Nicholas Hedges

Art, Writing and Research

Lines Drawn in Water

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The following passage is taken from ‘The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot’ by Robert Macfarlane. In a chapter on water he writes:

“The second thing to know about sea roads is that they are not arbitrary. There are optimal routes to sail across open sea, as there are optimal routes to walk across open land. Sea roads are determined by the shape of the coastline (they bend out to avoid headlands, they dip towards significant ports, archipelagos and skerry guards) as well as by marine phenomena. Surface currents, tidal streams and prevailing winds all offer limits and opportunities for sea travel between certain places…”

This reminded me of some work I did on my ancestor Stephen Hedges who was transported to Australia in 1828. In particular I thought about the route The Marquis of Hastings (the ship on which he sailed) took from Portsmouth to Port Jackson (Sydney) which I mapped using Google Earth and coordinates written down in a logbook by the ship’s surgeon, William Rae.

Macfarlane also writes:

“Such methods would have allowed early navigators to keep close to a desired track, and would have contributed over time to a shared memory map of the coastline and the best sea routes, kept and passed on as story and drawing…

Such knowledge became codified over time in the form of rudimentary charts and peripli, and then as route books in which sea paths were recorded as narratives and poems…

To Ian, traditional stories, like traditional songs, are closely kindred to the traditional seaways, in that they are highly contingent and yet broadly repeatable. ‘A song is different every time it’s sung,’ he told me, ‘and variations of wind, tide, vessel and crew mean that no voyage along a sea route will ever be the same.’ Each sea route, planned in the mind, exists first as anticipation, then as dissolving wake and then finally as logbook data. Each is ‘affected by isobars, / the stationing of satellites, recorded ephemera / hands on helms’. I liked that idea; it reminded me both of the Aboriginal Songlines, and of [Edward] Thomas’s vision of path as story, with each new walker adding a new note or plot-line to the way.”

One of the things I like about William Rae’s logbook of the journey aboard the Marquis of Hastings is the description of the weather. The world aboard a prison ship in 1828 is far removed from our experience, but we know weather and can therefore use his descriptions to bridge the gap between now and then; moving from – to use Macfarlane’s words – “logbook data” through “dissolving wake” and “anticipation,” all the way back to “planned in the mind.” The description of the weather therefore becomes a poem of sorts, echoing what Macfarlane writes above; how sea paths become narratives and poems, allowing me to step back into the mind of my ancestor.

Fresh Breeze. Mist and rain.
Strong Breeze. Cirro stratus. Horizon hazy.
Hard gale & raining. Heavy Sea.
Hard rain & Violent Squalls. Hail & rain.

Click here for a PDF transcript I made of the journey.

Glimmerings: The War Poets, Paths and Folds

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One of the nicest compliments I received during Friday’s private view was ‘…these remind me of Siegfried Sassoon…’. The works in question were those images of imagined World War I landscapes painted onto folded paper, one of which I have shown below:

DSC07879

In fact, the war poets were brought up a number of times in relation to these works which – for obvious reasons – pleased me enormously. But, I wondered what it was about these pieces which called to mind the poets?

One of the poets I’ve become increasingly interested in, is Edward Thomas – killed at the battle of Arras in 1917. I first became aware of his work whilst reading a book of World War I poetry, in which I found his poem ‘Roads’ (a poem I’ve already discussed in relation to my work). It was then in Robert Macfarlane’s book ‘Wild Places’ that I encountered Thomas again, this time in relation to another poet, Ivor Gurney. In a previous blog I wrote:

After returning from the war, Ivor Gurney, like so many others suffered a breakdown (he’d suffered his first in 1913) and a passage in Macfarlane’s book, which describes the visits to Gurney – within the Dartford asylum – by Helen Thomas, the widow of Edward Thomas is particularly moving. Helen took with her one of her husband’s Ordnance survey maps of Gloucestershire:

‘She recalled afterwards that Gurney, on being shown the map, took it at once from her, and spread it out on his bed, in his hot little white-tiled room in the asylum, with the sunlight falling in patterns upon the floor. Then the two of them kneeled together by the bed and traced out, with their fingers, walks that they and Edward had taken in the past.’

 Macfarlane discusses Thomas in another book, ‘The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot,’ in which he writes how for Thomas, paths “connected real places but… also led outwards to metaphysics, backwards to history and inwards to the self. These traverses – between the conceptual, the spectral and the personal – occur often without signage in his writing, and are among its most characteristic events. He imagined himself in topographical terms. Corners, junctions, stiles, fingerposts, forks, crossroads, trivia, beckoning over-the-hill paths, tracks that led to danger, death or bliss: he internalized the features of path-filled landscapes such that they gave form to his melancholy and his hopes. Walking was a means of personal myth-making, but it also shaped his everyday longings: he not only thought on paths and of them, but also with them.”

DSC07578

Ever since I walked a path in Wales on which I knew my great-great grandfather walked every day to the mine in which he worked, I’ve been interested in the idea of people as place (and vice-versa) – see Landscape DNA – the simultaneity of stories so far. The path from the small town of Hafodyrynys to Llanhilleth where he worked, not only connected those two places, it also connected me with my ancestor. It did just what Thomas suggested; connected real places but also went backwards to the past and inwards to my own self. As Macfarlane puts it: “paths run through people as surely as they run through places.”

 It was important for me that the images shown above did not appear so much as pictures – objects stuck on a wall – as objects of use. I wanted them to appear as if they’d been unfolded rather than simply painted, that like maps, they could be read rather than simply looked at. I wanted them to retain the potential for being folded (which, if they were framed, wouldn’t have been possible) for this inherent potential of folding and unfolding refers back to an observation I made whilst studying an old trench map.

DSC07754

During that observation I wrote, “…the past movements associated with this map are therefore recorded in its folds. It resists being folded any other way.”

The folds in the map are like ancient paths in a landscape. We can walk (within reason) wherever we like through a place, but more often than not, we will follow the way of countless others before us. Paths are themselves like folds within the landscape, and we, like the map, resist being folded any other way.

Trench Map 1916

Macfarlane again writes how for Thomas “…map-reading approached mysticism: he described it as an ‘old power’, of which only a few people had the ‘glimmerings’.”

These glimmerings reminded me of a passage I read in Merlin Coverley’s book Psychogeography, in which he writes: “Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary…”

These ‘glimmerings’or ‘shifting angles’ are best seen or accessed through the everyday; observations of which I record in other map works.

Map Work

This is something which Macfarlane again seems to allude to in ‘The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot’, when he writes: “The journeys told here take their bearings from the distant past, but also from the debris and phenomena of the present, for this is often a double insistence of old landscapes: that they be read in the then but felt in the now. The waymarkers of my walks were not only dolmens, tumuli and long barrows, but also last year’s ash-leaf frails (brittle in the hand), last night’s fox scat (rank in the nose), this minute’s bird call (sharp in the ear), the pylon’s lyric crackle and the crop-sprayer’s hiss.”

