Month: February 2016

Lower – 8th Feb 2016

Today ‘Storm Imogen’ hit us on the South coast, so today is also the day when I find out if my theory is right about the altitude of starling murmurations. The light is already failing when I get to the beach and I wonder for a moment if it’s just too windy at 60+mph winds for them to do anything but fly straight to roost, but then I realise the sea is covered in a black carpet. It’s as if I’m watching a fast and granular oil slick spreading back and forth across the water. The waves aren’t that high. I think because of the direction of the wind they’ve been almost flattened out, but the starlings are flying so near the sea that the lowest ones still get lost behind the wave crests. How do they do it without falling into the sea, and with so many brothers and sisters flying so close above them? Yet I’ve never once seen one washed up on to the beach. It isn’t the most extravagant of starling displays, but to fly at all in such high winds, let alone so precipitously, when only a few inches lower would spell certain death to non-swimming birds so tiny, still takes my breath away.

Twa Corbies – 6th Feb 2016

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
“Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?”

“In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And nane do ken that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair.”

“His hound is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady’s tain anither mate,
So we may mak oor dinner swate.”

“Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We’ll theek oor nest whan it grows bare.”

“Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane;
Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.”

Anon , Scotland, 17th C

Low – 5th Feb 2016

I think I’m getting the hang of this now. It’s generally accepted that starlings hate flying in rain, so that’s one factor that affects their aerial ballet. But I’m now also beginning to realise that the higher the wind, the lower they fly too. When I say lower, I mean that, taking the entire murmuration, while the lowest part of it will always be close to the sea at times, the maximum height varies according to wind speed. So, on days like the foggy one we had on (…), or on other days when there is hardly even a breeze and the light is clear, the murmuration will spread and contract vertically. But the more the wind gets up, the flatter the formation.

I hear there’s another storm on the way, a big one by our standards. If I’m right, when it hits us, if the starlings fly at all, they’ll be almost surfing.

Torch songs – 4th Feb 2016

A few years ago I decided I wanted to make some videos of cherry blossom swaying in the breeze at night. I’m not going into the ‘why?’ of this as it’d take up too much space. However the idea did create a problem: given that, at the time, camera sensors were not quite sensitive enough to be able to use only streetlight to get the correct exposure, I had to find a portable means of illumination bright enough to make the idea possible. I started looking at ‘specialist’ torch sites (yes, they do exist) and ended up spending some time reading entries in some very peculiar chat rooms, largely populated by security professionals and border patrol guards. Most seemed to agree on one particular make and model; this is the torch I now have. Though not the cheapest, it really is very bright.

I knew where to find the cherry trees, in a park not far from where I live, and so, one night close to midnight I set out.

Having set up my tripod and brand new video camera in some bushes near a particularly good sprig of blossom, I switched my torch on and began to film. It was then that I began to notice just how many carousers used the park, some simply to get home from the pub, others to continue ‘partying’. After only a few minutes I could hear a group of lads coming straight towards me and, realising at this point just how much I’d invested in my equipment, and how difficult it would be to extricate myself from the shrubs and make a run for it, my heart began to sink. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a fight, these things don’t happen that often, but conversations in the middle of the night can sometimes be difficult.

Yet, at a certain point, the whole group suddenly veered off in another direction. A little later the same thing happened again. First the loud voices, then some muffled muttering, then the sounds once more dwindled. It was at this point that I realised what I must have looked like to outside eyes: no one wants to go near the nutter hiding in the bushes in the middle of the night. Emboldened by this, I carried on filming, happily disregarding the other goings on around me and finally went home with a full memory card feeling quite pleased with myself.

A few nights later I related this adventure to some friends in the pub. They just laughed and said “Chris, they didn’t think you were some kind of pervert, they though you were the police”.

Crepundicide – 3rd Feb 2016

On my way home from work last night I came across a Santa toy disfigured by multiple burns. Most of his face had gone, leaving a nightmarish wound, the mutilation made more ghoulish by the jolly swagger the plastic would otherwise have embodied.

