A 6-month residency in Berlin.

(16th September post 2007 continued)

I suspect that if I could talk with these men, in discussion there might be many, many things in our worldview that we disagree on. The joy though in a way of NOT being able to get caught up in these differences is that I see more clearly to they're 'being ness' and find that I really like them. They are warm, kind, genuine people – very at odds with the stereotypical hunter I have imagined in the past.

I stand and watch some red squirrels playing on the lawn, we are in the grounds of a wealthy estate. Guido guides me as to what I can and cannot film as the grounds belong to "a man who is not here" so out of respect for his privacy he instructs me when to film and when not.

There are beautiful flowerbeds, ornamental trees, and lots of rose hips fat and juicy and Guido and me discuss making jam.

Later that weekend I meet a girlfriend whose mother was German. I tell her about my trip and she says yes she has seen this in her family, a strange mixture of masculine and feminine attributes – very masculine men who weave or make quite feminine things and don't feel threatened by that.

I remember too hearing once that it is quite traditional and normal for men in Norway knit. I think after all perhaps these things seeming masculine and feminine to us is to do with being British? That there is a different way that 'gender' operates on an everyday relation between the sexes level, in a European context.

My friend says "it would be great to meet a female hunter and see how she does thing differently / the same" – I think briefly of Guido's mom – he told me that she used to hunt. I would so love to meet her, but I have worked so very hard just to get this far with him, building up trust, and I suspect I would be pushing the boundaries too far to ask to meet his mother too.

I reply back to my friend – "yes, well maybe that could be me?" as I remember that I have seen a course in game keeping in the UK that I could do, and I remember that for a while I used to work in forestry. In the early 90's I worked in the lake district as a conservation volunteer with the BTCV; through that I gained my advance chainsaw certificate and did all sorts of things I would never have imagined myself doing before…

And so the making of this work continues.

(16th September post 2007 continued)

Bambi hovers some distance away, then moves on with no assistance from me whatsoever. I am both relieved and disappointed.

We sit for a while longer then leave. I can't believe that we have been there for perhaps 3 hours or so. We go for a coffee, meet some of his friends who have made two kills and Guido asks if I want to visit the refrigeration unit to see the catch. I say yes, suddenly guilty for my fleeting desire to spoil this mans hunt, who has been so open and generous in allowing me this access to what he does, when I am sure he has no real idea what I am doing and finds me a bit of an enigma – but still he says yes anyway. I have taken him a bottle of what I think is whisky for this trip, but he has asked for no payment. I think to myself that if I go out with him one more time I must get him a bigger bottle of better whisky, and I realise how much I want to develop some really excellent new work around this footage, how I would love to be able to then give a piece of this work back to him…

We go to a private house and in the refrigerator see 4 dead wild boars, hanging for the meat to tenderise. His friends turn up with one more wild boar and what looks like a deer, though I think it may not be (must try to identify what it is) because Guido doesn't call this one Bambi, he has another name for it, which he cannot translate.

His friends are jovial as they wash and hang the catch in the fridge. I find that I really like them, 4 men total. They shake hands with me and introduce themselves, we can talk little owing to my lack of German (I was so lucky with Guido to find perhaps the only hunter in the whole of east Berlin who speaks some English; I had been warned this would not be possible as the second language amongst most older east Germans is Russian and definitely not English owing to the history)…

They all shake hands with me and although I cannot talk with them, I am on the one hand pleasantly 'ignored' in the sense that they take no notice of my filming various parts of their activity. On the other hand I am included very often in their activity with a warm smile, a glance or a wink and I feel very grateful for the warmth and generosity that allows me to be here seeing this.

(16th September post 2007 continued)

I try to imagine the opposite, believing today that we WILL shoot something, but this feels wrong too – strained – and I realise the trick is to learn to simply be with WHAT IS, and to rest in that present moment, with a gentle undercurrent closer to faith and trust than belief or hope.

We have sat in near silence for well over an hour (maybe two?), it is now light and I am really enjoying shooting the footage] – the details, the scenery, the changing light, flashes of Guido (though it is hard to film him, sat close next to each other, knees touching as we are).

It is impossible to film him from these close quarters, and yet if I were to get up and stand at the door, which would be the only place I could get enough distance to frame him, I would disturb his hunt. So I content myself with the little glimpses of him I can catch in my camera. I notice also not for the first time that he is a very beautiful man. Peculiarly German pale grey blue eyes, very masculine in his physical presence and way, but with a soft, even slightly feminine face and wavy mid brown soft hair – a kind of sexy angelic androgyny.

Through my camera I get lost again for a while in a 'cinematic' version of the reality that is unfolding around me. I realise this is so when Guido alerts me to the presence of a "Bambi" nearby and picks up his gun. I suddenly am aware just how unprepared I am for the actually of an animal killed before my eyes – for the reality of a dead Bambi – and as in my last trip with Guido, the part of me that was vegetarian for 15 years contemplates making an 'accidental' noise to alert Bambi to the danger…

I contain this response however; as I remember that I am here for a reason, I have chosen to confront this issue head on. The surface ripples say "stop it, don't let it happen" but the underlying current that runs deeper and much, much more strongly freezes me to the spot saying "no, watch this, you need to see this".

Not for the first time I see that whilst I can make lots of 'logical' explanations as to what brought me to this juncture – my oft repeated story of "15 years a vegetarian starts eating meat, who always said to herself I would never eat meat again unless I could kill the animal myself well here I am following that up, want also to explore things we are disconnecting from in the city through supermarkets and packaging" etc etc etc – I realise that this is all a front – that there is actually something else compelling me to be here, something that I have not quite grasped yet…

(16th September 2007 post continued)

I curse myself then for not knowing my equipment better, for though it is light enough to see clearly outside through the hunting slits, inside it is still very dark. I imagine I must have something incorrectly set ("perhaps I have the manual light metre on and have it set too low…perhaps, perhaps"). This carries on for some time as my fears spiral out of control until I realise that I am panicking. "Ok, this is panic" – I name it.

So I slow my breathing and think – and remember that I have my small stills camera with me. I open this (more impossibly loud Velcro noises…) and turn it on (even the mechanism, it is so loud!) and – once again the screen is blank as if there were a lens cap on (only this camera has no lens cap to forget). They can’t both be broken. I look out and realise that actually it is still much darker than I think, but that my eyes have grown accustomed to the dim light. The way I am blinded by even just the blank LED screens on my cameras confirms this hypothesis, so I turn all equipment off and relax.

Half an hour or so after my panic I see that it probably really IS light enough now to film and turning my camera on confirms this. Again as I am filming I do as much looking within as 'without'. I enjoy the framing, the seeking out of details with my lens – the shape of the gun, the camouflage flapping in the wind, the shapes in between the trees.

I notice within me a lack of 'belief' saying already "I don't think we will catch anything today". I think once of again of what I have learnt – that Guido hunts several times a week all year, making only a few catches in the year. I think of the confidence needed with those odds to get up and out by 4am after a long shift in his restaurant, knowing he has another to do the next day too.

Not for the first time I think that there is many parallels between this, and the kind of love and faith I see in artists undertaking their practice. This returns me to my own current lack of faith – in both the hunt today and often in my own practice – I notice the thoughts whispering in the silence "we won't catch anything today, there is nothing in sight, not a whisper of an animal, I have scared them all off with my noise" etc etc. I think that perhaps I have come all of this way simply to confront something lurking deep within myself, something that is not helping me in my work.