A lot has happened, although time seems to move slowly now I have arrived in the Gardens, as if my pace slows to match the plants, to match the path of the sun.
I make a desk space in the barn, and put out my books, my drawing and writing tools, create a space to stick things up where I can see them. People come to make cups of tea in here and I get many visitors and questions, which is perfect.
I gather bird sightings:
Blackbird, Blue tit, Wren, Sparrow, Magpie, Pigeon, Great tit, Green Finch, Starling, Goldfinch, Sparrowhawk.
I draw a design for a contraption that lifts a person up 7.5 meters in the air and turns them slowly 360 degrees. It is unlikely this will ever get made, but it is beautiful – the design, the idea. Arrol who has plot number 69 with Liz, used to sketch architectural drawings for a living, so I ask him a few questions. I show him my drawing but he can’t see it without his glasses. I tell him it is probably just as well.
People have started to come and speak to me about this place; how they feel when they are here, what role it plays in their lives, the history of it, the things they have seen here, the trees that used to be here (the big knarly rowan that the children used to climb).
I visit people’s plots and sit with them, listen to their stories and thoughts. Dorothy (plot 57) tells me she has a love affair with the small green door that leads off Albert Drive into the gardens. We talk about how it is like a threshold.
I am starting to think about the ‘voices’ of and in this place. Their echoes and songs and repetitions and meanings.
And I keep coming back to the ‘layers’ of this place-in all senses of the meaning of layers…
Thinking about how this process might become something which can be shared, which might somehow do this place justice- the growth, the aliveness, the people and their amazing care for the things they look after here…I have felt quite sure that it needs to be an experience, rather than an exhibit, as such. Tonight I re-read a passage from Tim Ingold’s ‘Being Alive’ and (although I think objects can exist outside of his description) I feel it tells me my instinct is right:
Indeed in a world that is truly open there are objects as such. For the object is having closed in on itself, has turned it’s back on the world, cutting itself off from the paths along which it came into being, and presenting only it’s congealed, outer surfaces for inspiration.
The open world, however, has no such boundaries, no insides or outsides, only comings and goings.
Things are their coming and goings. Tim Ingold
Things are their comings and goings.
Things are their comings and goings.
Tomorrow I will go back to the gardens.
I will invite every allotment holder (around 100) to have a recorded conversation with me. And I will continue recording the birds, and sketching the magical moving tower which will never be made.