February

Over the past month I’ve been recording sounds around my home and the daily paths I take. I’ve also been lying beneath the trees for long periods of time, observing their sounds and what they hear, the movement within those sound and silences too. There isn’t really many silences at all. There’s always something stirring, even at night.

Looking at the 20 letters of the Celtic Alphabet I created percussive movements to match each of these letters which I will use to write a piece on the forest floor to the trees. I’ve been thinking a lot about the time signature of these rhythms. Am I dancing jig rhythm? A reel? I couldn’t figure it out. But while lying beneath the trees one day just listening with my headphones on plugged into my Zoom microphone, a wood pecker started pecking close by. Her rhythm was so stark in contrast to the other bird song at the moment. I started to imitate it with my feet. Then I tried imitating the skylark. Then the blackbird, the curlew, the sky goat, the buzzard, the wren and more. They all had their own rhythms, tempos, tones, timing but they all fitted perfectly together. And so from this I drew inspiration for my dance piece. There is no set time signature or beat. It’s completely free form yet deeply structured and specific.

As for filming style, I’m planning to film the piece myself and keeping it as simple as possible with one camera, one view. Like the camera is itself a tree, rooted. I feel it should be a simple piece allowing lots of time, to replicate on a very small scale, the amount of time that passes in a trees life. Time to sit and listen and see. Take it all in like you are there. Once they are rooted, they have one view for the rest of their existence.

I’m thinking about focusing the camera on the trees and forest floor rather than on me and my feet and that I would be out of focus for periods of time. I will dance in my feed and earth myself.

I wrote a short piece to the trees. Trying to learn each letter of each word to be able to dance it out on my imaginary Ogham line on the forest floor is intense. I’m still struggling to remember all the patterns without having to revert back to my notes but I’m really enjoying the challenge. I find myself collapsing under the trees like a child throwing a tantrum, sometimes from frustration, other times from exhaustion in trying to dance out my words. And after a few minutes of lying there, listening, breathing, smelling, touching, with my head on the ground looking up, I’m ready to go at it again.

January

Having spent much of December and January reading books about trees in Ireland I noticed a common theme running throughout them; the presence of trees in Irish folklore and language.

Ogham is an alphabet which was traditionally used to write the earliest form of Irish and is Ireland’s earliest form of writing. Dating from the fourth century, it is often called a tree alphabet. It is an ancient script using trees for letters.

There are twenty letters within the Ogham language and each letter is associated with a different native tree of Ireland. Sometimes the association is very direct – the name of the tree in Irish matches the name of the letter. Other times it is more poetic – the name of that letter translates to a word that would be associated with only one tree in particular. Their selection gives us clues as to the importance spiritually and symbolically of trees in this ancient society. The Ogham alphabet was written and read from the roots up with each character sprouting from a central line, like branches on a tree. The philosophy behind the language is amazing and primarily considers how intimate the connection is between forests and humans.

Having grown up in rural Leitrim I’ve always found great solace in our wild landscape in trees, now more than ever in the times we find ourselves. Trees play a large role in my life right now. There are days they bring me great happiness, days they rise a rebellious fire inside me that’s fit to flitter before me to protect my county while other days they bring self doubt and defeat. It’s not the trees fault; it’s the result humans and their positive and negative actions.

FÉACH ANSEO

Because of all this, I have an awful lot to say to them, the trees. I have studied how they communicate with each other and now I think I have found my way to communicate with them.

I will write a letter to them in our Irish language and dance it out to them using their own alphabet, their forest floor my Ogham tree.

December

I was a day dreamer in school. Many teachers have said to me over the years ‘you’re wasting your time staring into space Edwina’. Was I though? I was always quite happy in the places and situations I had travelled to in my head, excited about the plans I was conjuring. That space I found myself staring into was and is my creative space. Time is a wonderful gift and I’ve been very grateful for it this month to have time to day dream, think, question, explore, breathe and “waste” it in whatever way I wanted. I spent much of this time amongst trees this month.

Growing up on our farm in rural Leitrim where wandering across the fields to your neighbour was actually 5 mile away and nothing thought of it, I’ve spent quite a lot of time amongst hedges and trees all my life. I’ve always been fascinated by them and their individual characteristics and abilities. I just wish I knew back then what I know about them now.

This month my amazing neighbour; musician and community activist, Natalia Beylis organised a tree festival which was hosted on www.thedock.ie called “Whose Woods These Are”. A joyous celebration of trees in music, talks & films featuring folklorists, historians, scientists, activists, foresters, artists and visionaries. My mind was buzzing with all I learned. It was phenomenal and greatly influenced the path I’m travelling with this project.

I was really interested in storyteller Eddie Lenihan who recorded a podcast about tree folklore for it.

