Deborah Richardson-Webb
Head of Performance Pedagogy, The Royal Academy of Music and Drama

Well Trodden Paths

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Nelson Mandela

Meeting Jules in that Edinburgh café last July to discuss the Natural Change Project, I was intrigued to learn that the second week would be held somewhere I had visited many times.  In some ways I felt destined for that journey and in other ways I knew it may feel strange to return.

In 1990 the following entry in a holiday brochure drew my attention,

“At the heart of Glenprosen, one of the renowned ‘Glens of Angus’, lies the Balnaboth Estate on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park; 6,000 peaceful and secluded acres surrounding 16th-century Balnaboth House. In its midst, these five characterful holiday cottages each offer a unique and magical holiday retreat for couples; indeed the creator of Peter Pan himself (Sir James Barrie) was born in nearby Kirriemuir and holidayed here.

These cottages were once occupied by shepherds, gardeners or other staff of the Ogilvy family when this was a traditional Victorian sporting estate. Red squirrels play in the trees, otters frequent the burns, and deer graze all around. Because of the varied scenery, that varies from beech woods to forest, pasture to heather moor, mountain streams to river pools, the area enjoys a spectacular range of wildlife, including species largely extinct elsewhere in Britain, such as black game and ptarmigan.

Good road, rail and air access to Angus provide easy access from all parts of the UK or international destinations. Shop 9-10 miles.”

We stayed first in Braeshalloch in October 1990 and from 1996 until 2004 we stayed in the Gardener’s Bothy, The Laundry, Pitcarity and Burnmouth Cottage.  I had trodden these paths many times.

October 1990

It is twenty one years since this photograph was taken and seven years since my last visit, I know it may feel strange to go back.

A Morning Dérive, Glasgow City Centre

“In a dérive[i] one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.  Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”

Guy Debord 1958

My threshold – sliding doors.

I wait for the second hand to reach o’clock – it’s 11.15am.

I cross the threshold and walk under the tall brick arch…

Renfrew Street

Wait cross with care

Savoy Centre

Wear a protective face mask

Sauchiehall Street into Wellington Street

Wear ear defenders and steel toe-capped boots

Bath Street

Dial 999 and ask for ambulance

Blytheswood Road

Wait cross with care

Blytheswood Square

Private property enter at own risk

My planned place, a little green space in the city, I plan to sit on a bench in this small park and watch the city pass by.  There are no benches!  I contemplate sitting on the ground or a wastebin.  The feeling of liberation I felt walking with my pockets empty, carrying nothing, without ‘phone or money, now turns to feeling ill-equipped as I haven’t brought my little sit mat.  I feel sitting on the top of the bin will attract too much attention – I may look like a strange performance art installation and decide being on the top of a waste bin is definitely not what I want to say about myself!  I continue…

Douglas Street

No entry

St Vincent Street

Wait cross with care

Pitt Street

St Vincent Lane

I now plan to get up high.  I have a memory of steps and a place with a view but I find locked gates.  I sit on the concrete steps beside a sign

24 hour emergency fire access

My company, a plastic bin full of empty Red Bull cans and a Vauxhall Vectra with a broken wing mirror.  I am behind an Alexander ‘Greek’ Thompson building.  I wonder how I will know my 90 minutes are over, I have given myself plenty of time – I’m not teaching until 2pm.  I look up and see I am underneath a tall clock tower.

I am warm but the concrete steps are cold.  I take off my leather gloves and sit on them.  My space is five metres by ten metres.  I can see;

A locked car

A locked gate

A locked bicycle

A locked plant pot filled with concrete and chained to the railings.

I think of the suffragettes.  I am leaning against a railing.  I wonder if some of the radical suffragette actions were a bit like a solo?  What did a suffragette wear when planning to chain herself to railings indefinitely?  I can hear;

A pneumatic drill

Cars

Buses

Brakes

Seagulls

The hammering of metal on stone.