As I have recorded in my text-maps:

A man talks holding his hat
A flag flies, fluttering in the growing wind
The next bus is due
A car beeps
Amber, red, the signal beeps
The brakes hiss on a bus

Maps are objects which we fold and unfold. We unfold them to find our place within the landscape. We fold them and carry them with us. The process or unfolding and (en)folding: the idea that the past can be seen as being enfolded within the smallest objects and everyday observations in vital to my work; as is the way in which we are enfolded (written) into the landscape as we walk; the way in which the landscape is unfolded as we travel across it. Knowledge, likewise, is also unfolded in this way. As Tim Ingold writes in ‘Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description’:

“…knowledge is perpetually ‘under construction… the things of this world are their stories, identified not by fixed attributes but by their paths of movement in an unfolding [my italics] field of relations. Each is the focus of ongoing activity. Thus in the storied world… things do not exist, they occur. Where things meet, occurrences intertwine, as each becomes bound up in the other’s story. Every such binding is a place or topic. It is in this binding that knowledge is generated.”

Empathy is another important aspect of my work and I’ve stated before that empathy is an augmented discourse between bodily experience and knowledge. I like to think that with these works I’ve discovered a means of expressing that.

Finally, the works I’ve made are fragile pieces, and in another passage on Thomas, I found in Macfarlane’s prose a sentence which describes why they should be so: “His poems are thronged with ghosts, dark doubles, and deep forests in which paths peter out; his landscapes are often brittle surfaces, prone to sudden collapse.”

Perhaps this, in part, answers my question above.

The Material World

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“What, then, is this material world? Of what does it consist?”

So asks Tim Ingold, in his book, Being Alive, Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. It seems an obvious question, or rather, a question for which there is an obvious answer, but in terms of the field Material Culture it would seem to be not so straightforward. Citing a number of works on the subject, Ingold writes how “their engagements, for the most part, are not with the tangible stuff of craftsmen and manufacturers but with the abstract ruminations of philosophers and theorists.” Furthermore, “literature in anthropology and archaeology that deals explicitly with the subjects of materiality and material culture seems to have hardly anything to say about materials.” Ingold then goes on to cite an inventory of materials one might expect to see when dealing with this subject, as can be found in a book by Henry Hodges called Artefacts.

pottery
glazes
glass and enamels
copper and copper alloys
iron and steel
gold, silver, lead and mercury
stone
wood
fibres and threads
textiles and baskets
hides and leather
antler, bone, horn, ivory
dyes, pigments and paints
adhesives

In an array of books on his bookshelf, all dealing in some form with the subject of material culture, Ingold states that one looks in vain for any “comprehensible explanation of what ‘materiality’ actually means, or for any account of materials and their properties.” 

To cut a long story short, Ingold goes on to question what the material world actually is – thus the question at the top: “What, then, is this material world? Of what does it consist?”

He writes:

“Christopher Gosden suggests, we could divide it into two broad components: landscape and artefacts. Thus it seems that we have human minds on the one hand, and a material world of landscape and artefacts on the other. That, you might think, should cover just about everything. But does it? Consider, for a moment, what is left out. Starting with landscape, does this include the sky? Where do we put the sun, the moon and the stars? We can reach for the stars but cannot touch them: are they, then, material realities with which humans can make contact, or do they exist only for us in the mind? is the moon part of the material world for terrestrial travellers, or only for cosmonauts who touch down on the lunar landscape? How about sunlight? Life depends on it. But if sunlight were a constituent of the material world, then we would have to admit not only that the diurnal landscape differs materially from the nocturnal one, but also that the shadow of a landscape feature, such as a rock or tree, is as much a part of the material world as the feature itself. For creatures that live in the shade, it does indeed make a difference! What, then, of the air? When you breathe, or feel the wind on your face, are you engaging with the material world? When the fog descends, and everything around you looks dim and mysterious, has the material world changed, or are you just seeing the same world differently? Does rain belong to the material world, or only the puddles that it leaves in ditches and pot-holes? Does falling snow join the material world only once it settles on the ground? As engineers and builders know all too well, rain and frost can break up roads and buildings. How then can we claim that roads and buildings are part of the material world, if rain and frost are not? And where would we place fire and smoke, molten lava and volcanic ash, not to mention liquids of all kinds from ink to running water? … If, moreover, they are part of the material world, then the same must be true of my own body. So where does this fit in? If I and my body are one and the same, and if my body indeed partakes of the material world, then how can the body-that-I-am engage with that world?”

When I read this, I thought about the dig I went on last year at Bartlemas Chapel in Oxford, when I found a small but rather beautiful piece of mediaeval (I think) pottery.

Bartlemas Chapel Excavation

There are many ways in which one could interpret this find, but what I thought about was how this was like a missing piece of the present, and how, before it was lost to the soil, it had existed in a mediaeval present that was (save for the obvious differences) just like ours today. There was the wind, there were trees and flowers, the clouds, the sky and of course the sun, by whose light the beautiful glaze could be seen again, just as it had been by someone living hundreds of years ago. Reading what Tim Ingold has written about materiality and material culture above therefore made perfect sense.

And as regards my work with empathy and the importance in this respect of materiality and material culture, the idea of the body as part of the material world was also of interest. We are not set outside the material world but are an integral part – therefore it’s easier to engage empathetically with an individual through the objects those individuals once used. Empathy is as I’ve said before an augmented discourse between bodily experience and knowledge. Knowledge as Ingold writes derives through movement: “It is by moving that we know, and it is by moving, too, that we describe.” When I discovered the piece of pottery (through moving), I uncovered not only the object itself, but the material world by which it was once surrounded, including those people who once used it, or the person who even made it.

Moments

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Following on from the completion of my text map (which I’m thinking of as a map of an individual rather than a place) I remembered this photograph which I bought in a junk shop, which seems, visually, to capture the idea of the texts. The photograph (below) dates from the 1920s.

Junk Shop Photograph

One can imagine what someone doing the same thing as me might have written had they walked through this scene:

A woman walks quickly over the road
Two men chat on the pavement
A cyclist passes
‘Hovis Teas’
Parked cars

Map Work

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I’ve almost completed my map of observations made during a number of walks over the past few weeks and am now looking to see how I can progress this line of work.

The paper shown above has started to soften, from being carried for so long in my pocket and being held in my hand as I walk. It’s started to feel almost like material. I like the way too that it’s acquired those tell-take signs of wear and tear; dog-eared corners, rips and holes and creases.

On the reverse, you can see the selotape used to keep it all together, indeed there is something about this side which I really like.

I like the idea of these pieces becoming maps of individuals rather than just a place, while at the same time representing people as places – or at least the product of places. I like the idea of them becoming patterns, such as clothing patterns, again giving a sense of the individual.

Another part of this process has been the recording of my walks using GPS. I have, for this work, been putting them all together in one image.

In our minds, when we think about our own past journeys, there is little sense of space, i.e. the physical space between the places in which we made those journeys. Everything is heaped together. Time, like physical space is also similarly compressed. All the walks I’ve made for this work therefore are heaped one on top of the other, with little regard to their geography or temporality. The past with which I seek to identify is also like this. Geography and time are compressed. Everything is fragmentary.

