Click image to see film There to Here
|
There to Here - Narration for Four Voices - 2008
The individual in the city creates his or her own space through the paths he or she ekes out. There is a connection between this physical space and the internal story - a palimpsest of past and present events. Walking the pavement, we carry our inner space - the one we inhabit in our minds. We steer past others. When we collide it is accidental, apologetic or occasionally aggressive. Intersections of lives can occur similarly to be avoided by those unwilling to interact with strangers, and yet inevitable. Coupled with this is the voyeurism of those living in close proximity, who become curious about one another whilst remaining reluctant or unable to interact. Below is the text that was used to create a narration of four voices representing different individuals and entities overlapping and co-exisitng within the city, each of them creating his or her own space through the dialogue between their inner and outer lives and the particular physical and psychological paths they occupy. The context used was the area surrounding Parnell Square in Dublin City but could, in fact, be anywhere. |
From there to here
From there to here
From here to here
From here to there
I’ll be fine, love
She came to the city
I’ll just step out for a moment
Don’t stack the fire too high
To find her castle in the air
Pop in across the road
To a squalid bedsit, truth to be told
From here to there
From there to here
Mother came to talk to me last night
Good view, they said
Look after the boy, St. Martin
She’s a rum one, just moved in
So had Diogenes’ barrel, no doubt
There to here
She was raging about the way things are
Not from around here, anyway
‘Trams on wheels careening around Parnell Square’ she said
And the neighbours….
They take the same routes day upon day
Still, I can watch the sky change in the evening
‘Belching noxious smoke’
From here to there
And already I have places to go to
I’ll light a candle to St. Martin de Porres
I could walk a different way for a change
From there to here
I’ll nip over to the church
Their lives are walked into the pavements
This is where I sit
Yet I forget for a moment
‘They are crammed aboard, cheek by jowl’
And go the same old way
From there to here
‘Ragged and comical scarecrows in carnival attire’
Canyons to illusory familiarity
I don’t care to think who sits here in my absence
If I had a day for every time I came here
Individual constructs
‘They wear their ballooning bellies without shame,’ she says
Housing their chthonian fears
I’ll just stay a while in the amber glow
But I don’t give up my secrets
‘Like badges of honour’
Don’t be fooled by my pretty faces
I saw them on the pavement, waiting
What’s left of them
‘They lurk half-dressed in the doorways’
A group of teenagers with musical instruments
‘Smoking like men’
Joking and laughing, they boast their prowess
They swept back the forests to lay me down
In the warm familial embrace
‘The fear gorm is here in multitudes’
To fend off the abyss
Yet through the wall
It’s not shameful any more, Mother
To lay down roots
I hear a shrieking rage
St. Martin, save the boy
But I grow and grow
A keening caterwaul
In my dreams
I am doing penance St. Martin
I clutch my head
And within me a new wilderness evolves
The gallery walls make me calm
How many years in the cold now?
‘Charlemont house is filled with gaudy detritus’
A palimpsest of competing conquistadores
Room after room
My gaping maw will consume you
So many souls, so many minds
‘Images of the devil populate the walls’
You may choose
‘As well as the idle scrapings of demented children’
Only the manner of your consumption
Freshly shaven, my neighbour drops in my post
A decade of the rosary
‘Du fehlst mir, Liebling....’
She gets cards twice a week from abroad
I’m all alone St. Martin
If I don’t answer, he’ll slide it under the door
I know she’s in there
Please bring him back, St. Martin
He stands too close
She gives nothing away
What do I have to do?
Do you think I don’t see the tremor in your hand?
She looks at me sideways
That I don’t hear at night?
A bit uppity maybe
As you are dragged wooden-legged up six flights
Still, she’s friendly enough
Dropped from the shoulder of a good Samaritan
Her hair smells of….
Who pads away, leaving me to your nightmare moaning
What does it say on the card, dammit
Mortify my flesh St. Martin
Apples
The curses you pour on the mother of your lost children
Her hair smells of apples
Voices, from left to right:
1. The voice of the city – omnipresent – all-seeing
The remaining voices: Three people who live in flats/bedsits in a Georgian house in Blessington Street. They don’t know one another well, but encounter each other on a regular basis. The descriptions of people’s lives are implied in the script rather than proven. The following, therefore, is simply to help develop a picture about a character.
2. An older woman, living with her adult son, in difficult circumstances. It might be that her son was born out of wedlock at a time when this was unacceptable. She may have been shunned by her family. She imagines her mother visiting her and how her mother might describe the area today.
3. A young woman who has returned to Ireland from abroad/ who has come to the city for the first time. She has left something/someone behind and is unwilling to engage with her neighbours.
4. An alcoholic, estranged from his family. He lives a Jekyll and Hyde existence – entering a nightmare world at night, which he forgets during the day.