I look for signs of something growing.  The architectural patterns on the church are abstractions of natural forms, weathered and worn, blackened by years of smoke and grime.  I can see some tiny green weeds and some moss growing at the bottom of the building in the cracks, irrepressible weeds.

The clock says noon.  (Sitting on my gloves is really helping and I’m pleased with my idea.)  I realise I am worried about the time.  There are consequences to my solo time spilling over today.  I realise I am not sitting under this clock tower by accident.

There’s so much to look at.  Sensory overload.  One of the stone blocks to my left has been dislodged.  The wall, the dislodged stone, the manufactured materials;

Concrete

Plastic

Paper

Paint

Rubber

Glass

All testify to the presence of humans, human endeavour, human intervention, human invention.

I’m such a scribbler at these times, perhaps on my next solo I should leave my notebook behind, see what of the flotsam and jetsam survives over time – days, weeks, years.

The hands on the clock seem to speed round.  My glove trick has stopped working.  The sun has clouded over and my feet are getting cold.  It’s time to walk back.  15 minutes walk, 1 hour to sit, 15 minutes walk.  I have an urge to go inside the church before I leave;

Visitors welcome

It’s locked.

I walk more slowly back but I want to retrace my steps.

St Vincent Lane

Pitt Street

St Vincent Street

Douglas Street

Blytheswood Square

Blytheswood Road

Bath Street

Wellington Street

Sauchiehall Street

Savoy Centre

Renfrew Street

Give way

I re-cross my threshold at 12.49

Every branch big with it

This poem, so evocative from my childhood, has been in my head as I’ve looked at the trees covered in hoar frost, then snow, then hoar frost again…

Snow in the Suburbs

by Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,

Bent every twig with it;

Every fork like a white web-foot;

Every street and pavement mute:

Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when

Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.

The palings are glued together like a wall,

And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,

Whereon immediately

A snow-lump thrice his own slight size

Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,

And overturns him,

And near inurns him,

And lights on a nether twig, when its brush

Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,

Up which, with feeble hope,

A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;

And we take him in.

Traveller, There Is No Path

In truth, I have found it hard since my return from Knoydart.  Hard to process my experience, hard to readjust, hard to hold on, hard to blog!

On my return I felt very alive, hyper-sensitized.  Alive to the beauty in everything (particularly my fellow human beings), alive to the land I inhabit everyday, alive to the words of others, alive to the lessons in all that surrounds me.

Everything felt important and connected. But if everything is important and connected how do I pay enough attention to it all?  I realize that in order to survive, to get through our daily lives, we attach importance to very little that is really important. Paying the kind of attention that living and not merely surviving demands, slows me down, causes me pain, makes it hard to move forward with certainty.

I have felt very lost since then.  I have lost my ability to prioritize my everyday tasks.  What I feel needs my proper attention is out of kilter with what seems to be being demanded of me by others.  I have lost my sense of time.  I feel I need to slow down when the world seems to be demanding my speeding up.  I even think I’ve lost my sense of humour.  Nothing feels very funny right now.  Humour seems to be located in a negativity towards others and Knoydart had been a time lived without negativity, a time to interrogate what needed my proper attention, a time to see others and the world around me in the most positive way.

I spend a good deal of time explaining to my students how precious it is to be lost, how it is from this place that more creative possibilities exist than any other place.  ‘Learn to love being lost,’ I say, ‘surrender to it, stay open to the lessons to be found this place’.

So, now I find that I don’t know where I am and I’m unsure of where I’m going, unsure of my purpose, unsure of my agency.  I reflect on my solo and how strong I felt on that day, how being lost led to being fully present.  Then I remember this line from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado,

Traveller, there is no path, 
the path is made by walking.

I resolve to keep walking…I will make my steps deliberately slow.

