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1. |
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Dan: Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow…
Sam: When you unweave the rainbow
nothing is lost by understanding
that it is light refracted, reflected, and dispersed
by illuminated water droplets
between two particular angles;
photons hitting the photoreceptors in your eyes
that send electrical signals down the optical nerve
into the brain which in turn flips the image,
causes a cascade systemic reaction
triggering consciousness, memory, emotions;
becomes what we see
and makes us go:
Dan: “Wow! Look at that!
A rainbow!”
Pulling back the rain-shower curtain
reveals no occam's razor
of wizard-manipulated levers,
but a blank slate to be discovered,
marked, blemished, and re-found.
Sam: Science says we are here. Full stop.
Dan: Poetry says we are here. Question mark?
Sam: Science asks the questions.
Dan: And poetry marks the spot.
Sam: The spots of a leopard are called ‘rosettes’ because their shape is similar to that of a rose.
Dan: Would a leopard by any other name smell as sweet?
Sam: Sweetness is one of at least five basic tastes detected by the tongue’s taste buds. Others include sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and a balanced flavour called umami.
Dan: The taste of her perfume split the air like the sensations on your skin before a storm.
Sam: The Beaufort scale is an empirical measure for describing wind intensity based on observed sea conditions.
Dan: We learn that there is no end to a rainbow.
So perhaps we can stop chasing the pot of gold
knowing that there is no leprechaun
but an abundance of wealth
in simply enjoying it
Sam: For what it is.
Dan: The sea is a dense sediment of mangled atoms.
Sam: All of the atoms in our bodies were created in supernovae over 4.5 billion years ago.
Dan: In the beginning there was nothing, just love and stardust.
Sam: Science says that all of reality could in fact be an artificial simulation.
Dan: Poetry says none of this is real.
Sam: We learn that many rainbows exist.
Unseen by an observer
that we are surrounded by a spectrum of light
that bathes us in a glow of colours -
we don’t even know
that even in darkness
we are lit up by electromagnetism.
Dan: So we can never truly be lost.
Sam: We learn that a rainbow does not exist
Dan: At one particular location
and instead – with this knowing of angles and light –
we can become creators of nature
making our own rainbows
on a sunny day with a fine mist from a garden hose.
Sam: We learn that my rainbow
is not the same
as your rainbow.
Dan: Because we are standing in different places.
Sam: The lives we’ve led leading us to this moment of our meeting.
Dan: You, me, and these rainbows.
Sam: Understanding that we are not seeing the same thing.
Dan: But also the same thing.
Sam: And how marvellous that we can overcome
Dan: That vast space between us.
Both: And compare our colours.
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2. |
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(i) Surface
The ocean remembers
a hand
the body of a child waist deep
it remembers touch
the promise of forgiveness
the ocean remembers
the loneliness of water
how we stepped away from it
dripping with ideas, our hands
furious creatures
how we arched our backs
& it ran from us
regrouped
watched as we built engines out of air
as we shoaled through our salt cities
as we whittled boats that bled their black grief
into its sunken cerulean mouth
how the grief settled across the seabed
into a funeral of fish
wrapped in a swirling dark cloak
stitched from its ancestors
the oceans are not blue
they are bruised
we bite our own hands
wash in the same water we drink from
are the same water we drink from
& now
the tide is turning
to look at you
Listen
can you hear the sea ticking?
(ii) Twilight
The ocean is a museum
remembers in sediments
the whole of time in a drop of water
humanity in strata
Here:
The first human to hold their breath
Here:
the first human to be their breath
Here:
The first human to Medusa their breath
to poison Poseidon
who dreams of deserts
this twilight cathedral
this prayer mat
//
Did you forget the ocean is within you?
can you feel the surge in your veins
a flash tide of belonging?
we battle our blood currents
swim upstream of our egos
but there are things
in our depths
that are jealous of the ocean’s belief
understand the language of the sea
& why it keeps returning
these sudden shallows
these rip currents of rage
this conviction that we can harness the waves
leash the ocean
carry us further from the shore
than we have ever been
swim against the song
a man stands alone on the shore
collecting waves in a plastic carrier bag
that he will take to market later.
On another coast a party of drunks
punch the water
until it retreats.