In any given place – for example, Oxford – we can, as we walk down an ancient road, follow the (fragmentary) course of a life lived centuries ago. But walking down another road, we turn and pick up the fragment of another life. And so on and so on.

It is this fragmentary nature of past time, and its compression of time and space, which makes it sometimes hard of for us to empathise with anonymous individuals who lived in the distant past. To make sense of the fragments, we need to see them in the context of the present – in the nowness of the present. By doing this, we can begin to unpick these matted strands of time and space.

History is the attempt to make sense of the fragments left behind by time – to construct a narrative of events with a beginning and an end. It has a point A and a point B, between which the narrative weaves a path, much like a script, novel or score. What I’m interested in however are those fragments, not as parts of a narrative progression, but as fragments of a moment in time – a moment which was once now. As I’ve written before:

Access to the past therefore comes…  through the careful observation of a part in which the whole can be observed. As Henri Bortoft writes in The Wholeness of Nature – Goethe’s Way of Seeing; ‘…thus the whole emerges simultaneously with the accumulation of the parts, not because it is the sum of the parts, but because it is immanent within them’.

Consider the span of an hour, and imagine a city over the course of that hour with everything that would happen throughout that period of time; history with its refined narrative thread, is rather like a line – a route – drawn through a map of that place. The line delineates space (in that it starts then ends elsewhere) but we know nothing of what happens around it – the mundane, everyday things which make the present – now – what it is. In my walks I capture moments, observations of mundane things happening around me as I walk.

For example:

A man talks holding his hat
A flag flies, fluttering in the growing wind
The next bus is due
A car beeps
Amber, red, the signal beeps
The brakes hiss on a bus

One could argue that these observations still represent a linear sequence rather than being fragments of a single moment in time. However, reading them, one does get a sense of the nowness of the past. The route as drawn by the GPS represents the narrative thread (history) whereas the text represents the individual moments from which the narrative is constructed.

Imagine if someone had done the same in 1897 at the time of last Diamond Jubilee.

A man talks holding his hat
A flag flies, fluttering in the growing wind
Suddenly, 1897 would seem there within our grasp. We could take any observation and extrapolate the wider scene around it. Below is a photograph taken in Oxford in 1897.

© Oxfordshire County Council

We get a sense of the nowness of a past time from images such as that above, but as Roland Bathes states, time in photographs is engorged. It doesn’t move. With the work I’ve made above however, the immediacy of a past time is captured, but, unlike photographs, is fluid. And it is this fluidity which is crucial to an empathetic engagement with the past. For the nowness of the present isn’t static, but rather flows within us and around us.

The following text from Robert Macfarlane’s ‘The Wild Places,’ interested me a great deal in light of what I’ve written:

“Much of what we know of the life of the monks of Enlli and places like it, is inferred from the rich literature which they left behind. Their poems speak eloquently of a passionate and precise relationship with nature, and of the blend of receptivity and detachment which characterised their interactions with it. Some of the poems read like jotted lists, or field-notes: ‘Swarms of bees, beetles, soft music of the world, a gentle humming; brent geese, barnacle geese, shortly before All Hallows, music of the dark wild torrent.'”

Return to England

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Since returning to England this morning after my residency in Australia, I’ve been looking at my notebook, and feel it’s worthwhile putting the pages up on, in particular those relating to the walks I did. So reproduced with this blog are those pages, written as I was walking (such is why the handwriting is atrocious whereas normally its little better than poor).

Lists and Bill Viola

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Whilst writing up some notes on making lists as a strategy, I thought again of the Bill Viola quote I mentioned in the last entry. The following is taken from what I wrote concerning lists, starting with an extract from one of the first lists I made during my residency at OVADA:

engine purrs
yellow clothes
hiss
reverse warning sounds
food
pie ‘n’ pint
Leffe
thumbs up
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows

This I then turned into a ‘prose’ version:

An engine purrs. A woman with yellow clothes walks towards me. The hiss of a bus’s brakes, and then its reverse warning sounds, telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard food is advertised; a pie ‘n’ pint. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a thumbs up as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a fat stomach walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows.

The idea of single words, or ‘hightlights’ reminds me of Bill Viola’s quote regarding our lives as a single moment.

“We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or ‘highlights’.”

The individual words are highlights, extrapolated from (or in this instance built into) a piece of prose (the ‘same moment’).

Diaries, Lists and Haiku

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Last night I watched Chris Marker’s film ‘Sans Soleil’ or ‘Sunless’, and having watched it, downloaded the text from the film. There was one passage in particular which interested me which was as follows:

“He spoke to me of Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting to Princess Sadako at the beginning of the 11th century, in the Heian period. Do we ever know where history is really made? Rulers ruled and used complicated strategies to fight one another. Real power was in the hands of a family of hereditary regents; the emperor’s court had become nothing more than a place of intrigues and intellectual games. But by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon had a passion for lists: the list of ‘elegant things,’ ‘distressing things,’ or even of ‘things not worth doing.’ One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of ‘things that quicken the heart.’ Not a bad criterion I realize when I’m filming; I bow to the economic miracle, but what I want to show you are the neighborhood celebrations.”

As part of my residency at OVADA, I spent a long time compiling lists of things I’d seen on a particular walk around the city centre and so this extract intrigued me because of my own efforts in the art of list making. There is something about the mundane that is more telling in respect to the bigger picture of the past than anything one might find in the pages of a history book.
The beginning of the film deals with this very fact:

“I’m just back from Hokkaido, the Northern Island. Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane, others take the ferry: waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep. Curiously all of that makes me think of a past or future war: night trains, air raids, fallout shelters, small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life. He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function it being to leave behind nothing but memories. He wrote: I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. On this trip I’ve tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. At dawn we’ll be in Tokyo.”

As one might guess from the extract above, the film had a predominantly Japanese theme, and I was reminded of the Haiku I wrote last year. Most of them were, on reflection, not particularly good, but there were a few which took me almost instantly back to the time they were written. I could remember everything about the time they were written and, more importantly, why they were written.Here are just a few.

In a vague garden
In the morning’s smallest light
The first bird’s singing

Insomniac bird
Sings though we should never know
This dark melody

The moon was a blur
On a long lost photograph
A timeless second

The cat spies the birds
While they look down from above
And I watch them all

Secrets of the deep
Are whispered by the Snowdrop
Missing its flower

Just for a moment
I swapped places with a cat
Sitting on the wall

Incongruous field
A horse without a rider
Stands like a shadow

The painted subway
A crow hovers on the wind
I think of angels

The tall girder-cross
Lone man sits in a cafe
She can’t stand his kiss

The sudden trees have
Grown before the constant gates
The violent field

I was listening to a discussion programme on ‘Diaries’ and in particular, what makes a good diary. I, like many people have tried keeping a diary or journal and actually managed to sustain one for about 10 years, between 1989 and 1999. Much of it, is of course of no interest to anyone else but me, and even then, the greater part of the entries are a little mundane (and not mundane in a good way – as described above). What was agreed, during the conversation, was that what makes a diary interesting is not what the author thinks, but rather what they see. It is again the small details which help to build the bigger picture of the time. Of course, this is by no means a rule, and there are many exceptions where the good and the great have opened their hearts and inspired nothing less than awe. But these are exceptions.