Soul-O

I have a story to tell, it is in 49 parts:

1.      I am more afraid than I expect when I leave.  It is too dark to see the lay of the land.

2.      I soon realise that I will never get to where I want to go and so I settle on here – a grassy knoll by a tidal inlet that flows to the sea.

3.      My place is imperfect.  As the day breaks I see that I am too close to a footpath (Knoydart in a Knutshell) and I can see the rooftops of two dwellings.  Over the day people pass; two ladies speaking German, a family with four small children, Penny the beagle has two walks today.  I so wanted to be more remote.

4.      My sleeping bag is my best friend.

5.      I sleep on an off for what feels like a long time.  I am very comfortable.

6.      I wonder if I will be able to commit to my imperfect place for the whole day.

7.      I spend time thinking about my pursuit of perfection.

8.      I ask if I am in the right place…nothing!  I resolve to commit to my place.

9.      I decide to create a circle of contemplation.  It will be 10m in diameter.  I will mark it with stones.  I choose quartz after making peppermint sparks with Morag last night.

10. I carry 125 stones from the riverbed.

11. I sleep again in my marked place.

12. I am woken by a strange knocking sound; a kind of ‘gloop, gloop’.  It is the water against the bank – the tide is coming in.  It has risen a lot while I have slept.  I move my ground mat and my sleeping bag to the top of my circle of stones.

13. I feel vaguely stupid.  I recognise my inexperience.  I am a learner.

14. Wide-awake, I listen to the chatter in my head.  I wait for it to quieten.

15. The drizzle comes.  I get into my survival bag.  The drizzle stops.  I fold my survival bag and find that it won’t go back into its original pack.  Once it’s out there, there’s no putting it back!

16. The sounds are magnified.

17. I hear them building ‘affordable housing for Knoydart’.

18. I hear two gunshots reverberate around the hills.  I see the image of the stag being dismembered in the game larder yesterday.

19. It’s the dry leaves that make the most deafening sound as they crash to the ground.

20. The rutting stags roar relentlessly.

21. As I circle for the 21^st time, I cry for my father.  He died in my 21^st year and I feel present in that distant time.  Dad feels very close here.

22. The tide has gone right out.  The landscape has completely changed.  It has revealed itself.

23. I realise that I am here to experience the turn of the tide.  I will wait.

24. I paint the view.  It is a poor painting but I commit to it.

25. It seems so simple; go out when day breaks, come home when night falls.  Why is it so hard to do the simple things?

26. My sleeping bag is still my best friend.

27. The day is uneventful, a little mundane and truly amazing.

28. I imagine creating rituals to help me ‘let go’ but settle on watching the receding tide – a ritual not of my making.  My ritual is to be still and watch.

29. I write in my journal.  I try to be in a stream of consciousness.  I write too much.  I stop writing.

30. I think about my friend and his present pain – his pain is very close to me now.

31. I consider my silty pond.  I wonder if I am in a constant state of stirring, never allowing the silt to settle?  Today I try to let the silt sink slowly to the bottom.

32. I trust this process.

33. I trust this process because I feel I am walking in the footsteps of a much older tradition.  I value this connection with the past.

34. This is a BIG thing to do.

35. I wonder what we have gained since the industrial revolution?

36. I go for a pee.  There’s an empty can of Tennents in the gorse bush.  Here for God’s sake, even here!

37. The greyness of the day makes it difficult to discern the earth turning.

38. I am still in the same place.  I have made a commitment.  I feel strong.

39. Funny how solo could be soul-o.

40. I think of my sister and her new solo time.  I wonder how she is.

41. The difficulties of earlier I now see as resistance – resistance – resistance.  I’m glad this has melted away.

42. I feel I could stay all night.

43. I think today has been my transition from one phase to the next.  Nothing remarkable has happened, I haven’t seen a golden eagle, I haven’t seen a stag, I haven’t cried with loneliness or fear but I have designated this day.  It is a good day to designate.  I name this day as the gentle ebb of one phase of being into acceptance of my next phase of being.

