So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here
Seamus Heaney in Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh
tugaimid onóir do na tailte seo
•September 14, 2021 • Leave a CommentGabhaim molta Bríghde, iníon í le hÉireann
Iníon le gach tír í, molaimís go léir í.
Lóchrann geal na Laighneach, soils’ ar feadh na tíre
Ceann ar óigheacht Éireann, ceann na mban ar míne.
Tig an Geimhreadh dian dubh, gearra lena géire
Ach ar lá le Bríghde, gar dúinn Earrach Éireann.
Gabhaim molta Bríghde, iníon í le hÉireann
Iníon le gach tír í, molaimís go léir í.
Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, Gabhaim Molta Bríghde
Music by Dowd Donall Gillespie and Aoife Ní Fhearraigh,
Thanks to the support of Una on Rathlin Island and her hospitality
This forms of documentation of my ongoing series; Dance: Earth
Mall go n-ardóidh
•September 13, 2021 • Leave a Comment
Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
Is turning and the waves of darkness
Begin the brighten the shore of of Dawn.
The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light
The heart fills with fresh, bright, breath
And thoughts stir, to give birth
to colour.
I arise today
Womb of the word
In the name of stillness
Home of belonging
In the name of the Soul and Earth.
I arise today.
( Martins . In O’Donohue. D ( (1998) Eternal Echoes. Bantam Press. GB.)
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world is more full of weeping than you can understand
( Yeats, The Stolen Child)
Mall go n-ardóidh forms part of an ongoing reseach process: (Earth Dance: Environmental Dance scholarship)
le grá gan teorainn
•December 2, 2019 • Leave a Comment
le grá gan teorainn.
i gciorcail
Perhaps the rock does not wait for the wave
we breathe
an endless circle
to complete.
ar imeall fiáin den chuardach scanraithe seo
•August 15, 2019 • Leave a Commenton the wild edge
of this scared search.
Music: Dowd Dónall Gillespie.
Location: An tSrúibh
Filimed by Beatrice Jarvis
on the wild edge
of this scared search.
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside which is unbreakable
and whole
while learning to sing.
Rashani Réa
The space between presence and absence
There rests a pearl of heather, caught between arriving and departing.
To have and to hold
There is a space where there can be no names.
A formality in this passing place.
We sit.
Waiting and not waiting.
Being in this space, known and unknown.
The cormorant does not notice. The cow stares on, blank, without a need.
Circling wind, holding grace.
Where will the wind hide?
Between being
A barnacle
Moss
song
A thread between worlds
seeking, falling, rising, falling,
to heal, to hurt, to love,
On this sacred edge
to neither fall nor recover
simply to be.
ar an deasghnátha
•May 18, 2018 • Leave a Comment
“The eco-somatic concept that body sensibility and conscious action can facilitate planetary awareness”
This research process is seeking to explore what Deborah Bird Rose refers to an ‘emplaced ecological self’ that is permeable where, ‘place penetrates the body, and the body slips into place’ (2002: 312).
My entire practice is seeking to explore the possibility of somatic practice to generate a process through which I can articulate the specific natures, narratives, and sensations of the landscapes which I traverse. The real question; one familiar with all disciplines remains constant:
How do I embody and articulate my experience of time and space?
This form of somatic practice does not always have tangible outcomes; as East asks: “What does this kind of somatic research contribute towards the world of knowledge? Can we seek to understand habitation of previous others to a place through our own experience and imaginings? Eco-somatic research lies somewhere amongst this quiet action and contemplative stillness.
There is a need for stillness in this ever faster world; the need to tread very slowly; to count the grass stalks and to watch the woodlouse cross the wooden table as I write these words. Dance to me is a form of learning; of knowing and of deep listening. This is very much on a personal level and when this is applied with a more socially conscious stance and this process of deep listening is applied to a wider cultural context; as Fraleigh explores: “Dancing can be employed as a language promoting change in the Anthropocene.
Through my habitation, working and workshopping in particular landscapes of Donegal; I seek to explore the idea that it is indeed: ‘possible to move beyond something called ecological or sustainable performance to a consciousness of regenerative performance.
This means aspiring not simply to leave things in as good a condition as we find them, but to create the conditions in which they can begin to revive, regenerate and thrive.
I use the process of making films and workshops in these particular landscapes as a mechanism to develop an ecologically aware dance practice which supports, nurtures and enriches a sense of place.
In her seminal chapter Ritual is everything, Chappelle asks us to question: “How can we learn from the Salmon” Taking specific parts of an ecological system and tracing how their habits and routes can expand and deepen our understanding of a particular landscape or place and eventually that of ourselves.
As Heidegger explains: ‘Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating the space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.’ It takes both time and ritual for real dwelling.”
Light of sun
Radiance of Moon
Splendor of Fire
Speed of Lightning
Depth of sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock
This search for the possibility of deep peace.
I return to standing still in the fern.
My feet buried deep into the earth.
I am listening to the sound of trees
welcoming the light of the day.
Gary Snyder calls this practice ; “the real work” the work of really looking at ourselves and becoming more real.
As he most aptly states:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
Let us consider this term; Learn the flowers. I equate this to a strong summary of the deep investigation of self in Landscape which can be linked to the explorations of the self in the Eastern Taoist study. Taoism tells us there is a way of unfolding which is inherent in all things.
The poem; Recovering our Roots in the Tao Te Ching further develops this;
And see
Now all things rise
To flourish and return
Each creature coming home
To recover its roots.
To give a wider context to the term deep ecology: David Rothenberg describes the term as a way of transforming society; exploring how in order to do this we first need to transform ourselves. Arne Ness also describes the ecological self as: “that with which this person identifies. This key sentence emphasis here is that rather than definition about the self-shifts the burden of clarification from the term self to that of identification.