Turning back to Haiku, I read the following in a book (On Love and Barley) on the great Haiku poet, Basho (1644-1694) :

“So the poet presents an observation of a natural, often commonplace event, in plainest diction, without verbal trickery. The effect is one of spareness, yet the reader is aware of a microcosm related to transcendent unity. A moment, crystallised, distilled, snatched from time’s flow, and that is enough. All suggestion and implication, the haiku event is held precious because, in part, it demands the reader’s participation: without a sensitive audience it would appear unimpressive. Haiku’s great popularity is only partly due to its avoidance of the forbidding obscurities found in other kinds of verse: more important, it is likely to give the reader a glimpse of hitherto unrecognised depths in the self.”

There are two lines in the above which interest me the most. Firstly, the reference to a commonplace event, and secondly, the suggestion that the poems demand the reader’s participation. It is by sharing a moment that we become a part of that time which has long since passed.

The following is one of Basho’s haiku as printed in the book:

Old pond
leap-splash-
a frog.

In terms of taking us back to a moment, the three lines above do just that. It isn’t necessarily that we see the pond, see the frog, the poet, but rather that we experience a second or so of the seventeenth century as if it were happening now.

Day 12

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Today I walked the second walk in this series and made the following list of additional words:

engines roar
siren
cigarette
sightseeing bus
sunglasses
man in a suit
refuse sacks
red man
pushchair
spire
glass dome
Chinese characters
look both ways
dead end
green wheelie bin
barrier
family walk
girl with a trolley
mound
rucksack
loud music
car screeches
camera
parking tickets
small windows
tree
old railings
flag flutters
sound of a bin moved
shutters
padlock
bookshop
shopping bags
three ducks
bricks and old stones
new flats
rainbow flag
bicycle racks
chefs
traffic warden
worn out face
20 zone
absent baskets
pigeon descends
except cycles
pink bag
net curtain
palm trees
E1
smell of cooking
E2
library
engine
headphones
old sock
bus ticket
traffic cone
flat cap
red waistcoat
crossing sound
green sweet
broken bottle
mound
dropped chips
running water
dog shit
man walks through a green door
red flowers
coke can
libya libya
corner
black door
plastic coffee lid
old brick wall
thick trunk
metal boxes
corn exchange
knitted jumper
cordon around a tree
green dome
push to open
pigeon
market office
fans
With the new lists, I have written the words up on paper in ‘squares’, and in the example below, those words from the first walk which were not relevant in the second walk have been rubbed out. Of course, as with most things, the presence of the word, or the object is never fully removed; although it may not have been visible on the walk in a physical sense, it still existed a part of my memory.


I’ve made a similar work with the prose version of the list of words. Here is the prose version of the first walk:

and here the words and attached sentences have been removed.

As well as this method of constructing what one might term a ‘document of experience’, I have also used the typed versions as a means of recording. Following the second walk, I removed from the prose, all the words which I erased from the first list but left the surrounding words of their relevant sentences intact. Into the gaps I then inserted sections of prose from the second walk.
Everything leaves a mark somehow and whereby in the pencilled versions of the prose I can erase the pencil and still leave a trace, I cannot do the same with an electronic document. Leaving the rest of the sentence intact therefore works in the same way as the trace of rubbed out words. If someone is seen in a street one day, they inevitably leave a trace, somehow, and, when they are no longer visible in that place, this trace might still be seen.
The following prose is that of walks 1 and 2 combined, as described above:

