I am currently writing and directing a project which will be performed in June. It is called The Swallows. The Swallows is performed by Helen Morse, Ria Soemardjo and Helen Mountfort, with designer Joanne Mott, all extremely accomplished artists crossing different areas of performance and art. It is a sensory sound and vocal based work, genre bending in how it communicates across the forms of voice, music, text and design.

The work originated from an audio guided work composer and vocalist Ria Soemardjo and I were commissioned to create during COVID lockdowns. The idea of this piece stems from the fact that I spend a lot of time walking. Walking has been very healing for me. Walking is the dramatic structure of a lot of this work. Because when we walk, there is a sort of theatre that takes place. It is the mundane, the passing rhythms of trees and birds, people and the interaction of wind, water and plants. But also, thoughts. How our thoughts become a theatre, interacting with the external world. As we walk, we are often deeply invested in the theatre of our life, not even aware we are engaging in theatre as we mull over things. We reflect over the series of intersecting narratives of our lives, playing themselves out. Really, for most of us it is a soap opera. With ongoing repeated episodes which basically have the same story line, just different characters and circumstances. To me, this interplay of our thoughts with the external world is just as fascinating as any story playing out between external characters.

As I walk, I use it as an opportunity as much as I can to be present. Centred. To connect with nature, with the birds, with the here and now. Sometimes as I walk I talk with what I imagine to be my higher self. I ask for guidance to navigate life. My higher self lives in the future of my dreams, has the courage to speak the truth, with unconditional love. My higher self knows how to fly above the ongoing cycles of circumstance and is no longer tethered to what others think or the opinions of anyone. My higher self creates from a place of love. Any discomfort I feel, is minimal compared with this. A couple of blog posts ago I wrote about my housing situation, and other stressful things happening in my life. But if I focus on my higher self in this way, it always guides me to expand beyond stressful situations. And the more I do this, all of the things which have held me back, the repeated cycles of lack of self worth from childhood for example, have less hold on me.

So my experience of walking is often like this, flicking between the drama of what ever is going on in my 3D world, and the freedom I feel to fly high above fear, connecting with my higher self towards the future I want.

The Swallows is really a work about this. It’s about someone who walks, mind going between the mundane dramas of life, and the will to fly. And as they walk they slowly free themselves, and become more and more birdlike, eventually like an embryonic bird in an egg, they become too big for the old universe they have inhabited. They naturally put a crack in the shell just through their natural expansion. And that is when they are able to effortlessly push the shell open and expand into a new universe, and everything in their environment follows, and suddenly they have a new expanded universe to play in.

This is the opening text of the Swallows. It’s starts and ends with a bird at different stages of life. In between is the human story.

1:

Dripping eye of invention

flap of wings

Squawking spill of life

X meets Y comes I

Dividing then dividing inside hardening membrane

Laid into a cup of hard mud and grass          

12 days unfurling under warmth

which comes and goes but mostly stays

mostly warm, I form

soft bone into wing

soft cartilage into beak

expanding like the universe I am.

We all are that universe.

expanding

till so compressed

the slightest movement cracks open

all previous notions.

Influx of air.

With no resistance

I stretch

this universe open

broken shell all around

naked skin against fledgling skin

first vibration of vocal folds

chit chit chit

eyes closed

chit chit chit

wriggling under soft under feathers

warmth

baring down.

Chit chit chit chit…..

Bookings are now open for this work here.

I strongly advise you book, if you can make it, as one show is already almost booked out!

By the way, if you want to support my work, and are looking for a hoodie, these designs also are connected to walking, collecting plants along the way and turning them into art works which ended up on hoodies and t-shirts! They are so soft and warm. Check our shop out here if you are interested.

Thank you!