An Already Made Song

-composting-

Digesting

Living in darkness
All that is considered waste
Sits together crumbly  

-extraction-

Digging in
Drawing one precious thing

you sent that potent something
you wanted a way in the tangle  

-distillation-

We take
something down
to the water

Allowing escapes, taste is left
the scent
of a slow boil
Steam on clear glass

-Extracting from an imprint one-

Local folks could tell the difference. So they say.
Palimpsest.
soft sound of violence
the shape of her silk afterwards

curled up, with her face in the moss
Leaving
a shape with a before and after.

-----------

A poem starts from clothing
the shape of her silk afterwards
curled up.
Weaving
what you bring with you
and hosting your eye in
perfumed wax and fat

forms history art

                            long smell of rosemary is for memory
But I remember the smell of birch bark on fire
New birch leaves, astringent, green
Smoke puckering your tongue with recognition

This light is not now:
your words
the canopy for an already made song
Daaach: Deep mapping

Visible cultivation is
When it starts to agree,
To have a logic of its own selfness
A knowing that is physical and needs
a non word

“Swedes say, they don’t know.”

What is possible for different people to see?
What does human habitation look like?

Which cultivation is visible and to whom?

The intimacy of reading
Words to make a space
Laid out on Pine, Tal, Pinwydd
Hosting language
An encounter at a distance, over time.
An already made song


Index of




Sails
Moon
Sun
Gold
Silver
Fixed star, morning star.


(emphasis on the first syllable)
There is no such thing as wilderness
9 forms
“No one told me I was Sámi”
Metallic back of the throat, more aspiration.
Where is that eye?
back and closed
Something that should last forever.

A feeling of lightness: You are in the sky.

9 forms



Aspiration
Daaaachhhhh gat
Dah gat (nose_ )

                            front
                            back of the throat, more aspiration.

Daaaaa (back and closed)
Daaach (att göra)

Pwyslais ar y sillaf cyntaf

Pine tea:

Tea water wash


Tingle

Lemony

-Extracting from an imprint two-

A wolf could be an elk walking backwards, before lying down.

-----------
“The sun has gone down but it is still light. So what is it now?”

Hybrid words
(Dove-blue, My-mother)
Uninterrupted
This loop-hole of retreat.
Beauty as resistance to violence

Finding rest in each other
Sky falling softly into the earth. Rain or snow, dew or fog.
The lawn is completely yellow
Purple after her father died
White table cloths

Burning hot
Sprinklers running
I am occupied, but moving slow
Astringent, bright, sharp, spiced, clean
A low creeping growth
Water yes and sun, but sodden, engorged, full and alive
hay prickling our bare legs
Hot skin close up, I want to be closer

Upside down in the lake
Inside the container
The effect on things
Is a matter of positioning:
Simple not banal

Checking the signs
Waiting
Insect legs tickling my hands
A little longer until it passes
Meat. Its fibres dense and held: falling open as it is cut.

White table cloths
immersed in the light. Someone watching you.
How it felt to be in the light
Reflecting upward
Diving into the light just after the sun has set
No shadows

“Nothing dies if you are still jojking it.”
Golden tongue
Being spoken, softly
Like blowing over the top of a bottle neck, if the bottle has fur
Duetting. This is not a love song

These first three texts - ‘composting’, ‘extraction’ and ‘distillation’ -  are scores that we used as guides for editing sound in a previous project, in which we worked with these themes in relation to plants, people and place.
Both 'Extracting from an imprint one and two' are the dagbrott of our notebooks from time we spent working together at Northern Sustainable Futures, Moskosel in Norrbotten during May 2023. These are things that did not end up in the work we made there but that are tangled into the making, a leftover pile of our notebooks.

We meet in these texts.

For us they are a series of improvised duets danced on our computer screens. The process is simple: We gathered and chose a previously unused score, we time the edits, usually in series of seven, six or four minutes (which we just recently realised was like egg-boiling times so we adopted eggy descriptions to correspond to the timings: “Should this one be hard boiled? Loose? Soft?”).

Accompanying  this work is a perfume called Jávrre 1 - the word for inland lake or ‘insjö’ in Lulesamiska and Pitesamiska. Scent is an ongoing part of our choreographic practice. Made by extracting the aromatic particles of plants in multiple processes, the smell changes over time as the oils evaporate at different rates from the paper, or in contact with the chemistry of people’s skin.

The scent dropped into the pages of the print edition of this issue is made of: oakmoss absolute, tree moss absolute, white birch extract, birch leaf tincture, melonal natural isolate and vodka. Jávrre 1 is also a dagbrott or byproduct: it is an early recipe for a perfume made for the iMKonsthall, discarded as one of the ingredients, Oakmoss absolute, is not to be worn on the skin.

- Siriol Joyner and Alice MacKenzie, 2023