An engine purrs. A woman with The engines of the buses roar. walks towards me. The Somewhere in town a siren is sounding. of a bus’s brakes, and then its A man walks towards me with a cigarette in his mouth. He hasn’t lit it yet. A sightseeing bus turns around, ready to begin its tour. telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard is advertised; a. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a A woman checks her sunglasses while behind her a man in a suit walks aimlessly as if he’s not long woken up. as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a On the edge of the pavement, a heap of refuse sacks are left waiting to be collected walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows. A young man with a The red man is lit so I wait to cross. I look around. saunters down the road while a A woman pushes a pushchair and from amongst the rooftops a spire points to the sky. at the traffic lights. I see people with I notice a glass dome, I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed it before. making their way to the train station. The lights are red, then red and amber and the traffic moves. On the window ahead of me are written some Chinese characters and on the road, a sign cautions everyone to look both ways. are on patrol. A bus called the Having crossed the road and walked a little, a signs says dead end and down that dead end stands a green wheelie bin. drives past and a man gives his daughter a A barrier is down at the exit of the car park beside which a group of people are out for a family walk. There are two trees on this side of the street. I hear come from a car, while up ahead, a cuts the pavement in two. Up another road, in the distance, a man crouches. I walk past an iron gate and on some railings see a French flag – a poster advertising a market. A wedding party stands on the pavement. The A young girl with a trolley stands at the side of the road dominated by the mound. just before I reach the road and so I wait a while. On the lamppost, a sticker with 404 has been stuck on. I look up the empty street towards the city centre. A couple carry identical A man with a rucksack walks with a group of others; girlfriends and children. happy with their purchases. I cross the road and see A car stops at the junction, loud music pouring from its open window. The car screeches out. littering the pavement. One of the wedding guests talks about sales. Ahead is the castle tower. A Walking down the road I notice a camera hidden away like a big eye watching everything. hangs on a bollard and nearby lies a discarded blanket. Up ahead, a A car is parked with four parking tickets tucked beneath its windscreen wipers. I look; a takes my attention for some reason. On the pavement, old confetti appears stuck down. There’s a row of empty cycle racks. The street is quiet, a and I hear. A man wearing walks towards me. Round the corner, the I notice the small windows of the houses here and a tree which grows near the old railings by the river. Some are painted a different colour to the rest – just a few of them.. and ahead I see an arch over the entrance to a courtyard. Birdsong is mixed with the gentle sound of water. A flag flutters above the tower. and a group of To my right I hear the sound of a bin moved across the floor. A shop window has metal shutters pulled down and a padlock is coiled around the railings like a snake. Along the road is a bookshop. talk as they walk past. Dirty water gathers at the weir. On the road, a cordon contains sand, paving slabs and gravel. There’s litter too. Above me, the ancient windows of the tower look out. A lifebuoy waits for an emergency while the Two men carry shopping bags and down on the river, three ducks negotiate the litter in the water. on the water. A and I hear 118 is written on a sign. I don’t look at the rest of it. Below the bridge is a drowned bicycle and a submerged traffic cone. There are some old plastic bags snared in the branches. I walk beside the old walls. On the pavement is the stain of a splash just where the weeds grow and where petals gather like the paper confetti. Little Derick’s doin ok – a scrawled message on a hoarding says. I wonder who he is. A A building here is a mix of bricks and old stones, On the opposite side some new flats are being built. From a building opposite – a pub – a rainbow flag hangs. In the yards of a block of flats are some bicycle racks. Two chefs take a break for a chat while up ahead a traffic warden chats with someone less fortunate. A man in a luminous jacket with a worn out face looks out for litter. A sign says 20 zone. and on the wall of a building I’m made aware of CCTV. An arrow points towards another road while up ahead, the concrete monster looms large. Hooks on the front of a building wait for absent baskets of flowers. appears on his bike and we engage in A pigeon descends with a flap. mainly about the weather. Posters look tatty beside that ugly building – all bricks and shadow. A man with A sign says except cycles. on his arm waits while A woman carries a pink bag and behind a net curtain in a restaurant window a man sits, as if he is hiding from something. is erected nearby. Are they going to knock the ugly stuff down? I wish they would. A Here palm trees grow. E1 bus stop. Here the smell of cooking hangs in the air. E2 bus stop and a sign for the library. bobs on the opposite side of the street but on my side it’s all bird shit. A The sound of an engine – not heard by the man wearing headphones. An old sock lays incongruously on the pavement; where is the other one I wonder? scuttles across the path, in amongst the cigarette ends. E3 says a sign at one of the bus stops. Ahead I see the steps I’ll walk up. A strong shadow cuts across and in the distance I hear A bus ticket blows past and over the road I see the steps near which a traffic cone has been unceremoniously left. An old man with a flat cap walks past and opposite, waiting to cross the road is a man with a red waistcoat. Then comes the crossing sound. We walk across. – a wedding perhaps? Green lights but I cross anyway, there’s no traffic. A bottle of I walk up the steps and see a green sweet and further down a broken bottle. There’s a The mound rises up behind the walls while on the ground are some dropped chips from the night before. has been left by the steps. waiting for a visitor, but above it a roll of barbed wire warns against intrusion. A satellite dish sits silently on the wall of another house and above it, a green spire shoots like some massive flower. Here it’s I can hear the sound of running water. and On the pavement is a pile of dog shit. I pass lampposts no.2 and no.3 and see ivy clambering over the wall like a thief. Up ahead a man walks through a green door above which, tumbling on the wall are some red flowers. A coke can sits at the edge of the pavement and on a step someone has written the words libya libya; why I don’t know. Up ahead is a corner. There’s a black door and in the middle of the pavement a plastic coffee lid. Below the gutter runs, as if unsure of its path. Lamppost no.4. Like the ivy, a plastic sheet escapes over another wall. I see an old step over the lost gutter which now goes nowhere. Ahead is a half-painted bollard. A There’s an old brick wall above which the thick trunk of a vine twists and turns. has been left on a car parked on double-yellow lines. The driver’s seat is decorated with a Three metal boxes are stacked at the alley way to the street at the end of which is the corn exchange. Here is lamppost and a gathering of. says one of them. I notice an just as the smell of fills the air; someone is cleaning. Ahead is a litter bin past which a man pulls a. I pass a red door then a blue door, a bicycle and a pillar box. On the pavement is a A boy with a knitted jumper walks with his parents. Up ahead, a cordon has been placed around a tree and above the roof tops is a green dome. I round the corner and see two people Push to open says a sign. There are a few A pigeon wanders aimlessly. On the pavement is a load of spilled. There are French flags again. The market’s here. A girl in walks towards me and I walk past a stall selling and on towards a which snakes its way down one side of the square. A man in a luminous jacket walks past me. An engine purrs. Ahead, three telephone boxes wait for conversation, but for the moment, there’s just the sound of Here is the market office and back where the buses leave a number of fans are whirring.

I am also interested in the visual interpretation of memory, i.e. what it is that we remember. Of course it may be different for different people, but whenever I think of a part of the walk and think about what I am seeing, I realise that the image is a very vague interpretation of reality. Below is a drawing which is a drawing of my entire walk, drawn with my eyes closed so as to focus my mind on the memory image, from the left of the page to the right. The image below is my ‘memory’ of the first walk.

After the second walk, I rubbed the entire image out, leaving a trace of the original drawing on the paper. Over this I then drew my ‘memory’ of the second walk (below) and will repeat this process throughout the duration of my walking this particular route.

These examples are all in effect palimpsests: whereby even though I have erased words and images, traces of them can still be seen on the page, just as traces of the past can still be found everywhere throughout the city – the past is never fully effaced.

Day 11

by

I’ve been looking at my work so far and have started to think about what I will have to show and how I will show it.

“The Smell of an English Summer 1916 (Fresh Cut Grass)”
Deckchairs and Graphite
This piece takes the memory of a thing (in this case, lazy summer’s days before the outbreak of World War One) and using objects to symbolise this thing (e.g. deckchairs), reinterpret the objects so that they come to represent something new (the horrors of war, the hopeless wish for peace).

“Broken Hayes”
Oil, Pencil and Graphite on Canvas
This canvas will be covered with words written on each of the walks that I’ll make over the coming days, and where the words are crossed out on successive walks, so they’ll be rubbed out on the canvas, much like the names on old tombstones, smoothed over by feet. This link with feet, fits with the walks themselves.

The title ‘Broken Hayes’ is the old name for Gloucester Green and describes a place which, in a sense, no longer exists, although, like the ghostly dwellings on John Gwynn’s survey (1772) it’s ‘footprint’ is still visible in the boundaries of the Green. Many of the items rubbed out on the canvas no longer exist in the places where I ‘found’ them; they are, in name only memories, just like Broken Hayes, yet like the physical aspect of that place, they still exist.

“The Light of the Moon “
Found Disposable Cups, Graphite and Water
This will be an installation of paper cups found in the city centre. The contents of each have all been consumed by tourists and residents alike; people who now might be spread throughout the globe. This fits with Dogen Zenji’s quote: “The light of the moon covers the earth, yet it can be contained in a single bowl of water.”

Also, the act of looking in bins to make this installation has been interesting in that when I’m walking through town, I’m sure that no-one is looking; I’m just a part of the mass of people. Yet when I start rummaging through bins, I feel as if everyone is looking at me – I feel like an individual, a ‘single bowl of water.’
I’ve also started the walks again now that I know what I’m looking to do. I’m following the same route, the first words of which are as follows:

engine purrs
yellow clothes
hiss
reverse warning sounds
food
pie ‘n’ pint
Leffe
thumbs up
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows
hooded top
red car waits
suitcases
red
red and amber
two police officers
Jericho voyager
piggy back ride
two trees
tinny music
diagonal shadow
man crouches
iron gate
French flag
wedding party
green man disappears
404
empty street
shopping bags
new confetti
castle tower
child’s coat
discarded blanket
child cries
letterbox
old confetti
empty cycle tracks
gate slams
footsteps
sandals
sun shines on houses
arch
birdsong
gentle sound of water
a bird calls
Russians
dirty water
weir
sand
paving slabs
gravel
litter
ancient windows
lifebuoy
sun sparkles
car turns right
a distant siren
118
drowned bicycle
submerged traffic cone
plastic bags
old walls
the stain of a splash
weeds
petals
little Derick’s doin ok
car starts
CCTV
arrow
concrete monster
an old acquaintance
conversation
posters
bricks
plaster cast
scaffolding
balloon
bird shit
pigeon
cigarette ends
e3
steps
strong shadow
church bells
green lights
Leffe beer
doorbell
barbed wire
satellite dish
green spire
traffic noise
birdsong
no.2
no.3
ivy
gutter
no.4
plastic sheet
step over the gutter
half-painted
parking ticket
dragon
no.8
red bins
mixed glass only
arch in the wall
disinfectant
litter bin
suitcase
red door
blue door
bicycle
pillar box
plastic bottle
checking a map
confused faces
popcorn
French flags
pink sandals
ham
long queue
luminous jacket
engine purrs
telephone boxes
laughter

