unheard conversation

 

 

solitaire

(listening to the light)

 

 

setting sun reflects from a neighbour’s window

fading white wall whisper

shadow play, apple tree, evening breeze

 

 

spaces of silence

allow new possibilities

 

 

beyond the edgeless shape

 

≈≈≈

Now playing: Steve Roden & Stephen Vitiello – The Spaces Contained in Each

A Familiar World Made Strange

All tracks,  footprints, paths were gone. Buried. He had pitched a tent on arriving: how come it had not blown off? From inside, he watched the complex improvisations of the wind. He heard how it suddenly laughed with the sand, danced with the sand, amused and irritated the sand, amused itself and got irritated with the number of grains. And finally, it became, in its desire, a mad sand god dragging monstrous winged creatures off to conquer the world.

Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions

In a few steps, a familiar world made strange

Disorientation

Elemental vortex

Snow on sand births alien forms

Flecked horizon of Rothko greys

 

From a very brief walk along the shore at Limekilns, Fife on 28th February 2018, around 15.00. An encounter with the “Beast from the East”.

≈≈≈

Now playing: Chaya Czernowin – Wintersongs

The low instruments were moving like the slow search of a plant towards light – CZ

We Can Only Be Onlookers

.

The call precedes

the chorus of arrival

A delphian chant

from an ancient score

 

We can only be onlookers

 

Line

of the long

low

swoop

 

Ascending

 

over the Forth

 

Carried

 

on song

 

          – Fading                                                          – – faint

 

– – – far                                                                            – – – – beyond

 

Our horizon

 

We can only be onlookers

 

≈≈≈

Limekilns, 4th February 2018

Settle / / Disperse

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Settle

.

.

Settled /

.

/      /

.

/ Disperse

.

Dispersed

ice blue hue of early morning /     / settled setting of frozen music /     / arrowhead stave aimed at the stars /     / rhythms inked on starless starlight [ crack crack – cacophony crescendo ] winged chorus sounded in flight /     /

settle /     / settled /     / disperse /     / dispersed

still /     / stilled /     / stillness

At Capernaum Pier, Limekilns. Early morning 21st January 2017.

Now playing: David Cross & Robert Fripp – Starless Starlight

Slow Time – Assorted Ragpickings and Footfalls

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Conflux of cobbles

Walking against

Autumn’s wake

.

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 .

Deep           Time

Shore           Line

F r e s c o

.

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a scattering of jewels

criss-cross streams

of early morning light

.

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.

drifting

at the edges

meaning, slipping

away

from the words

.

...godot3

.

Godot Tree

Waiting

For leaves

To fall

.

ksroad

Autumn morning / City pastoral

(King’s Stables Road, Edinburgh. Horse and cattle markets were held weekly in this road from 1477 until 1911)

 

cobbles

.

Underfoot

the spaces in between

One cracked cobble

.

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“Several whales have come in upon this coast

Anno 1652, one, eighty feet in length”

Moby Dick (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian) – on the Fife coast.

.


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No still life:

Foraging wasps, drunk

on autumnal colour

.

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Always good to head for a higher perspective. On the way, counsel from the elephant wood shaman.

.

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Towards the brow of the hill:

a wind blown tree;

an apparition,

forming in the sky

.

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Always the tracks

of footfall

beyond the now

of time

.

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Frost already underfoot/ A smothering of darkness/ Celestial lights & the eerie glow of the petrochemical plant/ A heron stalks the shadows

.

Now Playing: Robin Hayward – Stop Time (favourite piece of music of the year).

Time of the Vanishing ( )

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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