In a seaside town
frozen fish
are released back into the wild
the water without calls to the water within
(iii) Deep
We know that
things live in the dark places.
while we engineer certainties
something without a face
watches us
its lost siblings
waits for our return
knowing that
our hearts are
tectonic plates drifting
moving further from one another
down here light loses its way
& shadows shoal & flit, are ideas
sunk in the body’s blue subconscious
it is only in these darks
that we find the bright
philosophies self-illuminate
& the ocean remembers love
how something small dropped in its
wide knowing
becomes something big
that can swallow cities
o, we humans
we come in waves.
//
& you and I
are the same body of water
touching our lips
to different shores
& somewhere a child
takes the hand of the ocean
& a smile ripples out across the still surface
of a face
//
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3. |
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Here it is again
smacking on my windowsill
I drink tea and watch each drop
snake a journey down the pane
unique fingerprint
moses basket
tiny orb
Patterns. Solid time. A blanket of possibilities. Follow the trace. The weave.
I swallow hard
ponder a biscuit
what would Attenborough think
of my diet
28000 species of fish
Feel it glide past my skin. Feel the bite.
Stretch my legs
salmon for tea
what would happen
if my lungs filled up
I’m an eel, a golden fish, a mermaid forced to live on land,
squash in a wine glass
to feel like I’m drinking
does anyone get their 2 litres a day?
Three strong strokes then drifting, eyes on the sky, the tapestry of the surface
I miss feeling my limbs lighten
kicking off
like a frog
Down from the path where the lake spills
Where the footholds slip and the unseen-ness caresses
Silver rope-plaits play to a ruffling crowd
a thrumming scent of swoop and stumble
Translucent forms of half remembered faces,
of hippo backs and cauliflowers,
arch past in uneven stunted rows
before drowning in imperfect reflections
Come closer, crouch down, decelerate to silence
Hold this cool jumble of yesterday’s meteors
Ravenous silver fragments in your palm
Poised for a night of sweat and bass
My sister took to it easily, two, three then four touches on the surface of the water. My brother every so often would make ripples with his wet smooth pebble , but mine would plop and sink, plunge to the bottom every time – didn’t matter how shiny or perfect the stone - we’d go camping each summer – long walks – books that would tell us which path to take, which stile to miss, which fields to cross – sometimes we ended up lost all day – a backpack of cheese and pickle sandwiches, ready salted crisps – I’d wake in the night desperate for a wee – relieve myself into the morning dew – my dad caught wasps in a trap made from a bottle, water and jam – sat there in his camping chair with a butterknife – struck the plastic as they took the bait – I watched them drown.
My babies were born in the water. In a giant blue pool enveloped by forest green carpet and the wincing scowl of the trainee midwife. Water babies. Too many lost. In the spate.
Pink stain crumbling. Waiting for the flood. Current ripping. Sharp stones tearing. Submerged tree fingers slicing. When it’s over – searching through the debris for the curled pink pebble. Sometimes small enough for a matchbox cremation. Inside a bed of red silk. Too many lost.
I’ve been getting to know my cervix. Its mucus. Consistency, colour, position and shape. Worry I’m not ovulating. The birthdays keep on coming and the pregnancies announce themselves like hangovers. I piss on a stick – study the lines. One of my friends has a water birth – right there in her front room. I meet him 4 weeks later on a walk by the sea. She says her hormones have made her stink. I smell his fresh head like in the films. Hold him close as the wind picks up. The waves in me are stirring and I’m waiting for the flood. Every crimson splash in the porcelain – every smudge on the paper tearing me up – I obsess over my diet – take evening primrose – count my macros –They say that madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I’m a failure, a miracle, battling with my battered body. Maybe a dog will do. Am I swimming or floating? Waving or drowning? I track my flow, run a bath – hold myself in the foam.
Exploding bubbles of repeated loss.
The cravings come with their pointy teeth
Mad hormonal fluctuations. Maybe you avoided eating sugar out the bag.
A spoon of Nutella straight from the jar
The oozing muds spit pebble pips.
Maybe I’ll try one last time to make their smooth skin skip
There is a pebble – here in my fingertips –
How many people have held this stone in the centre of their palm?
