Text written while on a group studio takeover of Kingsgate Project Space and presented to accompany the end of residency group show Wild Service.
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Where we used to walk we wade. The point where the rivers meet the sea is higher up now and will be higher again tomorrow. They turned the dug up things in to solid things forever. The things—the seeds or bones or skulls or shells—the ones planted underwater time upon time upon time ago then dug and made and eaten (by us and everything alive) clog up the water, the drops, the pools, the ponds, the streams, the rivers, the lakes and they all slide down but they can’t push the salt back anymore. Things floated or sunk and hoarded underneath and didn’t change or did but so slow we never knew or never saw. The lady made old bones but the cairn or the dead bones in the cairn couldn’t stop the bog and the old valley weathers itself in to the memories of the new children that the new children have. We were sick from all the grapes, infinite grapes piled up at all the hours of any day, a hard sick thing to live with: having all that we wanted. We ate food we fetched sticks we got cloth we wrapped and bound it all together and we climbed inside, we lit a fire the smoke rose and the dogs and the insects came in and we made a story:
We used to find
We used to feel
We used to swap
We used to change
We used to move, to walk, to run, to swim
Then we would eat
We used to share what we found
Some of the things we would try to keep but not many
Mainly stones and bones
We used to look at the sea
We used to look in the clearings and between the trees
We walked from the forest across the moor to the banks of the shallow (deepening) river
Where we swam with the others in the river
We shared between us the things that we were which was all of us
The things we ate were us anyway and un us was more us to make more of us all together
The only growth was sunlit: spring summer
Everything died for a long time
Then came back
We lived through the dark each cycle
We loved and walked and picked but a lot less
We kept warm and made stories
Until the eggs came back and the grass turned more green
And again we could swim and be awake
