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alexmaygoodman · 8 years ago

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Beach-combers logbook / knowing what to take away / knowing what to leave behind

This week I've been artist in residence at Chalkwell Hall with Metal Southend and I've been spending some time doing research on the beach and in the water. Each day I collected small tokens beach-combing my way from Chalkwell beach to Southend pier.

What follows here is the result of five days looking, finding, collecting and writing.

shell 1. Noun hard outer case of nut-kernel, egg, seed, fruit or animal such as crab or snail or tortoise; framework or case for something, walls or framework of unfinished or gutted building, ship, etc ; explosive projectile for firing from large gun etc; hollow case containing explosives for cartridge firework, etc ; light rowing boat for racing, 2. Verb take out of shell, remove shell or pod from; fire shells at.

In computing, the Unix operating system has a program called "shell". It is the program in which you can write instructions which allow you to access the fundamental systems of the computer. It is an interface layer for the heart of the computer, which protects the computer systems from direct interference but still allows communication.

Day One

A shell can protect something soft or explosive by covering it with something hard and/ or strong. It may contain and encase some potential for life, the living, or the ending of life. A shell may keep you afloat or protect you from the elements by creating a chamber, hull or facade. A shell can be an empty vessel carrying nothing but the scent of the sea.

Collecting on the tide-line Chalkwell beach is made up of a thousand fragmented memories, each shell a small sea-worn souvenir. Here I find my preferred trinkets, away from the gimcrack the beach shops sell. Each shell is a clue to the creatures hidden in in the mystery of their tidal world as their debris is revealed by the ebbing water.

Here they enigmatically hand us evidence of their existence, only in revealing themselves once their short lives have past they cast their bone-like exoskeletons onto our shores. The flesh of these creatures have melted into the sea, leaving behind for us to find these tokens of existence. Their secret lives lived beneath our feet in a world of unconsciousness, of movement ruled by the watery moon and set to a clock that shifts its schedule to the gravity of the heavenly bodies.

As one of our first experiences of collecting as children, we walk along the sand or shingle and collect tiny pieces of creatures which have disappeared into the watery underworld that rises and swells, slackens then recedes. Archaeologists found that as far back our Neanderthals ancestors we collected shells, using them as mixing pallets for pigments and paint to be used for decorative and ritual purposes both on the walls of their caves and as body paint. Perhaps today it is another unmentioned rite of passage when we walk with our parents, grandparents and alone, collecting shells, picking up the lost pieces of our ancestors out in the landscape and taking them home to hold close to our hearts.

Here I dream of the flood, of a car being washed away as the sea rises below my window. And with it memories are flooding back, waves of loss and the past being processed... the shells and bones of the past year have been washed up at my feet for me to pick through, to draw, hold, line in rows and sing over.

Day Two

The tide is low, and tomorrow there is a new moon. There is a great distance between high and low tide in the silt estuary and I walk the distance it has receded down across rickety planks laid out like a tram track down to the water. Here as I walk, eyes half down the shape of a heart catches my eye down in the shingle and shell. I pick it up and in wonder I realise what the treasure I hold in my hands is - a fossilized sea urchin, like the one my mother had given me some years before. A charm used to protect houses against lightning. After deliberation a friend tells me its either a sea potato, or a heart shaped sea urchin, I know which I would prefer its name to be.

Low tide is a magical time, when creatures hidden by the tide are revealed to us, their shells tightly clasped and locked rigid when touched or disturbed. Giant oysters bigger than any I've ever seen, clumped together in barnacle festivals. Mussels who have lost their anchors, and the empty shells of cockles signalling their presence deeper in the mud below.

This night I dream of rummaging through second-hand shops, looking at knitting needles and crochet hooks. I picked them up and consider the options, all the different sizes and colours, grey and brown plastic. I was looking for one for my mother, I was looking to buy one for her for whatever dreaming reason, that's why I was here. I picked up one made of wood and knew this was the right one for her. And that was all, a simple task completed during my sleep.

When I wake I think about the women I'd seen down on the beach, walking out from the high tide she carried the sea in her pockets.

