monday 5th january 2009

the essence...

Armed with a large loaf of bread and my camera I swan visit.  I forget my gloves and my hands seize into still, unmoving things.  I throw bread and then pass the loaf to a French man who is watching the party of swans, gulls, pigeons and the funny honking brown bird, how they gather in numbers and momentum.  I'm starting to feel familiar here. I film freely for a while. 

The French crowd move along and I finish emptying the bag of bread. The small gulls are getting brazen and begin diving at me, grabbing the bread in my hands with their sharp beaks, wings a hairs breath from my face. I feel the beaks, a thrill of the wings so close and a view of their faces, the all of them mid air, poised and begging for food. I throw small chunks up and they swoop in closer, catch the bread and fly off. More come in to hover so very close to my face, I am beginning to recognise their features, to distinguish one from another. Some are braver. One gull has a dark face and big eyes, he looks like a cartoon character of a bird animated and turned back into flesh.  

I recognise this is a moment.

I cannot capture that essential thing that I grasp for with the camera,

I cannot witness and be present to the moment if I am removed from it or distracted by the camera

I need to be there, present

I receive something and it resonates, it magnifies, ripples out and repeats itself

an echo

Where the echo is, is a place 

a place initiated by a new moment, a reflection of the initial happening

a reflection of a thing that is essential.

I notice there are  key resonances that reoccur

There is a texture of this film that is beginning to surface

textures, colours - a skin. 

The song is still a silent vibration that hums underneath not quite at the surface, lingering. 

I want to hear the Quay Brothers Institute Benjamenta, to leave it playing in the background whilst I edit, a point of sound that is far away. The voices, the breath, the haunting strings and sense of space (a depth of vast rooms and silence that is swimming about in them) gives a weight to what it is I am doing even though I am not sure what will be the final outcome.

There is an echo, an essence

It lies just below the skin.