44. The geese fly over reminding me of home.  I remember my first blog.  I think of finding my way back from a distant place.  I think of finding my way back to myself.

45. The landscape turns monochrome.

46. Dawn and dusk are bookends and today they are a mirror image.

47. I walk around my circle of stones 49 times.  I give thanks for each year as I travel.  I leave.

48. The tipi glows like a beacon.  Emotion catches my throat as I approach the threshold.  I feel strong.  The tears surprise me.  I feel the strength of being back in the group.  I feel very held in this moment.

49. This morning, walking towards the tipi in silence, the landscape feels different.  No longer just my ‘view’, I have lived here – for a while.

That’s my story.

Stirring the Silt

At our orientation day Dave talks about life being like a pond and how we can go through life without disturbing the silt if we choose to.  Or, we can muddy the waters by stirring up the silt with a stick, which prevents it from settling on the bottom for a while.  He says the Natural Change process offers that stick – it’s an invitation.  It’s up to us what we do with the stick – we can stir gently at the top of the pond trying to disturb nothing or we can take the stick and give the silt a good old deep stir!

By way of an explanation of the emotional demands the Knoydart week may hold for me, I tell my students about the pond.  It strikes me as I offer the analogy, that the process of the CPP* degree programme asks the students to do a lot of stirring of their own and they are vaguely amused at the thought of me on my own emotional journey.

I consider my mature pond.  I think it has been well planted over the years but I also allow myself to consider that I may have a sediment or silt problem that has accumulated over time.

As I leave the building on the Friday before Knoydart, I pass a student who smiles broadly and says, ‘Bye and good luck with the stick!’

*BA Contemporary Performance Practice

Beyond Dualism

Today, thinking about what we have shared together over the last two days and how we have shared it, I offered this text to our new students. It is from an essay by Jeanette Armstrong called ‘Keepers of the Earth‘.[1] She is a Native American from the Okanagan peoples and writes the essay from this perspective.

‘The emotional self is differentiated from the body-self, the thinking, intellectual self, and the spiritual self. In our language, the emotional self is thought of as the part with which we link to other parts of our larger selves around us. We use a term that translates as “heart”. It is a capacity to bond and firm attachment with particular parts and aspects of our surroundings. We say that we as people stay connected to each other, our land, and all things by our hearts.

As Okanagans we teach that this is an essential element of being whole, human and Okanagan. We never ask a person “What do you think? Instead we ask, “What is your heart on this matter?” ‘

I make a wish for their future:

“I hope your heart goes first.”

I make a wish for myself in Knoydart:

“I hope my heart goes first.”[2]

[2] With acknowledgement to Junction 25 for one of the best performance titles I know.

Orientation

On the 28 September we had our ‘orientation’ day at the Scottish Book Trust.  So, I have been thinking about orientation and beginnings.

A definition: orientation

Pronunciation:/ˌɔːrɪənˈteɪʃ(ə)n, ˌɒr-/

Noun [mass noun]

• 1 the action of orienting someone or something relative to the points of a compass or other specified positions
• [count noun] the relative position or direction of something
• Zoology the faculty by which birds and other animals find their way back to a place after going or being taken to a place distant from it
• 2 a person’s basic attitude, beliefs, or feelings in relation to a particular subject or issue
• 3 familiarization with something
• (also orientation course) chiefly North American a course giving information to newcomers to a university or other institution

We have lived at The Lint Mill for one year on October 1^st.  We are beginning a new year.  I am working with first year undergraduates at RSAMD.  We are beginning a new year.

The last of the swallows nesting in our stables have gone but now every evening thousands of pink-footed geese are flying over our house in noisy battalions.  They have found their way back.  In my class we talk of beginnings, we think about where we have come from.  We are in a distant place trying to find our way forward.

Next week I go to Knoydart.  I’m hoping to orientate myself from a distant place.  I’m hoping to find my way back.