The prose version:

An engine purrs. A woman with yellow clothes walks towards me. The hiss of a bus’s brakes, and then its reverse warning sounds, telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard food is advertised; a pie ‘n’ pint. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a thumbs up as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a fat stomach walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows. A young man with a hooded top saunters down the road while a red car waits at the traffic lights. I see people with suitcases making their way to the train station. The lights are red, then red and amber and the traffic moves. Two police officers are on patrol. A bus called the Jericho voyager drives past and a man gives his daughter a piggy back ride. There are two trees on this side of the street. I hear tinny music come from a car, while up ahead, a diagonal shadow cuts the pavement in two. Up another road, in the distance, a man crouches. I walk past an iron gate and on some railings see a French flag – a poster advertising a market. A wedding party stands on the pavement. The green man disappears just before I reach the road and so I wait a while. On the lamppost, a sticker with 404 has been stuck on. I look up the empty street towards the city centre. A couple carry identical shopping bags, happy with their purchases. I cross the road and see new confetti littering the pavement. One of the wedding guests talks about sales. Ahead is the castle tower. A child’s lost coat hangs on a bollard and nearby lies a discarded blanket. Up ahead, a child cries. I look; a letterbox takes my attention for some reason. On the pavement, old confetti appears stuck down. There’s a row of empty cycle tracks. The street is quiet, a gate slams and I hear footsteps. A man wearing sandals walks towards me. Round the corner, the sun shines on houses and ahead I see an arch over the entrance to a courtyard. Birdsong is mixed with the gentle sound of water. A bird calls and a group of Russians talk as they walk past. Dirty water gathers at the weir. On the road, a cordon contains sand, paving slabs and gravel. There’s litter too. Above me, the ancient windows of the tower look out. A lifebuoy waits for an emergency while the sun sparkles on the water. A car turns right and I hear a distant siren 118 is written on a sign. I don’t look at the rest of it. Below the bridge is a drowned bicycle and a submerged traffic cone. There are some old plastic bags snared in the branches. I walk beside the old walls. On the pavement is the stain of a splash just where the weeds grow and where petals gather like the paper confetti. Little Derick’s doin ok – a scrawled message on a hoarding says. I wonder who he is. A car starts and on the wall of a building I’m made aware of CCTV. An arrow points towards another road while up ahead, the concrete monster looms large. An old acquaintance appears on his bike and we engage in conversation, mainly about the weather. Posters look tatty beside that ugly building – all bricks and shadow. A man with plaster cast on his arm waits while scaffolding is erected nearby. Are they going to knock the ugly stuff down? I wish they would. A balloon bobs on the opposite side of the street but on my side it’s all bird shit. A pigeon scuttles across the path, in amongst the cigarette ends. E3 says a sign at one of the bus stops. Ahead I see the steps I’ll walk up. A strong shadow cuts across and in the distance I hear church bells – a wedding perhaps? Green lights but I cross anyway, there’s no traffic. A bottle of Leffe beer has been left by the steps. There’s a doorbell waiting for a visitor, but above it a roll of barbed wire warns against intrusion. A satellite dish sits silently on the wall of another house and above it, a green spire shoots like some massive flower. Here it’s traffic noise and birdsong. I pass lampposts no.2 and no.3 and see ivy clambering over the wall like a thief. Below the gutter runs, as if unsure of its path. Lamppost no.4. Like the ivy, a plastic sheet escapes over another wall. I see an old step over the lost gutter which now goes nowhere. Ahead is a half-painted bollard. A parking ticket has been left on a car parked on double-yellow lines. The driver’s seat is decorated with a dragon. Here is lamppost no.8 and a gathering of red bins. Mixed glass only says one of them. I notice an arch in the wall just as the smell of disinfectant fills the air; someone is cleaning. Ahead is a litter bin past which a man pulls a suitcase. I pass a red door then a blue door, a bicycle and a pillar box. On the pavement is a plastic bottle. I round the corner and see two people checking a map. There are a few confused faces. On the pavement is a load of spilled popcorn. There are French flags again. The market’s here. A girl in pink sandals walks towards me and I walk past a stall selling ham and on towards a long queue which snakes its way down one side of the square. A man in a luminous jacket walks past me. An engine purrs. Ahead, three telephone boxes wait for conversation, but for the moment, there’s just the sound of laughter.

Day 10

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Finished priming the canvas and then painted a layer of Paynes Grey on top. Over this I’ll rub some white before working in the graphite powder. Into this I’ll then scratch the outlines of Loggan’s 1675 map which I will attempt to project on top.

I also did another walk following the same route and this time crossed out the words that were no longer appropriate (for example, objects that were no longer visible). As I did this, I decided to add new words that were appropriate to today.


The new list of words now reads:
voices
the sun
engine starts
Leffe
zebra crossing
waiting
boarded windows
remnants of posters
French market
a man on a bike
a dog being walked
all routes
missing letters
pencilled ‘e’
blue car
squeaking brakes
a woman carries a package
red lights
weeping willows
green mound
red man
cyclists wait
open window
Guinness Time
green man
20 zone
pull pull
discarded bottles
old confetti
cigarette butts
a man in sunglasses
crooked shadows
fire extinguishers
discarded blanket
weeds in pots
a man eats
the sun
a flag hangs
empty racks
doorbells
dirty water
orange jackets
taxi
lifebuoy in the river
cementing pavement
a broom
plastic bottle
two men in ties
pile of sand
gravel
weir
stone tower
scaffold
danger – high voltage
cygnet
sun sparkles
water sounds
lifebuoy
warning!
measuring post
submerged traffic cone
drowned bicycle
the stain of a splash
shopping trolley
birds twitter
a ladder
a barrier
a signpost
bright sun
hooded top
people talk
birds twitter
footsteps
CCTV
arrow
broken green glass
ornate gate
roar of bus
music
concrete
shadow
a man pulls up sleeve
a woman sits
tables and chairs
glass ashtray
trees
tinted windows
engine ticks over
bus shelter
green plastic bag
a woman eats a baguette
two yellow markers
green spire
amber light
the sound of a crossing
footsteps
blue plastic bag
graffiti
OX4
blue peeling door
two men talk
green door
satellite dish
sharp shadows
a drain
sound of keys
man opens green door
lamppost no.4 peers
old stone walls
lamppost no.6
a man talks on a phone
gutter
half-painted
weeds
three young women
locks for nothing
a suitcase pulled
a blue door
a blue door
a plastic bag on a saddle
a woman takes a photo
a man checks the films
a taxi
a sapling
black plastic bag
pigeons
checking tickets
a phone rings
fat stomach
bottle top

Day 9

by

I received the canvas today and so made a start on priming it.