From time to time I come across similar things on my wanderings: decapitated soft toys with the stuffing ripped out of them, limbless Barbie dolls, My Little Ponies scalped of mane and tail… All of us have carried out comparable acts of abuse at some point in our lives. It’s no use denying it, even if once as a toddler you demanded the head of the jelly rabbit, or watched with fascination as the features of the Christmas candle figurine slowly liquefied at it burned down, you are guilty to a degree. Perhaps it’s a way of saying “I have put away childish things, I am bigger than this now”? Or maybe it’s just that children really can be murderous.

Anyway, on arriving home I decided there had to be a term for these ritual killings. Yet, despite a lot of searching I came up with nothing. It’s too significant a practice to not have a name so I’ve decided on:

‘Crepundicide’.

From the latin: ‘Crepundia’: rattle, plaything, toy. And ‘-cide’. Word-forming element meaning “killer,” from French -cide, from Latin -cida “cutter, killer, slayer,” from -cidere, comb. form of caedere “to strike down, chop, beat, hew, fell, slay… [or] from Latin -cidium “a cutting, a killing.”*

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*Online Etymology Dictionary http://www.etymonline.com/

Rabbits – 1st Feb 2016

“Chris!”
“Hello Alex!”
“How are you?”
“Good, fine, you?”
“Ok, been really busy, work”
“Me too, up to my eyeballs”
“How’s things there?”
“Oh, the usual, you couldn’t make it up… That’s a fine looking dog you’ve got there. Yours?”
“Yes, had him for a couple of months. He’s really friendly.”
“Why the muzzle then?”
“Retired greyhound, raced for 6 years. Keeps mistaking small dogs for rabbits, got to be a bit careful”
“Ah”

Strange Lights – 30th Jan 2016

“These nymphs, I would perpetuate them.
                                                                                So bright
Their crimson flesh that hovers there, light
In the air drowsy with dense slumbers.
                                                                           Did I love a dream?
My doubt, mass of ancient night, ends extreme
In many a subtle branch, that remaining the true
Woods themselves, proves, alas, that I too
Offered myself, alone, as triumph, the false ideal of roses.

Let’s see…”

Stéphane Mallarmé, ‘L’Apres-midi d’un Faune’ 1876
Translated by A. S. Kline

Portents – 28th Jan 2016

“Slowly, shakily, with unnatural and inhuman movements a human form, scarlet in the firelight, crawled out on to the floor of the cave. It was the Un-man, of course: dragging its broken leg and with its lower jaw sagging open like that of a corpse, it raised itself to a standing position. And then, close behind it, something else came up out of the hole. First came what looked like branches of trees, and then seven or eight spots of light, irregularly grouped like a constellation. Then a tubular mass which reflected the red glow as if it were polished. His heart gave a great leap as the branches suddenly resolved themselves into long wiry feelers and the dotted lights became the many eyes of a shell-helmeted head and the mass that followed it was revealed as a large roughly cylindrical body. Horrible things followed-angular, many jointed legs, and presently, when he thought the whole body was in sight, a second body came following it and after that a third. The thing was in three parts, united only by a kind of wasp’s waist structure- three parts that did not seem to be truly aligned and made it look as if it had been trodden on”.

Voyage to Venus (Perelandra) C. S. Lewis 1943

Marie Celeste – 27th Jan 2016

Not long after I started this project I came across this scene in one of the closed-up units opposite Brighton pier. The building that houses it is entirely glass-walled, somewhat reminiscent of a fish tank. I photographed it at the time and included it in my contact sheet for that day*.

A year later I’m looking at it again. Originally there were 5 chairs, now there is only one, but the newspaper hasn’t moved a millimetre. It still lies there, considerably more yellowed, and over time has become moulded to the round surface of the table; a fossilised exhibit in a fly-specked museum vitrine.

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* ‘The Dark Side – Mon 16th Feb’ (2015)