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Song paths operate almost as maps in which places are placed in memory and they are connected to the ancestors and to cultural identity. I began to notice that with focused attention even the sounds of a noisy construction site can seem quite fascinating and complex. This concern with environmental sounds and musical improvisation led me to consider methods of exploring places and interacting with them vocally. My first attempts, in , were called Vocal Strolls and consisted mainly of wandering in the city while listening to the environment and responding with improvised singing.
I recorded these drifts with binaural microphones, which I still use, as they produce a subjective three-dimensional soundscape when heard back through headphones. James Joyce wrote that places remember events and I found this idea very interesting—that everything that happens leaves traces that we might be able to sense. I wondered if it was only the large events that we call history that are remembered, or if places also remember the small events of ordinary lives.
This question led me to create the project. The process is straightforward. I arrive in a new place and ask to be taken on a special walk, one that has been repeated many times and has meaning or significance for that person.
In our struggles with our humble lives below. Give us strength and vision. Help us walk each day in Your shadow. And when You hear our cries. Help us remove. Walking in His Shadows CD. Walking in His Shadows. $ Quantity. Add to cart. SKU: SHADOWS-CD Category: Music. Description; Reviews (0).
While walking together, I record our conversations and environmental sounds. These recordings are then taken back to my studio and edited together to become the final work, the Shadow-walk. All the sounds and singing heard in the work were recorded in the actual place. Shadow-walks have been disseminated in various ways: This was inspired by the practice of British walking artist Richard Long.
As his walks usually occur in rural locations, the materials he transfers to the gallery tend to be natural, such as mud, stones or slate. My walks usually take place in cities or towns and therefore the objects I find, with the exception of occasional feathers and leaves, are typically debris and litter. These found objects are easily ignored traces left behind by others and they create a fascinating collage of a place through its detritus.
I photograph the objects and frequently incorporate these photos and the objects themselves into my installations.
In order to consider what it is that makes a walk meaningful to someone, and how my improvisations can reinforce this, I will describe three examples of Shadow-walks, from USA, Ireland and Portugal. Here amid the snow, ice and howling winds of April, I met a community of people who had escaped their pasts and left their cities, drawn by a need to live close to the lake and wilderness.
Nine people took me on their special walks. The title of the piece arose from conversations in which I was told: Many of the people that I met had left well-paid professions in order to do menial work in Grand Marais, simply because they found life there rewarding, off the grid and close to nature. Their walks took me to places important to them. A nurse went to a car park to revisit the moment when he realized that he had finally found home in this town.
A cartographer climbed up to a panoramic view, an artist went to the shore where she paints ice boulders in spring, and an Arctic explorer walked by the river where he goes to recover his health and shake off the inevitable depression that occurs after each expedition. Grand Marais is not paradise: But the beauty and scale of Lake Superior, with its crashing waves and full-spectrum sound, is overwhelming.
I made an installation of this work in a museum in Portugal and also a gallery in San Francisco, which included a video of images of the place and also of the objects I had found there, many of which had been crushed beneath snow for months. The actual objects hung on fishing lines in transparent bags, creating a shimmering curtain through which visitors passed. Cobh, formerly known as Queenstown, is situated in Cork Harbour, Ireland, and has a significant history. It was the main departure point for Irish emigrants to North America until well into the twentieth century.
Queenstown was also associated with the great steam ships, including the ill-fated Titanic and Lusitania. In recent years both industry and tourism have declined. During my artist residency there, fivelocal inhabitants volunteered to take me on their special walks. Hilda was born in Cobh and led me through places that spoke to her of her life and the history of the town. We began the walk outside the house where she was born, then walked to the dock where, as an eight-year-old girl, she was regularly sent alone by boat to baby-sit a cousin on a small island.
My singing followed the mood of regret and nostalgia in her reflections, and I tried to repeat her walk at the same pace as the original. This reduction in speed from my usual stride affected the way I vocalized, creating more time to breathe and therefore allowing a greater variety of long tones and phrases.
Hilda had paused often, to describe her memories: Every special walk contains an element of an interior journey through a personal landscape, but Cobh provided the most extreme example, as I was guided on a walk without moving. John was 87 years old and could no longer physically walk, but offered to describe his favourite route as we sat in his room looking out to sea. His description of the walk used both current and former place-names and combined personal reminiscences with history and mythology: Our walk, unrestricted by the speed of an actual journey, lasted several hours.
So, for instance, when you are outdoors, your shadow occurs when you are between the sunlight and the sidewalk. Shadows occur in the valleys of creation by the mountains that are erected around us. The valleys are low and the mountaintops can seem so high. They can seem agonizingly overwhelming.
We can feel as if they are closing in on us, attempting to leave us in utter darkness. King David wrote these words over 3, years ago. He personally knew what running from the shadow of death felt like. He ran from shadows for years as King Saul sought his life.
He fought against death when he boldly stepped forth and took down Goliath when everyone else stepped back, shaking in their boots. David walked through the valley of the shadow of death where he learned to fear no evil. He had learned to not be afraid in the valleys of his childhood where God trained him to conquer the hard stuff. God trained David to walk through the valleys so he could learn to trust his Shepherd.
Because of his past experiences, he was able to walk through the present, while being guided by the mighty hands of his God. He had learned to trust God through the valleys. The valleys of hard places. The valleys of pain and sorrow. The valleys of shadows where death drew near.
As his walks usually occur in rural locations, the materials he transfers to the gallery tend to be natural, such as mud, stones or slate. Douay-Rheims Bible Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that when Peter came, his shadow at the least, might overshadow any of them, and they might be delivered from their infirmities. What is the lewis structure for co2? Please try again later. But the light still shines, no matter how dark and gloomy life may appear around us. They placed them on stretchers and cots so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some sick people as he went by.
They are merely shadows. Perhaps we once did skip down the sidewalk in glee where now we may be rolling in a wheelchair or steadying ourselves with a cane. But the light still shines, no matter how dark and gloomy life may appear around us. Something may have stepped in behind us to cause shadows around us — pain, loss of control, sorrow — but there is still light before us, and as long as we keep following that light and moving forward, we will not only be able to walk through the valleys ahead but also climb to the mountaintops as well. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.