I also walked my new route and made a list of objects, sounds etc. The full list is as follows:

voices
a siren burst
the sun
engine starts
Leffe
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows
remnants of posters
black cloak
yellow glasses
sweet smoke
quiet street
red bus
missing letters
pencilled ‘e’
water collected in cobbles
roar of a plane
red lights
cool breeze
weeping willows
a wedding
green mound
old woman
shopping trolley
red man
heart-shaped balloon
Guinness Time
green man
fingers point
pull pull
paper cup
old confetti
cigarette butts
a siren
the sun
a flag hangs
empty racks
wheelie bins
man on a phone
doorbells
dirty water
washing hangs
a broom
plastic bottle
weir
stone tower
scaffold
dead pigeon
sun sparkles
water sounds
lifebuoy
warning!
man with walking stick
drowned bicycle
the stain of a splash
the sound of a coat
scraping tools
a barrier
a signpost
bright sun
people talk
birds twitter
footsteps
CCTV
arrow
ornate gate
traffic cones
roar of bus
music
concrete
shadow
a woman sits
tables and chairs
an empty glass
sun on plastic wrapper
trees
tinted windows
engine ticks over
bus shelter
old people queue
two yellow markers
the sound of a crossing
footsteps
blue plastic bag
graffiti
blue peeling door
sound of a child
green door
carrying shopping
man leaves door
a lamppost peers
old stone walls
plastic bag tumbles
libya libya
lamppost no.6
gutter
half-painted
weeds
hazard lights
painting a window
locks for nothing
purple trousers
a suitcase pulled
footsteps in sand
a taxi
a sapling
arrivals
fruit-boxes
music
soiled blanket
a sink
a mop
checking phone
checking leaflet
bottle top

This evening I read and recorded all the words as an MP3 file. It reminded me to some extent of the extract I published in yesterday’s entry, concerning the reading of the ‘battalion roll-call’, where ‘name after name went unanswered; each silence, another man wounded, missing or dead.’ Tomorrow, armed with this list of words, I will walk the route again, and photograph as much of what is on this original list as possible. Obviously certain things won’t be there any more, certain words on the ‘roll call’ will go ‘unanswered’. The signified objects of other words however will still be in existence, but there will be less, and these missing words will, in a way, act as metaphors for the missing men who did not answer their names in the ‘hollow square.’

I took these words and made them into one paragraph:

voices a siren burst the sun engine starts Leffe zebra crossing fat stomach boarded windows remnants of posters black cloak yellow glasses sweet smoke quiet street red bus missing letters pencilled ‘e’ water collected in cobbles roar of a plane red lights cool breeze weeping willows a wedding green mound old woman shopping trolley red man heart-shaped balloon Guinness Time green man fingers point pull pull paper cup old confetti cigarette butts a siren the sun a flag hangs empty racks wheelie bins man on a phone doorbells dirty water washing hangs a broom plastic bottle weir stone tower scaffold dead pigeon sun sparkles water sounds lifebuoy warning! man with walking stick drowned bicycle the stain of a splash the sound of a coat scraping tools a barrier a signpost bright sun people talk birds twitter footsteps CCTV arrow ornate gate traffic cones roar of bus music concrete shadow a woman sits tables and chairs an empty glass sun on plastic wrapper trees tinted windows engine ticks over bus shelter old people queue two yellow markers the sound of a crossing footsteps blue plastic bag graffiti blue peeling door sound of a child green door carrying shopping man leaves door a lamppost peers old stone walls plastic bag tumbles libya libya lamppost no.6 gutter half-painted weeds hazard lights painting a window locks for nothing purple trousers a suitcase pulled footsteps in sand a taxi a sapling arrivals fruit-boxes music soiled blanket a sink a mop checking phone checking leaflet bottle top

And then to reconstruct the walk, I joined in the gaps with more words drawn from what I remember of the afternoon.

There are voices and then a siren burst cuts through the air, just like the sun. An engine starts and in the window of the pub I see a sign for Leffe beer. I make my way to the zebra crossing and cross the road. A man with a fat stomach walks towards me. Ahead, I see the boarded windows and on them the remnants of posters pasted on and pulled off. A woman in a black cloak wearing yellow glasses walks past me and in her wake I smell the scent of sweet smoke. The quiet street is not normally like this. A red bus pulls in and restores normality. Walking past the boarded up restaurant I see the missing letters of its name. Someone has drawn around them – a pencilled ‘e’ sticks out. To my left is a road with water collected in cobbles and above me I hear the roar of a plane. The red lights stop the traffic and the cool breeze moves the weeping willows in the distance. I see a wedding party move on down the road. To my left is the green mound past which and old woman pushes her shopping trolley. The red man tells me to wait and in the distance I see a heart-shaped balloon bobbing above those who have been to the wedding. A sign on another pub reads Guinness Time and now the red man becomes a green man and I walk over the road. Fingers point, two women look at something, I don’t know what it is. To my left, up some stairs are two doors. The words pull pull invite me up the steps. I carry on walking and pick up a paper cup. On the road are remnants of old confetti and cigarette butts. I hear a siren and the sun makes its presence felt. On top of the tower, a flag hangs – there is no wind. The empty racks wait for bikes and the wheelie bins wait for rubbish. A man on a phone stands ahead of me. I walk past him and see a panel of doorbells. The river is full of dirty water and in a garden, washing hangs and a broom is propped against the wall. In the dirty river a plastic bottle is collected with other muck and litter around the weir above which the stone tower stands, surrounded in part by a scaffold. A dead pigeon lies beneath the bridge and beside it the sun sparkles. The water sounds as it pours through the weir, a lifebuoy is stored on the pavement just in case. There’s a warning! sign. A man with walking stick stands on the bridge and looks down into the water. A drowned bicycle shimmers beneath the water and on the pavement the stain of a splash colours the faded tar. A young boy walks past and the sound of a coat, one made of waterproof material is the only one for a while. Then I hear scraping tools and through a doorway leading to a yard I see a man cleaning his tools. There’s a barrier to my right and up ahead a signpost pointing somewhere. A bright sun lights up the pavement and people talk – three of them. The birds twitter unseen and footsteps ricochet around me. A CCTV signs warns me I’m being watched and a white arrow on a blue background points in another direction. A beautiful, old ornate gate stands incongruously as the traffic cones warn me of the traffic. The roar of bus after bus does not drown the music coming from above me. To my right is the concrete hulk of a building which casts a great shadow over everything. Within it, a woman sits and on the opposite side of the road a number of tables and chairs on which remains an empty glass are positioned. Here the sun on plastic wrapper make a star as trees stand lining the road. Tinted windows forbid the sun and behind me an engine ticks over. There’s a bus shelter and old people queue for their journey home. In the pavement, like gravestones, two yellow markers stand. I hear the sound of a crossing and footsteps cross from one side to the other. Near the steps is a blue plastic bag and on the walls plenty of graffiti. A blue peeling door needs a lick of paint and the sound of a child comes behind me. Up ahead on the right is a green door. A woman carrying shopping walks towards me just as a man leaves door. I notice how a lamppost peers ahead of me, looking at the old stone walls past which a small plastic bag tumbles. Someone has written libya libya on a step. Ahead is lamppost no.6 and from a wall a piece of a gutter protrudes. Two bollards, ones half-painted block the traffic. The weeds grow wherever they can and hazard lights flash on a lorry. A man is painting a window and locks for nothing remain locked around the cycle stands. A boy walks towards me in purple trousers. Another man walks with a suitcase pulled behind him. There are footsteps in sand which is sprinkled on the pavements. There’s a taxi and in its cage, a sapling. The arrivals bag a cab and fruit-boxes are piled high. There’s music and in a small yard a soiled blanket. I walk past an open door and inside I see a sink and a mop. A woman is checking phone and an elderly couple are checking leaflet. There’s a bottle top on the pavement.

