Yesterday I stood up in a roomful of acquaintances and strangers and read out something I’d written. It wasn’t a presentation. It wasn’t a training session. It wasn’t an event launch or the chairing of a meeting. I’ve done loads of those. This was harder. This was me offering out an assemblage of words that had no other purpose than to be what they were.
They were not to educate or inform, not to instruct or confirm. They were (are) simply ‘something what I wrote’ as Mr Wise used to say.
Maybe they would entertain. Maybe they would amuse. Maybe they would make people think or wonder. And maybe they wouldn’t. They have to stand as alone as I stood at the front of the room.
People weren’t there to listen to me. There was a dozen or so people offering up their words – and the words of absent colleagues read on their behalf. Among the audience were those also there to share what they had done over the same six weeks and the same outings that I’d been on. Others were there to support friends and relatives. Others presumably just out of curiosity, I hope. I hope some were in the room for that reason alone.
Why-ever people took a seat in that little back room at Cley Wildlife Centre, I hope they come again.
I hope that they found something in one or more or many of the offerings of poetry and prose and a beautifully rendered new ‘folk’ song that might make them want to come again, to support the centre and the work it does and to help those of us learning to write or to write better or to write differently or more often or with greater insight or knowledge, to help us celebrate what we have achieved in the preceding few weeks, to help us celebrate a season as seen in this place.
And let’s be honest, I hope that next time I stand up to celebrate a season, I can read with more authority, more belief in my own words, and my own ability, and the progress I’m making. Because I will be back come Spring, to head out on more mystery forages into landscape to capture whispers and turn them into…something.
Of all the things I wrote during this Winter season the one I liked best, the one I chose to share, was something I called ‘Dance of the Wind-witch’ written after a blustery day at Blakeney in the aftermath of Storm Ciara.
Dance of the Wind-witch
Is it mad of me to want to go and watch where the wind-witch dances, to stand hair-whipped where she screels across the marsh? Am I strange that I love to walk alone, to stand held by her primeval hand, though I know she could hurl me out to sea, or simply pull me down, into the creek, to drown?
I sometimes wonder if there is any feline in my ancestry. I get skittish indoors when the winds arrive. The whistling in the wires and the disconsolate moan over the empty grate, unsettle me. Like a shell-shocked soldier I flinch at the boom of another upturned wheelie bin hitting the deck. I can hear power being wielded, but I cannot see what it wreaks from in here. I feel vulnerable, disconnected, outsidered inside.
I need to go out and walk with the wind, into the wind, across the wind, to be whirled by the wind, into the ceilidh of the reeds, among the midnight pools at noon, where sun and shadows waltz upon the waters and the off-stage geese wait abandoned in the wings, where water colours riffle music to the eye, shifting, subtle, momentary glimpses of unknown shades, that flicker once, and swim away.
We chart her progress, and call her by her latest sign. Ciara – Celt – of the raven hair. There’s an old belief that if you call something by its given name, you claim it, catch it, control it, bring it like a whelp to heel. But the wind’s untamed, wild yet, and dangerous, and dances one more reel. Who can catch the wind or mark her card? For all our centuries, our myriad tongues, we’ve not right-called her yet. Still she dances, and in the darkness keens.
Every season we try again, naming and claiming and always failing…but then…as we watch…she dances herself out, slowing eventually into whispers of innocence. Who? Me? A sleepy sigh…a gentle time-to-rest goodbye. A breeze.
It would be wrong of me to talk about this experience without giving credit where it’s due…so thank you to Norfolk Wildlife Trust at Cley for hosting the course , to everyone on it who generously shared their own insights and approaches and words, and to Jonathan Ward for his gentle and inspirational leadership, prompting, and encouragement. See you all in the Spring.
