Well, I am finally here!
I am so pleased to be finally beginning this process. The way my residency will work is that I will do 45 (pretty much) consecutive days on the drive with the odd day off here and there. I am really excited about totally immersing myself in this place-it’s culture, it’s environment, it’s climate, it’s wildness, it’s people. My commitment (at least to begin with), is to focus on the non-human living aspects of this place.
I am lucky to begin today as the sun is shining bright and bold.
Everybody’s House is out, so I spend time in there talking, laughing, having tea.
I walk the drive and focus on being open to its intricacies. One of the things I notice are the many flowers in bloom in the area west of Shields Road.
I notice there is a distinguishable green boundary on this intersection. The eastern section of the drive (between Pollokshaws Road and Shields Road), has almost no visible green. I imagine weaving a thread of some sort between these noticeable differential sections of the drive. What would that thread look like?
I go the the New Victoria gardens and meet Fiona, Norman, Mat, Anita. It is beautiful in there. Again I am struck by colour. There is a colony of newts living there.
When I come home I look up “The Place Where You Go To Listen”, by John Luther Adams. I love how responsive his work is to place, and how interactive and lively it seems along with its surrounding context. He says of this piece:
“This is a statement of poetics, of the aesthetic and philosophical ideals on which the work is grounded and towards which it leads.”
I love how he sees his work as both moving from and towards a set of ideals, as if the from and towards are actually the same thing when it comes down to it.