This work can be seen a ritual pilgrim; a journey of transformation which was a personal ritual and process to overcome the grief of losing my close friend to suicide. In some ways, this all began in the process of running away; from turning to landscape in search of answers and healing. Akin to Buddhist practice exploring the transformation of suffering into healing and relating this to the principles of deep ecology; sensing nothing can be changed and everything can be done. There is a strong optimism and inquiry within my work exploring the concept of healing earth and self through practice.
This work was shared at CIG 2018: http://www.conferenceofirishgeographers.ie/
a bheith máthair
•April 7, 2017 • Leave a Comment
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
( Wendell Berry: The peace of Wild Things)
Tired of all who come with words but no language
I went to this Island,
The wild does not have words.
The unwritten pages spread themselves in all directions!
I come across deer’s hooves in the snow
Language, but no words.
( Tomas Transtromer)
The Gift of Earth
We are the earth
The Macrocosm
and the Microcosm
We are creation
We are the fertile force
Creating life from the natural alchemy of union
We are continuous cycles of life
cells inside cells
regenerating through cycles
of death and regeneration.
We are the stabilising force of time and matter,
abundant infinite manifestation through the web of life.
We are more than our surface reality.
We are the dark inner world of infinite possibility,
incubation.
a seed.
( Glennie Kindred, Elements of Change)
When I see your face, the stones start spinning!
You appear; all studying wanders.
I lose my place.
In your presence I don’t want what I thought
I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.
Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
Seem like rusty mirrors.
You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread
as Spring begins to move
like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
~
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
~
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
~
Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.
But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.
( Rumi. A Great Wagon)
Rinneadh scannánú i nDún na nGall,
Earrach 2017 le Saoirse Ciela Allegra Gillespie-Jarvis.
Scannán ag Beatrice Jarvis Le cabhair ó Dowd Dónall Gillespie.
Le dóchas agus grá
Anam Cara
•July 26, 2016 • Leave a Comment
Studies in a changing home
The body as home
An Archive to changed state
Moving now as mother
Moving as being
Moving as body
The landscape listens
softly to lie in the flax
To carry
To hold
To nurse
To heal
Beannacht
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
( John O’Donohue )
“Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed.” ( John O’Donohue )
Perhaps here I arrived again
To find route and to run free
to root and earth
fall and rise
Moving
A new form as yet unknown
this dance becoming
a search
My feet wanting to bury deep into the earth
The mind left
Of constellations, the day and its discontent will always fade
How can I move now
Take root
Steady
“Your body is your clay home; your body is the only home that you have in this universe. It is in and through your body that your soul becomes visible and real for you. Your body is the home of your soul on earth.”
“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”
Walking now
A new version of home as my body shifts
This form
a Journey
as yet unknown.
This film was made in Donegal in 2016 in collaboration with Dowd Donall Gillespie
B’fhéidir anseo tá mé saor in aisce.
•June 26, 2016 • Leave a CommentB’fhéidir anseo tá mé saor in aisce.
(A study in the possibility of the sensations of home)
I lie under the blanket of the forest
I lie in the shield of heather as a ram inspects my feet
I am here
I walk up the steep bank carrying my wares
Handmade twine as treasure
My House
I build
My body
A Shelter
I will rise with the sun and
Fall between the stream and gorse
Perhaps here I am free.
“As we become a more transient society, we tend to define home by the accumulation of possessions as much as by place.” (Busch: Geography of Home)
Can performance / walking / ritual and entering a dialog with landscape through conscious body awareness become a platform for deconstructive ecopsychology.
As part of Language, Landscape and the Sublime conference I will be hosting a workshop exploring notions of home as personal and spatial embodied methodology.
This workshop has been developed from an experience I had in Poland submerged deep in the forest, attempting to become a part of the forest, attempting to find home.
In this short workshop we shall explore a sample of practice based methodologies to explore notions of home as different internal and external states in relation to landscape; using the concept of home a means to explore how we relate to social and ecological concerns within our environmental frames of reference.
For full details of the symposium please see here:
The füll workshop document can be read below
‘ We are the mirror.
as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are the pain
and what causes pain, both. We are the sweet cold water
and the jar that pours. (Rumi)’
As Stoller indicates; ‘ To accept sensuousness in scholarship is to eject the conceit of control in which the mind and the body, self and other are considered separate.’ This research takes to it core the symbiosis of the connection of mind and body as the ecology of self and place, forming a cohesive site of collaboration between the two. The body is mirror to all experience, each motion and breath an archive to the experience of the living being.
‘The epidermis of the skin is ecologically like a pond’s surface or a forest soil, not a shell so much as a delicate interpenetration. It reveals the self as ennobled and extended, as part of the landscape and the ecosystem.’
Ar feadh na Saoirse Ciela Allegra Gillespie-Jarvis.
•April 29, 2016 • Leave a Comment
Ar feadh na Saoirse Ciela Allegra Gillespie-Jarvis.
A bheannacht fíor.
This forms a part of a new series I made whilst carrying my daughter, exploring how the body changes and shifts as her life formed inside me. Working with familiar movement mediatations from continued somatic embodied techniques, this series explores a new trio, of mother and daughter and landscape.
Music by Natalie Merchant. Nursery Ryhme of Innocence and Experience and Staring Directly Into the Sun (EP) by Tvärvägen
Poems by W.B Yeats and Christina Rossetti.
For Miss Gillespie-Jarvis. Born 17th February 2016.
Filmed in An tSrúibh Co. Donegal.
Urban re:passages 