Day 8

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Having consulted two maps (one a Google map, the other David Loggan’s map of 1675), I finally planned a new route for my ‘walking work’ which is as follows:

Gloucester Green
Chain Alley
George Street
Worcester Street
Tidmarsh Lane
St. Thomas’ Street
Paradise Street
Castle Street
Bulwarks Lane
George Street
Gloucester Place
Gloucester Green

Below are some photographs of the route of the walk:

More photographs of this route can be seen on my Flickr pages. This isn’t an area I know that well – I’m not sure if I’ve ever walked the entire length of Paradise Street – and yet afterwards, when I looked at David Loggan’s map of 1675, it all seemed very familiar. I was surprised at how much was left after the upheaval of redevelopment, particularly when standing near St. George’s tower, near the junction of St. Thomas’ and Paradise Streets. Now, looking at John Gwynn’s surveys, I could make much more sense of the Oxford of 1772.

Day 7

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I decided to do a walk today, one which I would record in single words or very short phrases. I am interested in how we relate to single words and phrases when trying to picture a past experience, particularly of someone else. The following passage from Neil Hanson’s book, ‘The Unknown Soldier,’ gives a very distinct and accurate picture of a scene one of the millions of soldiers witnessed:

“Decayed sandbags, new sandbags, boards, dropped ammunition, empty tins, corrugated iron, a smell of boots and stagnant water and burnt powder and oil and men, the occasional bang of a rifle and the click of a bolt, the occasional crack of a bullet coming over, or the wailing diminuendo of a ricochet. And over everything, the larks… and on the other side, nothing but a mud wall, with a few dandelions against the sky, until you look over the top or through a periscope and then you see the barbed wire and more barbed wire, and then fields with larks in them, and then barbed wire again.”

The simple use of words makes this passage very stark and easy to imagine. We can see it because in our own minds we can easily conjure objects such as sandbags, boards, empty tins and smells such as old boots and stagnant water. My walk around Oxford would therefore be described as a list of words.

The route was as follows:

Gloucester Green
Gloucester Place
George Street
Bulwarks Alley
New Road
Queen Street
St. Ebbe’s
Brewer Street
St. Aldates
Christ Church
Merton Grove
Deadman’s Walk
Rose Lane
High Street
Merton Street
Magpie Lane
High Street
Catte Street
Broad Street
Magdalen Street
Beaumont Street
Worcester Street
George Street
Chain Alley
Gloucester Green
In total the walk was around 4,300 steps and I wrote 631 words, some of which are listed below:
luminous jacket
suitcase
maps
market
bicycles
litter bin
jackets
mirror
coke can
boots
bicycles
taxis
sunshine – dappled
popcorn (smell)
cigarette smoked
sapling
buses
signs
“…do you remember…”
crutches
blue doors
letter box
chewing gum
‘topiaried’ trees
restaurants
cobbles
gutter
spire
bicycle
crunching wheels
cigarette butts
litter
broken glass
telephone
smell of rubbish
yellow lines
drain
graffiti
lampost
cobbles
stone wall
napkin
window
manhole cover
overhanging shrubs
green door
letter box
railings
fence panels
steps
man drinking
mound
sunshine
shadows
pedestrian zone
red telephone box
scaffolding
exhausts
litter bin
bus stop
taxi rank
colours
pinks, reds, blacks
flags
souvenirs
eating

and so on…

On returning the studio, I wrote up all 631 words on a long piece of paper stuck on the wall

What I was struck by, was how they reminded me of the names carved into the walls of the Menin Gate; column after column of words which at first meant nothing, but all of which had their own unique reference. I decided to create a virtual wall of these words which gave them a very different quality:

I had thought of writing all the words as in the extract above, in a prose form, i.e. something like: “a man wears a luminous jacket, another pulls a suitcase. There’s a machine for maps and the market is on. Bicycles are propped against the wall. Nearby is a litter bin…” Adding words however makes it less authentic, and writing them in this style at the time would be far too time consuming. What is interesting however, is how the mind knits the single words together and in a way the prose form is that process – the mind fills in the blanks.

luminous jacket
suitcase
maps
market
bicycles
litter bin
becomes…

“a man wears a luminous jacket, another pulls a suitcase. There’s a machine for maps and the market is on. Bicycles are propped against the wall. Nearby is a litter bin…”
I refer to a previous entry, Reading and Experience in which I quote the following extract from Filip Muller’s, ‘Eyewitness Auschwitz – Three Years in the Gas Chambers.’

“There was utter silence, broken only by the twitterings of the swallows darting back and forth.”

As I wrote: we were not there in Auschwitz at the moment this line describes (the moment before the doomed prisoner speaks up against the camp’s brutal regime), yet we all know silence and have seen and heard swallows. So although we were not there to witness at first hand this terrible event, we can imagine a silence, a particular one we might have felt some place before, and picture a time we saw a swallow fly. We can use fragments of evidence (photographs, documentary footage) to construct a fuller picture, and fill in the gaps with fragments of own experience. When we speak the words of others therefore, those words will form pictures in our own minds drawn from our own experience.
Taking the list above and adding words to turn it into prose, is in a way similar to this filling in the gaps. In this respect, it is worth doing.

I also tried to draw memories of the walk, taking individual words and drawing the corresponding image. It has always interested me, exactly what we see when we remember something. If we could print out a memory, what would it look like? Certainly what we remember is an approximation of what we actually saw, and again, we use words to ‘join the dots’, to fill in the gaps.
I am reminded again of what I read on Memory places:

“It is better to form one’s memory loci in a deserted and solitary place, for crowds of passing people tend to weaken the impression. Therefore the student intent on acquiring a sharp and well defined set of loci will choose one unfrequented building in which to memorise places…”

The image this passage conjures is of a deserted building, one which has seen better days and is perhaps in need of restoration, a shell which needs some gaps filled.

© Nicholas Hedges 2006-20

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