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4. |
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Section 1
Autumn leaves rustle under the crunch of a hiking boot
wind billows furiously on a festive Winter evening
the Amazon rainforest hums and stirs
Waterfalls gush
Pedestrians converse loudly interrupted by traffic
the irritating click in a clock
the whistle in a pressure cooker
the ocean crashes into the seashore
the tap of a keyboard
the neighbourhood ice cream man’s jingle
the shrill of a drill on a construction site
the rev in the engine of a motorbike
Psycho acoustics disturb the human brain
Ungrounded, uneasy
microscopic vibrations of little consequence
Until pressure builds
Resonating and ripping apart
crumbling from the inside
Pacemakers skip heart beats
A jetfighter with zero concern
Casualties of shockwaves
The unseen explosion
Energy moves at unglimsable speed
Fragile ear drums shatter
Bridges fall
Buildings collapse
Destruction surrounds
Communities gasp
Mayhem unraveled
No mercy
Torture in Guantanamo
Heavy metal frequencies
Sound bombs used to disperse youth on Earth
Frequencies disjointed
A volume unregistered to man
Some sounds human ears can’t catch
Section 2
Beyond our five senses
Challenging human arrogance
Questioning the notion of ‘the unseen’
worlds beyond the wonders in a rainbow
ultraviolet infrared
animal eyes bare witness
humans unable to comprehend
devaluing what’s invisible to us all
vision always the focus
sound unappreciated by man
the superior sense overlooked
denying the full cinematic experience
ignoring journeys collated with sound
a universe to explore
infinite blessings for those with superhuman hearing
Ultra low frequencies a pitch human ears can’t fathom
Scientists speed playback to unmute the pitch for our ears
Sonifications, whistles and crunches
Ears see before our eyes
Space around our planet filled with plasma
far from empty
A cacophony
A string under tension
Magnetosphere a resonating chamber
Solar winds control the size
Magic frequencies
Constantly changing, retuning
The most complex of instruments
Composer and guitarist a mystery
Magnetic bubbles protection from space radiation
But sounds rain down upon us
Space weather a hundred years behind
Expanding to translate invisible weather in space
Men of faith believe in Jinn
Yet turn their head away when scientists explain
When they explore further than what meets the eye
In God’s universe
In this never ending discovery of its music
This intricately expressive universe
Section 3
If space plasma physicists met with aliens
Conversations they could have
Could span the spectra of language
conversing coyly with gestures not words
But communication between planets?
the size of a human difficult to explain
A metre unfathomable
Pondering on a shared metric
Universal laws
Conversing in the language of atoms
Physics and maths the metronome
Aliens and humans made of the same star stuff
Electrons in atoms
an atomic scale resonates
Electromagnetic radiator
Chords in a voice box
The chime in a pendulum
Tuned circuits in radio
The same interstellar station plays
Oscillations and waves recognised from a distance
Forming languages unspoken yet felt
Epilogue
The knowledge of a space scientist
Decoded in libraries full of physics books
How many who admire the hundred billion stars and euphoric moon
Celestial bodies, planets, comets and meteors
How many intrigued by musical compositions
How many pick up a maths or physics book
Further their knowledge of the universe’s vibrations
Will they remember waves in space
When they pluck on a guitar string
When the camels skin on their drum vibrates
Will they only admire musical composers
Will they make the correlation
Telescopic endurance
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5. |
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Do you agree with me when I say to you that Engineers save more lives than Medical doctors?
May be you don't believe me... but it's true ... sometimes true things are hard to believe because you don't see them.
Like is it true that we shouldn't walk on glass? But what if that glass is a bridge and it is your ONLY way to cross the valley !! Wouldn't you walk on glass?
You might not see it at first,
from a distance, the people seem
airborne, feet on clear ground -
until sun shines through,
sends fractal shadow from its edges,
suspended, an outline of the sky.
Sometimes,
the work that keeps us moving,
keeps planes flying, worlds connected,
happens without our knowledge.
Constancy keeps us safe,
blooms through purpose and civility
as we travel through it, clean
and free-flowing as water
from a tap.
You need to master intimacy
to create something big enough
for bodies to rely on.
Dismantle structure to reform
logic and wind life around
the corners of everything
we could create.
