It’s a while since I visited by new collaborations blog, so here is an update.
I’ve had some problems doing my voice exercise due to a medical issue which is giving me a weak voice and a sore throat, so have spent a couple of weeks researching this condition in books and online, investigating some herbal treatments, and getting advice from Lucy my collaborator and voice teacher. Apparently it’s a problem which quite a lot of singers get because of the dynamic breathing excercises they do. The air, when it’s being expelled, pushes up into the abdomen and can push the contents of the stomach up through the oesophagus and then acid gets into your throat and can easily damage the vocal chords, resulting in hoarseness and changes in the voice (for the worse). Not nice……I hope I can solve this problem. I’m surprised as my attempts to do the exercises are hardly dynamic! but it has happened, alas.
Ha ha, well once again I’ve lost lots of text that I wrote while trying to add an image to this post. It’s just totally lost when you try to add a picture and then try to get out of the gallery…..or library? whatever it is called in its confusing way. there must be a better way of organising this software! the stuff I lost was explaining why not much work has been done on this for a few weeks.
The next part of the project is on Greenham Common. I visited a few weeks ago and although I’d done research before I went there, it was hard to tune-in to the place and its history. At first it seems empty……The missile stores are still there but all fenced off with razor wire, I think. The activities of nature, animals and humans constantly obscure and reveal bits of the past and traces of what remains underground or covered by vegetation. I spent ages looking for traces of bomb storage constructions in a wooded area but had to give up in the end! I will try again. However there are some really evocative things which remain of the military presence of UK and US forces over the centuries. For example this fire plane below, which you will find as you wander around.
As I wandered around in the heat (there’s not a lot of shelter on the common itself, though there are some lovely little woods on the periphery) I met a retired gravedigger speaking to one of the rangers in a landrover, so stopped and asked them a few questions. The ranger, a helpful guy called Adrian, sent me links to a really excellent report on preserving the heritage of Greenham Common, very well written and really informative. I read it online yesterday and have printed out sections of it, and identified key sites on the Common I want to revisit on a future trip.
While I was there the Red Arrows team of fighter planes flew over, the sound was amazing, quite sinister somehow, as they looked bright red against the blue sky. but alas by the time I got my recorder out and warmed up they were gone and I’d missed recording them! There must be a lesson here ……..
I’m going to re-read all my notes and printouts now and think how I can somehow in sound (very probably song) and image engage with the processes of revelation and concealment, appearing and disappearing, that are linked to the historical landscape of the Common. There is only so much that you can see there, so in what other ways and other senses can you discover what is there, what it means, or could mean, can sound play a role in this, and how can you suggest or bring back to life what is long past? Could I get something out of thinking about archaeology and its methods? I seem to remember Freud has written something about this…..is it the mystic writing pad or am I totally mistaken? also there’s a lovely bit in Laura U. Marks’ book, the skin of the film , where she writes about excavation and fossils…….I will read and think, maybe do a few sketches in my notebook….even if I don’t draw anything very brilliant I always think working with a pencil and paper helps somehow! I feel like a fossil myself sometimes these days. Perhaps I should go to Greenham Common and be a fossil…..I will think more on this.
