Deeds Not Words

Alternative Title #1:  ‘How the Suffragettes Invented Performance Art’[1]

Alternative Title #2:  Railing in the Wind

In advance of our Glen Prosen week we were given a ‘social change’ assignment.  I chose the suffragettes.  I am interested in many aspects of this chapter in our history and it’s legacy but for my research I wanted to consider my personal connection with the topic.

Two aspects became very present for me during this time;

• I was interested in perfomativity and I wanted to examine the connections between the actions of the suffragettes and my own work in teaching performance.  For this aspect I revisit Leslie Hill’s article.

• I was interested in the power of direct action and how some actions become transformed into iconic images, which remain in our collective consciousness long after the event.  For this aspect I consider the women who chained themselves to the railings of the Parliament buildings.

To address the first, I stand on the Hill of Spott in Glen Prosen, beside a tree.  I have tied my WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) scarf to a branch and the green, purple and white flaps in the high wind.  My colleagues sit around the tree.  I tell them about Nic Green’s Trilogy[2] and we hum ‘Jerusalem’ together in memory of the suffragettes and in tribute to Nic’s work.

I hurl my words into the wind,

• The personal IS political
• The body is the site of oppression and resistance
• The power of live presence cannot be underestimated
• The performance of personal truths is more important to me than acting

To consider the second, I begin to photograph railings.

I ask myself some questions;

What would I chain myself to railings for? What are my beliefs? What are my railings?

Some answers are;

I believe in:

• human capacity for growth and change
• radical pedagogy
• my family
• the interconnectedness of all living things
• the idea that we contain within ourselves all we need to live our lives now
• valuing intuition
• taking time
• being hopeful

As I make this list, I realise I will need good strong railings and warm clothes…I may be some time!

[2] http://www.nicgreen.org.uk/

My cat the philosopher

“When the world seems a confusing and unfriendly place, try lying in the sun with your legs in the air, as sometimes the world just looks better that way.”

I’ve been four months in hibernation.  While I loved the snowy white tranquillity of November and December, the dismal grey of January and February seemed depressingly relentless.  But today is the day when the sun finally rose high enough to make it over the roof of the house opposite and shine into our living room.

The cat is indeed lying in the sun with her legs in the air, personally I’ll just settle for lying in the sun.

It’s been over a month since our second residential workshop, this time in Glen Prosen.  Not only was it a totally different landscape it was also a totally different experience.  Somehow it felt more raw, more real and closer to the bone.  That’s why I’ve really struggled to blog since I got back.  The experiences of Glen Prosen, especially the solo, are just so much more personal and powerful; I’ve needed a lot of time to process it but I still can’t really put it into words. 

After the workshop I felt emotionally tired but also, in a strange way, lighter.  Getting home was so stressful as I seemed to be very sensitive to all the areas of neglect that had crept into my life – the little bits of unfinished paintwork, the late celebration of important dates, the loft insulation that was not all it should be, all the things I mean to do but haven’t quite gotten round to; simultaneously annoying, depressing and upsetting.

But now the sun has come back I feel that I’m moving again, able to start things and get things done…

The Second Week – what will it bring?

I drove to Glen Prosen and it  allowed me to get my head into the correct space, I had a very busy couple of weeks in the run up to coming away.  How difficult it was to stay in the Knoydart space after my return last time, I wondered if this week would be any different.  I was conscious that I kept drifting to Knoydart as I thought of the week ahead remembering what a fantastic experience it was, hoping the second week would be as good.

I was really looking forward to meeting everyone again, we have not been good at keeping in contact or blogging; I wondered what that was all about.

It was thinking that it would be good to experience a different location and I felt better prepared for the vegetarian experience!  I knew nothing about Glen Prosen until I looked at the map for directions for the journey, I had no idea where it was.    As I drove, I was aware that I was nearly there and there was no sign of any remote setting and then all of a sudden I found myself on a single track road and there was no going back!  Phone signal gone, I was delighted, I hoped no one would get a signal, I didn’t want any external unwanted interuptions this week.

As I arrived at the hostel, I was conscious that I was the first to arrive.  The empty social area seemed a little less roomy than last  time but the bunk rooms seemed a little more spacious.  One by one as people arrive it was one warm embrace after  another  and already the place seemed much warmer, it was as though we saw each other yesterday; how good it felt.  Before I knew it I was back in the tipi and it felt good.  Checking in made me feel close to the others and I got the feeling that this was going to be a good week; my thoughts of leadership and sustainability were to the fore!

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.

Snow Man

In preparing for the next phase of the Natural Change Project, the residential in Glen Prosen, I realise I have been in defensive mode: planning to protect myself against the elements, layering up against the cold and insulating myself from all real and, fuelled by the many recent TV programmes about life in the Arctic, imagined privations. Coming across this poem has given me a different perspective. I don’t completely understand it but it seems to say something about extending our boundaries into the natural environment, shifting  in and out of the ego perspective. It reminds me that we are both part of and separate from the natural world and the realisation again that nature is always there, irrespective of us. A useful preparation, as well as the thermals and flasks. 

Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens
– from Harmonium , 1923