How do we translate material?
How do we sing the language of
lives that are unwittingly
saved every day?
By the gift of clean water to drink,
safety of roads lit all the way home,
love held in the blue light of a phone
trains connecting across cities,
shoes that carry us through heat,
these constants help us traverse oceans
they keep the world’s steadiest beat.
Unifiers, don’t happen by
accident. This is a force created
by the resilient, who read,
tinker and make. Whose hands
hold all that we do, and
humanity cloaks our own
as we learn to live in a world
of their design.
Let’s meet on that glass bridge,
in all its translucent strength
and talk about the invisible,
visible things that keep us alive
Oh yeah definitely Engineers save more lives than Medical doctors because Engineers provide clean drinking water in your tap so that you don't get diarrhoea and need doctors. They provide light so you can see in the dark and not fall, injuring yourself and hospitalised. Safe road and car so that the car stops when you press the break to avoid accident and being rush into hospital. Above all, Engineers gets ride of your wastes, toilet, bathroom, kitchen waste and recycle them to another clean drinking and fertilisers to grow our plants.
Surely you now agreed with me that Engineers save more lives than Medical doctors.
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6. |
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Observation
Common threads connect
In near infinite bifurcations of subdivision
commonalities run like warp threads
through time
a river
to intersect the weft
singular minds entwined
At this junction
a thought experiment
Where artist and scholar meet
Immediately they weave similarities between
sciences and performances as they speak
of how these activities breathe
through the communion with mortal instruments
an awareness of place
a vantage point from which to see
the granular detail that never belies a beach
Or denies that cliffs shall fall to the sea
as we become the effect
observed particle and wave
sharpening an image
folding the edge of a Mobius strip
to a single atom thick
Dialogue is weaving
Words are whittling
And conversations are by their very nature
Experimental and recursive
Carving like a river
Research
Artist and scholar at this junction
implicitly discuss the etymology of Trivia
How these feats of memory require bibliography
alluding to ancient Greece
to the lesser arts
Learned as a foundation to more serious science
Backwards and forwards they speak
Of ancient oral traditions of griot and bard
Of empiricism and method
And “First do no harm”
Common threads warp
to connect these lines of inquiry
to the repetition of doing time
to the repetition in the practice
of an apprenticeship
to the repetition of steps
on the journey to mastery
The lesson of Chinese Zodiac
that to ford the river
we often ride the shoulders of giants
bedevilled on their backs
The painstaking precision of practice
The repetition of the pipette wielding lab tech
Running parallel to the pen stroke
Of the side joke
Of the poet
In the weft
How chasing unattainable perfection
In the reproduction of conditions
Is always a rehearsal
For addressing a digital mass spec whirring
For preparing a mass in genuflection stirring
Auditoriums are universal
Divining for truth is piecemeal
And recursive
Hypothesis
There is a question that drives all design
In conversation
A syllogistic hypothesis
That this
is what The Fabric is
That every single experiment
is an attempt to contribute to
a conversation
and therefore, change our understanding
That every single piece of art
is an attempt to contribute to
a conversation
and therefore, change our perception
we cannot begin to understand
without perceiving
and we cannot perceive truly
without understanding
there is a question
that drives experimental design
that inspires conversation
after conversation
and this
is what The Fabric is
A syllogistic hypothesis
Run Experiment
Live and direct
Where it intersects
artist and scholar plot
which variables can be controlled
and which cannot
stitch together the masters
Konstantin Stanislavski and Pavlov
In the conditioning of all preparation
And breathe
This is the litmus test
Burning light and heat
Seeping towards entropy
the mission creep of chaos
into the order we seek
so speak clearly
have empathy
They say a performer has PRESENCE
So be present
Breathe
Remember
reactive materials need careful handling
Steadying apparatus has purpose
exchanging energies has inherent volatility
So warm things up slowly
Be present
Breathe
Precision is learned over a lifetime of practice
Conditioning is not an accident
It is part of a bigger picture
You are part of a bigger picture
Take in all around you
It will ground you
This moment is unique
so breathe
Analyse Data & Report
Dialogue is weaving
Words are whittling
And conversations are by their very nature
experimental and recursive
But like the architects of the great Gothic cathedrals
We trust the process
Never knowing where the conversation is going
Or even if
it will finish
We still contribute
We still lay our stone
to cement our place within it
Spinning through the loom
Never knowing how long our thread
Or where it eventually rests
And at this conjunction
At this confluence
the scholar is Dr Faustus
the artist is Robert Johnson
Common threads connect
near infinite bifurcations of subdivision
our commonalities run like warp threads
through time
intersecting the weft
where the singular mind entwines
we invest our souls
we lay our stone
we disturb the flow
and the river
is changed forever
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7. |
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(Daedalus)
I am Daedelus, the engineer,
Maker of machines, solver of problems.