Day Three

No longer stranded – cut loose, the sea temperature has risen and I walk down to Chalkwell beach walking along the boulevard just before high tide. I see no-one in the water yet... so I keep walking until I do. Down at the end of the beach there are some older women sitting on towels in swimming costumes and some bobbing around in the water. I wander over and as I pass them I ask the lady I'd just seen emerge from the water – 'Hows the water?' and she replies, 'yes rather nice its the first time I've been in this year.' Feeling bravened by this reply, having dipped myself into the sea, river and rock-pools several times this year at any available opportunity I set down my things and changed into my swimming costume. I got into the water slowly, breathing out in short bursts, as there was a large temperature difference between the hot sun filled air and the cooler water. I could feel my heart rate change as my blood cooled and I edged in. For fear of going into shock I always get into water very slowly, having suffered a lot from being a very skinny child who would turn blue fairly easily. I splash my shoulders and chest to slowly introduce my blood to the change and to be gentle with my heart. Once in and swimming the water was lovely, and I swam up and down the beach calmly with joy in my heart.

Back on land a lady who has just arrives asks me how the water is as she changes into her costume and swim cap and we find common ground mouthing the names of places that had been my homes and haunts in far away Cornwall - Helford, Lizard, Falmouth, Coverack. Here I begin my beachcomb, and after the cool clarity of being in the water I am drawn to the pieces of sea glass. Later I visit Shoeburryness at low tide with Rob and collect more, finding dark blues and greens and small pieces of ceramic including the handle of a tea cup with a small brown stone wedged inside its curve.

That night I go to sleep with the full tide and a heavy heart, I feel myself in fragments. I think - when I wake these sharp edges will be worn smooth by the flow of water and time as the tide comes in and then rushes away.

Day Four

This day was interrupted by inactivity, and even the practice of beach combing was not very effectively exercised. Worn down by emotional tides I had very little energy to do anything but drift up and down to Leigh. Clare joined me in coming in for a dip off Chalkwell beach which distracted me, telling me about interviewing wild swimmers and installing the recordings in the changing rooms of swimming pools. She told me about her birthday ambition to swim around burgh island in Devon, the place I once visited with Dylan and Sophie, where we watched the tractor emerge through the mist across the receding waters.

Down in Leigh the seafood stalls where about to close as I looked at their array of cockles, whelks, winkles, potted shrimp, mussels, sprats and prawns. I bought 5 enormous shell on prawns for £4 and sat in the baking sun near the Endevour – an old cockle boat that had been beautifully restored. It was hot and I dipped back inland on the way back to seek the shade of the lime trees along the residential streets picking dog-roses in little nowhere patches.

Walking down to Leigh I picked up fragments of shell easily seen in the brown and grey of the shingle and the silt, objects that reflected white, like the light of the moon. The sky is very clear and I look out before I draw the blinds to see the stars shining brilliantly in the midnight sky. I don't go out to greet them though I feel like I should. Tonight marks a change in the lunar cycle, the beginning of a new one and in astrology it marks a time for clearing and healing to be able to move on and plant new seeds in the next cycle. Its difficult to fall asleep but eventually I do, I can hear a sound which is almost like the sea, perhaps its the wind turbines, or maybe it is the high tide reaching the shore. Maybe the wind has picked up again. In the morning my dreams have fled and I can't remember them, all I find is a mosquito bite on my leg and the bright sun of a new day flooding in.

Day Five

Beach combing is similar to dreaming, if you try too hard it just doesn't work. I pretend to myself that I'm actually just walking across to the cafe, I'm not looking for anything – honest. Its like magic, look with the edge of your consciousness and you'll be rewarded.

I like to watch the ships go past from the top windows of Chalkwell hall and down in the sand. Here I sit and write in a little cafe right on the beach, they've removed some of the windowpanes for the sun and sea foam to enter the space and greet the customers as they sip their beers and coffees.

The ships flow though the mist of the estuary back and forth across the almost invisible line of water. I'd like to look at an Admiralty chart and see where they are going, to meet the crew in the pub there, to find out where they've been and where they're going next.

