NOTES TO SELF  3

THE ART OF SELF HELP

FIELD NOTES : On The Beat of Place.

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Today I am going.

Now.

Cant wait any longer. Got to go before I blow.

Today I travel to find perspective.

But it's such a long way away. Couldn't I find somewhere local?

Today on the way I began to wonder about what the beat of place actually means? That turn of phrase that seed funded my brittle ego and helped to propel me on my pseudo pilgrimage.

I find this hard to define as its too wrapped up in me.

For now.

Today I sail across the mill pond. Literally. Its so calm and nurturing I relax in my cradle into semi sleep. And miss the bowhead whale (duh!)

Today I am the worlds worst nature watcher.

Today I attempt to get under the skin of a place. To discover bones. To interpret-the-place-in-accordance-with-my-own-experiences and fore go the stamp of history. If that's possible.

Today much like an en plein air artist who becomes immersed in the landscape, I like wise, make my response as I stand submerged up to my self absorbed neck.

I climb a hill.

I pore over a map to try and to make a strangers sense of this leaf vein landscape.

I have no brushes and pigments to make my mark here.

Instead I have with me the means to record sound.

But the batteries are flat (story of my life) but my ideas soar.

Today no surprises, a grind-wind.

Today I doubt myself, my ideas. What am I doing here?

Today I remember (for some reason) that my eldest son told me that oxytocin is released when you stroke a dog.

I try to get back into my art-of-self-help by stroking the furry wind muffler on my microphone to synthesise the bonding chemical and for a laugh and to make me laugh.

It feels silly and weird. So I stop.

But it does makes me laugh out loud and suddenly I am away running with the thought that I answer to no one here.

It worked then.

Today I can do anything.

I am king.

For a moment.

Today I sleep when it rains.

Today I think if a camera can capture the ? of a landscape and a painting can capture its ? Then sound can tell us something too.

But what and how?

Today I feel homeless, again. Like I did when I was not fully fledged. Its high summer and really cold. I am miserable. But I am here.

Today I am blissed out, excited.

Today I am worn out, knackered, too thirsty and slightly anxious as my legs are giving way. A first for me.

Today at the castle I read the most positive graffiti.

It said You are worthy you are not alone

Today, a little sad and a bit lonely. Truth is told. I try to focus on the wisdom of best uplifting graffiti ever.

Today I am not lonely in this republic of birds.

Today I compose beats and melodise as I walk and I am composure itself.

Today I am abroad and it's thrilling.

Today the landscape is repetitious if you don't know what to look for or know why you are there. I press play. There is no fast fwd here.

Today I discover, I am not waterproof.

Today I throw chronology to the wind and abandon the set-in-stone-deadline-baggage I brought with me. A spring returns to my step.

Today I reintroduce chronology and deadlines 'cos I need a campsite. I also manage to hang on to the spring in my step.

Today a freshly dead lamb, eyes gone stuck in a bog. Am speechless for a bit and sense the wildness and my vulnerability of place. There are so many bones here. What tune is that, that whistles out the wind?

Today I am a boil in the bag hiker. Soaked to the skin by adrenalin, sweat and by rain. I am seriously dehydrated. My internals are rasping against my ribs and they demand more water! This must be the wettest moor on earth. Ach!

Today the sun is in my face and the wind at my back despite bucking the south/north trend of the way.

Today I decide how the day's beats will pace my beat.

Today I took the time to observe birds. There are so many.

Today I feel like a protein lollipop on legs, the hooded crows eye my eyes. I screw them down tight. But I can't see where I am going and fear I will end up in the bog like that poor lamb. I hide my lips deep in my beard way out on the Hebridean tundra.

Today I tread carefully. But fall in the bog anyway.

Today the wind is in my face and the sun at my back. I think I like that better. It's more cooling.

Today is bleak and barren and beautiful.

Today I am bitten by bugs and something deeper.

Today I am busy but still restless.

Today I sleep atop, on a hard won postage stamp of elevated peat. Above the midge line. Surround by pools of fresh clean real water. 360 degrees of amazing.

Today I tarry a little at the shore and try to replicate in my own way the smell of seaweed and salt laden wind with sound. I fail miserably but win the memory of trying to do so.

Today a bracing beach walk I feel the endolphins of my mind surf as I dip my toe in.

Today I spy a herd of domesticated campervans pass, intensively reared, freshly belched out of the ferry belly, no doubt, and I lie low not wanting to break cover.

Today I gawk at the beauty of the machair. I did not come for that. That seems far too superficial a reason. But gawk I do.

Today I gag trying to eat pot noodles. Again.

Today iron heavy rain drops, and in accompaniment, the brightest sun

Today I danced alone to my tune of the day out hereby a stone that stands. I know you're not meant to do that sort of thing, and to my own music as well, but it was a really fun/funny thing to do.

Today it is cold, but I am hot and bothered.

Today is a prelude to tomorrow, another walk cycle

Today I weave through the land loch'd landscape. The marks of human kind are everywhere. You can't forego a place's history. These 'lazy beds' look extremely hard won to me.

Today, on the road from dawn till what should have been dusk.

Today, talking of cycles, I keep meeting the same visitors. It's a big and long place but paths cross regularly.

Today I write/rest/research and wonder without a bearing or caring.