Don’t come to me for elaborate metaphors,
But - hydraulics, levers and gears.
For plain words, that get things done.
So I did a thing or two for the Gods.
But none of this: ‘Here: be a constellation,
Twinkle as a star’. Not on your life.
My payment was to carry on my work
indefinitely, and that was good enough.
(Ada Lovelace)
They called me Ada, the Enchantress
Of Numbers. They placed me at the feet of Reason’s altar,
Went to the races.
Left me to the thorny mathematics of girlhood.
A child born in the shadow of the Great Father,
His countless kin. Man’s hubris was the kindling to my flame.
They wanted me to abandon the heart’s hydraulics ,
Each breathlessly illogical leap
Of romance. A turbulence I was warned against, weaned against.
They did not want to discuss this.
(Parry)
I went to the races.
I don’t understand your motives.
I don’t confide in strangers.
Let’s talk about something else.
It’s time you shared interest in my feelings.
I don’t want to discuss this.
(Ada Lovelace)
Lady Lovelace’s Objection. I gave my name to refusal.
Did not understand their motives.
Found no conflict,
Between the philosophy of drifting birds, between the poetry
Of shimmering dewdrops on grass & the humming whir
Of steam-powered engines. Shared interest with feelings.
The imagination knows no borders.
No dividing lines between the mind’s disciplines.
I never believed in a calculus of opposites.
At twelve, I tried to fly. Did not confide with strangers.
Oilsilk & feathered fancy, my wings first came to me
In a dream. Then, the hurried sketches.
Mechanisms given the flesh of metaphors.
The engine turns, the loom weaves.
Soft-petaled flowers. The shuffling geometry of cards.
(Daedalus)
Time to be practical.
To engineer moving statues,
machines, that can help me out.
Think of all the shock, all the - awe.
Just from gears: levers: hydraulics.
And my own skilled hands
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8. |
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Standing on a beach, I stare at the cliff.
A thin, black layer waxes and wanes in its sedimentary sandwich.
You have to get your eye in, but once you’ve seen it
You can follow this line through the rocks,
Where a catastrophic storm devastated a forest.
Huge trees came crashing down, and were washed downstream
Leaving logjams and debris.
A generation lost, all lost to decay,
Except for this tiny graveline.
I’m here to dig with a dessert spoon
To scoop out some deep time into an airline sick bag,
Plastic-lined to keep the history inside.
When I’ve collected enough
I take my muddy sick bag to a top-spec, spick-and-span lab,
tip it into a bucket
And pour on plenty of hot water,
Breaking down the earth. Oddly enough, the remains look like tea leaves.
Here I am, a fossil plant,
That dinosaurs once foraged on
Now stone-matured and so be warned
Make tea, drink me if you want
But I’m gritty with knowledge.
If hot water isn’t enough
I’ll add a hint of potassium hydroxide
Hydrofluoric acid will clean any rock off the tea-leaves - carefully, this stuff is like Alien blood,
A drop of this would eat straight through my bones,
It dissolves anything except plastic and the precious preserved plants.
I sieve out the fossils and I put them under the microscope.
Sort me. Find the interesting species
In the mess of history. Unweave ginkgo tree
from pine, unwind fragment and debris
From the wholer shape of leaves,
Hold on to these. Lift them free.
Look. You can see a cute little layer
called the cuticle, so waxy and waterproof it’ll
Resist the tooth of time and if you shine
Light through, it’ll still light up for you. Outline
The ancient cells I once used to infuse
Fresh air in my greenness. These holes
I could open and close to control water flow,
Tiny mouths to breathe the air.