The waves breaking down on the shore below are hypnotising as the wind picks up and they dash themselves against the tarred stones. When its like this in the water the rhythmic waves become something you just have to adjust yourself to, stepping and moving in-time with each one, like tuning into the sea's heartbeat. Either join her song or struggle against it- bracing yourself you try to catch your breath while being slapped wet in the face and geting salt in your eyes.

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alexmaygoodman · 9 years ago

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Lafrowda St Just

Lafrowda festival is way down west in St Just. It is one of those great Cornish feast celebrations that has its very unique two weeks of happenings,performance, home-built buggy racing and culminates in the festival day when the whole town takes to the streets in parade.

I was part of these two weeks in collaboration with festival programmer Chris Gronow, local poet John Harry and year 6 at St Just Primary School.

Chris introduced me to John Harry, who grew up in St Just and has seen many changes, particularly due to the closure of the mines that were such an intergragl part of the local industry. John worked at Geevor mine as a clerk where he worked until it closed in the late 1980′s. John writes poetry in Cornish dialect, with great humor and observations of the people of St Just, there quirks and traditions. One of his poems recounts how some of the women from St Just got on the bus to go to St Ives Flower show but saw a funeral on the way there, and made the bus stop so they could attend the funeral, despite not knowing the deceased.

Another poem ‘Heads or Tails’ describes a young man trying to decide if he should go out to find his fortune mining in Australia by flipping a coin as work at home was becoming scarce. The townspeople turned up asking him to take hot pasties, canaries and other things from home to their loved ones who’d left for Australia to work in the mines. The young man decides to stay home and go to the pictures instead after the townspeople had asked him to take all these things on his journey! John has traveled with Mousehole Male Voice Choir as organist and read his poetry in for Cornish diaspora in Australia and America. His work is wonderful to read and his performances are full of charm and really draw the audience in. His work is a window into a world that is becoming unfamiliar to us today and I felt very privileged to work with him and hear him read his poetry.

One of his poems writes a reflection on the great disaster of Wheal Owles in 1893 when 19 men and 1 boy died in the flooded darkness. The poem is about his Aunt who in her later years believed that she spent time with the ghost of her sweetheart who had been one the miners who died down in the mine. John’s poem really struck me, he read it to Chris and myself at Heartlands when we were planning the workshop and its been winding around my brain ever since. Chris lives down at Wheal Owles in the old count house. Chris’s garden shed was once the dynamite store and what is left of the the engine house stands just outside, an old shadow of time past standing out against the horizon of the blue sea.

I ran a workshop with year 6 at St Just and John read these two poems as starting points for the children to draw a series of illustrations journeying from St Just past to present and on to an imagined future. This roll of illustrations were then loaded into the Moving Panorama Machine.

The children drew images of the past with miners underground coming up ‘to grass’ (as they used to say) and heading home to St Just with a pasty disappearing as they traveled past the old miners cottages and into the present town. Here they showed off the Lafrowda parade and all the buildings of the town as they see it today, as they traveled on into the future they drew fairground rides and shops, restaurants and other businesses that they imagined they and their peers would run when they grew up. They turned the local fish shop into a phone shop, where a descendant of the miner at the beginning bought a phone. He then typed in the date of his ancestor and the phone opened up a time portal for him to travel back to the beginning of the drawings!

After a busy day of drawing with the children at St Just Primary I set up the Moving Panorama at St Just Library to perform ‘As the Crow Flies’ and showing the children’s drawing roll as a prelude with ‘Cornwall my home’ as soundtrack as part of Lafrowda’s free program of performances. Later on John performed his poetry which saw a brilliant turn out.

Chris Gronow kindly organised this project for Lafrowada week and after working with her I’ve become really inspired by the town’s (and its surrounding area’s) heritage, stories and landscape. Chris invited me to explore around her home and the ruins of the mines of Wheal Owles and Wheal Drey and she and her husband Clive kindly told me with stories of the mines and those that have lived in the area since. After all of this I’ve decided with so many images and stories burning through my brain I’m going to make my own story roll to celebrate the landscape and people of the stories that Chris, Clive, John and the children have shared with me. Images will be up soon as we journey back to Cape Cornwall by fishing boat... with stories of smugglers, mines and lightning storms in this beautiful peninsula cutting out into the Atlantic.

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