““Their roots go deep into the other world. Druids in Ireland believed the trees embodied spirits and were a source of wisdom. “”

Éist Anseo

Ash - Blackthorn - Willow - Alder- Hawthorn - Oak -Hazel - Holly - Yew - Pine - Apple - Rowan - Birch - Cherry - Whitebeam - Arbutus - Juniper

The tree festival sent me on many space staring wanderings, so many, in fact, that I had to watch the same episode of Tree TV 7 times to catch it all.

When people think of trees they most certainly would not associate them with having the ability to create thought processes. But maybe we need to re-evaluate how humans can interpret the world.

We breath in. Trees breath out.

Do trees dream? Do they fall in love? Do they have a language? Do trees have accents? Do the show emotion?
Are they happy to see me coming?

Can they hear me?…

““Listening in wild places we are an audience to conversations in a language not our own.””

— Braiding Sweetgrass

November

In Leitrim it’s seldom I am referred to by name by the elders of my county. I usually get “oh you’re the dancer, aren’t ya?!” and them knowing full well I’m the dancer. But in the past 3 years this has changed. Now I sometimes hear “Oh you’re the girl who doesn’t like the trees, aren’t ya?…”

Now, to explain that is quite a long story and one I’m not going to get into here but let’s get things straight; I love trees!

My favourite tree is the Oak.

OAK - DAIR - CHIEF

There are 4 books I have my head stuck in this month for this project.

1. The Lost Spells - Robert MacFarlane
   

2. Ireland’s Trees: Myths, Legends & Folklore - Niall Mac Coitir
   

3. A Year’s Turning - Michael Viney
   

4. The Hidden Life of Trees - Peter Wohlleben

Oak by Robert MacFarlane

The latter is very intriguing when it comes to my thoughts on the creative path I’m travelling with this film.

Peter Wohlleben writes:

“Trees are sentient: they are communal, they care for their young and for their neighbours; they remember, they can learn and they can count; they may even have emotions and feel pain. Trees are social beings, communicating with each other through their roots, they are able to decide, have memories and even different characters.

Trees may recognise with their roots who are their friends, who are their families, where their kids are. Then they may also recognise trees that are not so welcome.

Oaks form forests that last for thousands of years because they act like families. They are tribal and ruthlessly protect their own kind.”

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October

The brief is very brief! Dance with natural sound in your natural setting, percussively. I’ve been raised in a house always full of music and dance and so, dancing is second nature to me. But dancing without music is not.
As a percussive, traditional artist, I always seek to respond to the music as if in conversation with the player. Different musicians and their music move me in different ways. How should I move when there is no music to move me?

I have never watched the swallows as much as I have in 2020. I was anxious at the thought of them leaving us for Africa as I watched them line up on the wires at the front of the house in late September. They were late leaving this year. I think I was as lonesome for the great memories they had shared with me of summer past, as their fine company itself. My little boy and I spent many blue sky days lying in the field watching them chase one another overhead. Or my father standing at the red meadow gate watching them swoop through the long grass, shaking his head; “They’re flying low, the rain is on the way.”

The chatter between them was like a tune. I tried to replicate their rhythms and accentuations. It reminded me of all the other movements my home place stirs in me from one season to the next. The bubbling call of the curlew on the hill, the sway of the hawthorn on the ringfort, the skygoat diving at dusk, the skylarks song, the return of the whooper swans to the lake, the roar of the river after a storm, the looing cow in the scrub, the shriek of the fox in John’s meadow, the munching of the cows the other side of the quick, the echo of our neighbours talk from across the lake, the South West wind whistling through the towering conifers, the stillness the snow brings, the rain on the red rusting roof of the outhouse. These are the same sounds my ancestors heard before me on these lands. These sounds all make me move in different ways, all stirring different emotions and memories.

“Beech gives wind speech
Each branch reaches to other
branches as the gale rises;

Each leaf dances with other
leaves as the storm crashes.

Can you hear that inland sea,
its slow explosion?
High in the hill - woods, huge
surf breaks far from any ocean.

Robert Macfarlane”

My life has been greatly shaped by the people and place I have grown up around in Leitrim. One side of the road is the townland of Headford, my homeplace, the other, Correish, home of my grandparents.
Headford - Lios na gCeann - Head of the Forts.
Correish - Cor Éis - Éis’s Hill.

There is a strong connection between the land, music, language and history here. They fuse and influence a style that is unique to us. I would even say there are some people who match the character of their townlands very well. The same can be said for many parts of Ireland and their people. I think of Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich; the wild landscape out west beyond Dingle and all it carries from the past, their soothing language, how this all emanates through him and his music. This is something I have thought a great deal about of late. As a dancer I am almost continuously earthed; I dance by making contact with the land beneath me. My home land has instilled a huge sense of belonging and fight in me; a wildness and a burning sense to protect this place and all it holds. Has it also influenced how I move?

I am unsure yet of where this project will take me, but the thoughts and questions it has provoked has greatly reminded me that I am firmly rooted in this place.

Edwina

I made this reflection of my surroundings and time in lockdown. Leitrim.

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