Listen. You can almost hear
The petrified whisper of a bygone breeze.
I recognise this ginkgo. There is a living species like this tree, a single survivor.
Cultivated by Buddhist monks for thousands of years,
Since then it’s learned to live a city life, resilient and adaptable.
They’ve had to adjust as we’ve changed their world.
My thin beachrock line made of flash-flooded fossils
Has mountainous brethren: thick coal-beds, colossal
Bogs, woods and forests that lived back when mould
Was outpaced; when plant waste packed up uncontrolled.
Men dug up these graveyards and set them on fire.
Air’s carbon dioxide proportions rose higher
As millions of years of old woodlands were burned;
Meanwhile, the leaves of the ginkgo trees learned
They needed far fewer leaf-mouths to breathe in
The carbon they capture, where Victorian
Samples have holes packed much closer together
A trait most trees share: it’s not new-grown, just clever.
We can take our survivors and grow them in labs, with different kinds of air,
Mapping the precise relationship between carbon and mouths
And comparing this to their fossil brethren
Over deep time, the carbon levels we read from these leaves swoop and fall.
We can tell the story of carbon in many ways,
But the tea-leaves tell us the tale from the plant’s point of view.
They are exquisitely-tuned environmental sensors scattered through time.
You’re incinerating centuries of forests each day,
The living trees above the ground, the dead woods below,
You’ve burned to expand.
Putting us all in hot water,
Adding acid to our oceans,
Stripping away the earth.
Can you learn from the ginkgo
How to moderate your mouth in the face of excess
How to sense the changes around
How to adapt in a balancing act
That roots us in a lineage of millenia?
Because from the fossil point of view
You’ve made this huge mess of life in no time at all
When you haven’t even got your own layer of rock yet.
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9. |
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Fingers crossed
Crossed fingers
Lost tongue circle spirals in a drying mouth
Flutters
Mutters to self
Manage to find a side room that is quiet
I mistake the anxiety riot in my stomach for hunger
Adrenaline isn’t enough to sustain me
Peel back the skin
Wrap fingers around the flesh of soft yellow
Swallow
Breathe
Run fingers down forearm
Feel the goosebumps and sweaty palms
I sweat a lot
Trace the scar down the back of wrist
Hands are weirdly forgiving
Held tight by control pants and an industrial sports bra
A black second scaffolding skin of lycra
Hold it all in
Looking for the wrinkles that stay
Smooth the grooves, remember the lines
Everything needs to be lines
lined up with the door else I feel disorientated
Digits dive into dark tunneled sleeves,
The nervousness unfurls into command
full bloom …
Fingertips feel round the back
tie up the gown
A reinforced cuff of the neck
Someone else ties up knots behind
The constriction reassures me
I won’t fall out
My back protected from exposure
Double knot scuffs against my skin
Numb fingers, touch thin, miss this
But you don't see me till I’m ready
I run for a last minute wee
There is always a last minute wee
We pace, my body and me, we
Pull up sleeves
Push the wall
Push the fear back
Stall the imposter
Fall back
Attempt to sit into my body,
Ground and group limbs together
Prevent them from running
No one forced our hand
Breathe deep
Stomach flips
Teeter on the edge
Heels cling to the back step
Toes grasping
Toes gasping
Accelerate of acid heart rate
Beat, beat, beat
quickening metronome
Crescendo heat radiates from beneath the bones
Pulse in fingers, red up my arms
Thumbs up
Like I’m coming up
Red neck red breast red breath
Lungs pinch and cry out sigh
Momentarily self rising and watching on from high
The inhales shake
The exhales rattle and quake
Catch breath
Cresting the wave of an orgasm
Heart beat hard heat head butting the walls of my ribcage
The ribs are too small to encompass the breath I must harness
The first line always shakes me
The danger
The risk to see if I can do this
Sore thumb stuck out suck down
Ignore the alarms,
Reading them is easy
Ignoring them is the pro move
May I start?
Caught word in throat, cough it out
Hypersalivation
Dry mouth salvation
Spit
Spit it out then
How far would you sink if I left you asleep in the sand?
