Painting Beetroot with Beetroot, and the leaves with Red Onion Skins.
Writing with a previous Beetroot batch.
Tag: writing
Connection. 5-minute free write
On March 2nd and 3rd Root + Write brought its first weekend workshop to Cafe Kino in Bristol.
In honour of St David’s Day (*holds hands to big Welsh heart*) the writing table was adorned with Daffodils and welsh cakes and it was mere minutes before the group got stuck right into the thick of it.
The air and ink were thick with fire and feeling and it was a complete joy and honour to witness the oiling of pens and voices.
Inspired by one of our conversations over the coffee break I invited the group to free-write for 5 minutes beginning with “To me connection is…”
Here is my writing:
To me, connection is laughter and an ease with those you find yourselves with. It is loving this stewed body, all brown and pickling the teapot with internal rings of evaporating tannin. This is connection. Connection is being yourself. But what does that mean?! How do we “be ourselves” when this emerging is so vastly unknown? The old man with light blue trousers and muddy knees. The young dad in the VW Polo, or Golf, with kids in the back and bird poo down the driver’s side. Too busy to give a shit about the shit unless it is coming out of one of his offspring. That is connection. Connection is not caring about the mud on your knees of the poo on your car because you’re too busy walking or driving to your friend’s for tea and a cry because you’ve had a hard week. It is taking a walk up the red mud track, under the gangly Ash and Pine, to the great Yew who smothers you with so much beingness you bow in complete reverence to her twisted dance.
Free Write. 15-minute. Saundersfoot Beach. 31 Jan 2019
I have written this exercise up as I wrote it in my notebook, with a little addition of punctuation. I tend to ignore punctuation when in my inky flow. This was a timed exercise of 15 minutes that started with the first sentence “I want to write about Saundersfoot Harbour.” I then wrote for the whole 15 minutes without stopping to edit or think.
A freeing process! No holds barred. All bared. Here you go…
I want to write about Saundersfoot beach. The seaside town in winter. Desolate, with people so tightly wrapped, faces are slivers between scarf and hat. The foam from the waves that relentlessly crash flies in the wind along the sand like a misdirected Ibiza foam party where no one came. Too cold to stand in wet t-shirts with lollies circling their teeth taking the edge off the gurning jaw. Here I stomp across the small slice sand, the wet top layer making way for drier, softer grains underneath. It must be coming in, that wet roar. If it were going out I would be walking on more compacted land. This village by the sea where I had my birthday party at the Wimpy in the late 80s. I must have been 5 or 6, and the knickerbocker glory that Dad ordered and we all marvelled at. Foaming whipped cream and bright red cherries unnaturally sweet.
This village by the sea that lives with the elements and blows away the crowds from November to March only for them to return in sensible shoes and anoraks ready for tuna mayo filled baguettes and arcade games. They are repairing the sign on the front of Booth’s Arcade. It is all batons and stripped back boards. The games lie silent and behind the closed doors, hibernating in preparation for their bonanza months of dropped coins and eager hands. Next door is the front door of the Sands Nightclub where nights were spent drunk and anxious trying to find happiness in dancing awkwardly with school friends kissing tall boys in shadowy corners. I remember the ladies toilets were often flooded and you would fo homes with black feet in sandals covered in sticky spilled beers and cigarette ash, the smoke clinging to every pore and morsel of fabric.
The seaside town from where a sign shines out through the dulled light. “Welcome to Istanbul – Turkish Barbers”. Sat amongst the garish yellow and orange plastic signage of the sweet shop and kiosks selling gifts. Sickly, unnatural colours of the products and shop fronts.
The beach is short. If you go out the other way, past the harbour entrance you have to jump a fast-moving stream. But today this all sits well below the ocean. As I walk I feel elated by the wind, it unstiffens me. That stiffening that happens when I have stared at a screen for too long, taking in the words of others. Feeling my senses fracture, my focus shot and the feelings of anxiety rise in my chest. The panic. Apparently, millennials live in panic. They are driven by the fear of not knowing how to fo the day to day tasks and always focusing on work is causing them to burn out. Us to burnout. Yes. I feel that push. That panic. That feeling in the dark and I welcome the wind, lean into it as I stand on the foaming edge.
How do you like to get writing?
Mapping A Walk
Where inner and outer landscapes meet. Maps are often static representations of places and processes, but what happens when we bring our momentary experience into the mix? What do we choose to document in that moment? What do we deem valid or worthy of note?
This walk from Amroth beach in Pembrokeshire, back to the home where I grew up in Wooden, is one I have taken many times. A number of years ago I became interested in the effects of my encounters with others and how this shaped my walk, why I walked, how I walked and opening up more to my sensory experiences. A form of mindful walking. Of looking. Of noticing what was actually happening within these different landscapes and making this part of my life and practice the work.
I have always been compelled to walk as a means of taking care, moving my body, releasing an often tense mind and returning to the stillness of my inner world. With the demands of the day-to-day taking their toll, it is on the pathways and adventures over field, sand and street that I process, think and renew. I have often thought – or rather the inner slave driving voice has proclaimed – that these walks were a waste of time and a distraction away from the REAL work. I see this part of me now for what it is. A fearful voice trying to keep me safe by pushing more action, more achievement. Bigger, better, BEST.
However, now I honour this call to stomp. There is something more primal, wiser in the sinew of my body’s longing to move, that grounds me. Connects me not just to my own flesh and bone, but to the world around me in a way that sparks great joy and connection. This natural world that is so devastatingly being eroded by our human push for bigger, better, BEST. More power, more things, more comfort.
We cannot keep on as we are. We are killing this planet and ourselves. Not so slowly, but oh so painfully.
In these small acts of walking rebellion against a culture that demands speed, high-end productivity and more and more seeming civilisation, I marinade in the hedgerows and simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other.
How do you walk?
‘Unravelled By Hand’ an Installation
In Winter 2014 I spent 3 months working in the house of a neighbour in Bristol developing a site-sensitive installation piece. I had wanted to take my work out of the domestic setting of my own home and was initially looking to use the room as a general studio space. However, after spending some time there learning about the history of the house I felt drawn to create a single piece in response to the room. The materials I was fascinated by at the time were a stack of my father’s old Civil Engineering books. The words and diagrams I would pour over and I found great poetry and beauty in the way the physics and engineering processes were explained.
These above images are of some initial ideas and experiments I had. Taking the words out of the book, and using electrical tape – another piece of my father’s material world – and red wool. The low winter sun became a vital, moving and ephemeral part of this process.
Red lines down margins of exercise books.
Undoing boundaries.
Beginning to unravel and take up space.
Blackout Poetry: Winter Redacted. 25 Jan 2019
Summer 2017.
Blakout poetry on a meditation retreat in Devon, England.
black//wind//boom!//swiftly//dropped//in the//burning/moment//guttural//stir//in the//trees//in//the night//Far away//cries//lapsing//bubbles//whistles//of sweet sound
FERAL Ink. 