Today out there is nowhere to hide so I come in from the cold and settle under the thatch.

Today inside there is nowhere to hide. So plod on.

Today a storm on the beach but not in my head. Peace.

Today I wake/walk/wander.

Today I thought about laughing alone yesterday. Another thing I don't think you are supposed to do. But it was really funny. Again.

Today an endless day an endless story on a boundless beach. I would have written endless beach but someone's had that already.

Today the wind grinds but the sun grants succour.

Today the ink black burn rushes by, so I stop.

Today I read the ubiquitous sign differently. It hammers its msg home. This-is-a-passing-place. Don't stop.

Today I cannot pass by the pristine, peat black, in-land loch beach, without lingering. I make my inverted footprint mark and leave the anomaly.

Today I visit an auld pal. But she is so busy I need running shoes to keep up. I try to politely drift away unnoticed.

Today I lay out my wares - camera/recorder/batteries/analogue note book/analogue pencil. What is the true angle of perspective that I am trying to attain in my viewfinder and is it possible with these gadgets? Hmmm...

Today the peat stares me down. I stop and pay my respects. Are we OK?

Today I rest up to listen to the beat of this place. Air Beàrnaraigh. A place I keep coming. Returning or it to me. Am I being stalked?

Today, well why stop now? Keep going. I have nothing to lose but myself.

Today passing chest pains. I lament my demise in my prime, much before my time.

Today I am back on track. I capture a corncrake while marvelling at the fluttering blue fairy nearby in the even light. I see at first hand how intertwined our folk laws are with the natural world.

Today I playback the recording of the corncrake. I listen, respectful of his skills, the constancy of his b.p.m. 6 hours solid and he never skipped a beat.

Today I debate the impact of my senseless senses on my experiences here and truly hope to overthrow the manifest, boring tyranny of these losses with song and sample, if weird.

Today I hear of a piper playing his pipes on his doorstep. I can't imagine a more fitting way to see that instrument played than that. Though I used to really enjoy the Tattoo on TV when I was a kid.

Today I learnt about bagpipes. The bag is skin from a lamb and the chanter grown (obv.) from a tree. An instrument then truly of and from the landscape in which it is played.

Today I scan the scape of the land but know nothing of its depth, new and ancient simultaneously.

Today I scratch the surface and try to peer beneath the maps.

Today I scratch a pinprick hole in the map thereabouts to where I am stood and peer through it to view the lochs laid out impossibly (to these eyes) below me.

Today I am not arsed with this place and I think heavily about the home hearth.

Today I dart around from croft to croft like an old time English eccentric, digital butterfly net in hand, grasping at fleeting, precious sound bites of this place.

Today I have blisters and swollen feet :(

Today I live and breathe side by side with the mighty-bitey, ladies all, and submit to playing my bit-part in this ecosystem. In this sense there really is a woman behind every tree.

Today, I hear tell, that in a remote car park, a pair of eagles no less, wandered around like a pair of pigeons while people picnicked.

Today I blink and I have missed it.

Today I meet birders who aren't impressed with my eagles-in-car-park anecdote. Amateur that I am, is surprised about that.

Today I think happenchance rules, Yeah!

Today I decide that clambering amongst the bogs, beaches and machair of the lower land is enough. To climb or not to climb the higher land is not the question for me here. To be deep amongst it and to feel it wet in my boots is the accomplishment. I am on trend! Which, as it happens compliments the vertiginous feelings I presently harbour.

Today peat/bracken/grasses and spring flowers mainly sheep's bit scabious, marigolds, irises and orchids. No ticks.

Today a realisation. I have got out of the house.

Today amongst the rocks my mind is washed out by the waves.

Today Jacob has his ladders out at sea but there is no one about to change the bulb.

Today its about time I got off my butt and got to the point.

Today I dispute the 4 in a day theorising. Surely its much more?

Today a blue I have never ever seen.

Today (though I don't know it yet) my back gives out stamping down on tarmac for far too long.

Today I awoke to earth-shuddering vibrations of a ride on mower encircling my punch bag tent. The 2cm tall lawn is now 1cm tall.

Today I breathed in midges until I coughed and my black jumper turned brown. Tent down/packed up/5 mins flat. Then I ran a few meters and there were none. They're a bit daft like that. No porridge for me though in the sunshine of this after storm morning.

Today sea and sky merge but the land remains distinct.

Today a steady pace across a vast space.

Today the sun won't go down.

Today the elements evidently blew a fuse, temporarily shutting me down. A natural short circuit. An electric circus. All the drama played out above my fragile head. The power of cloud talk.

Today evidence of coastal dune erosion. Buried skeletal ram pokes out of dune wall below marram grass line. About to fall. Horns adorned with Yves Klein Blue baler twine on this island terminal.

Today I chased a rain shower over to the Gunnery. Like I used to chase cloud shadows across the playing field. Fancy that a field just for playing.

Today I gained a new beating heart. Fit for purpose, rhythm and rhyme. Renewed focus in an instant. Dictaphone outstretched the beats rained down from the Gunnery roof. My own personal avant garde beat ensemble. On record.

Today I stumbled upon my own Fingal's cave and I must remember to send a postcard home.

The Gunnery beats.

Vilhelm Nein-Freunde. Compiled from field notes, January 2nd 2020