Hollow space held, the breath has left
a religious epiphany
Breathless
Two fingers tight before anyone can breathe out again
Check it holds
Hold breath between stitches
Check it holds
Skin itches with electricity
Deep lines of worry punctured with oxytocin
Pat back, clap hands, clap back
I hope I’ve done enough
Crossed fingers
Reassurance teeters on the edge
hand in hand with insecurity
Tugging on the ends
Fingers burned
There is no applause
Applaud the artistry
Quite a feat
Neat wounds stitched tunes back in
A desirable dexterity
Worked fingers to bone
Silence accompanies the descent back home
And I’m alone again
We’re not homunculi
A little human inside a brain driving meat
We are a lived in body
We are cognition and intuition
We are ambition,
Thinking, Feeling, surging and bleeding
We are difficulty in defining,
Elusive and explorable
we can’t fully quantify it
We are description defying
But we’re trying.
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10. |
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Science says:
I am big
I am broad
I am expansive
Art says
I am your heart
How you live
I am reactive
Science says
You need patience
The will to learn,
Maybe even a degree
Art says
I am a shapeshifter
Tell me what you need,
And that, I'll be
Science says
Well, yeah I am all of that too
I am how you get from a to b
I am the result of what you choose
Art says
I change lives
Science shouts
So have I,
I can be both the reason you live
and the reason you die.
See science has impacted everything
It knows the who’s, what’s, and whens
art has changed the face of the world,
where you go, what you do, how you spend
They both know what it means to be needed but not valued
For people to congratulate them at their destination
But not check in during the journey.
They both carry life, uphill, on their backs
and yet still have to beg for a sustainable rucksack.
They have seen greed hold progress ransom.
With release not offered because of need,
But because the profit margin has increased.
and students studying not based on talent alone
but because they have the means.
You can see,
look how much money goes into arms,
and how little into conservation.
How we’d rather wage war,
then give a decent wage to art and science past graduation.
We have seen the effects when communities and
scientists work together,
from flashing lights to ward off lions
to the Elephants and Bees in Kenya.
The progress of science, art, technology
is never the idea of just one person,
it is a mixing pot of backgrounds and
cultures, all of whom are determined.
The population of this planet has quadrupled
in the last 100 years,
so issues, conflicts and questions that haven’t
been asked before, are starting to appear.
More people has meant less animals
both trying to co-exist
both trying to find food and water
both trying to protect their land and kids.
Using citizen science and the knowledge of the locals
we can develop infrastructure for coexistence using the tools at our disposal
but without investment, sometimes that means hunting,
for both the animals and the humans,
both doing what they can
to live off the changing lands
of which they used to be fluent
and 4 and a half thousand miles away,
we stand in town centres with catchy chants and placards
demonising a way of life we don't live,
as if the right to be enraged, is ours.
In Britain, most children can identify a giraffe before a magpie
as if you can spot one outside the shop,
which means the needs of local animals are overlooked and forgot
and we do things like, shut schools in London,
For a “poisonous spider” that actually hasn't killed anyone.
False Widow Spiders have been in the UK for around
100 years, and rather than a quick google search,
we believed the tabloids, rather than consult
someone who's dedicated their life to research.
Science and Art work in the same way,
people want the product without investing,
they want the life changing discovery, the knowledge
with no understanding of how we get there.
The local fishermen in Kollam now collect the plastic in their nets,
which they now use and reproduce
to fill the potholes in the roads
from the plastic they’ve compressed
and in some places
scientists have fitted seabirds
with surveillance to suppress
the illegal fishing in our oceans
because the birds follow the nets (mess)
See science has impacted everything
It knows the who’s, what’s, and whens
and when it works with communities,
it best shapes the world we are in.
Learning and sharing knowledge,
at the same time means we are all part of the process
enabling communities to broaden their scientific literacy
allows scientists to research things they didn’t notice.
and science says:
I am big
I am broad
I am expansive
I am your heart
How you live
I am reactive
You need patience
The will to learn,
Maybe even a degree
Science says
I am a shapeshifter
Tell me what you need,
And that, I'll be
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Produced by Dr Illingworth & Mr Simpson with support from Nymphs and Thugs. Audio engineering by Chris Drohan.
Supported by Arts Council England.
released June 23, 2021