ALMANAC
notes on a performance
an ongoing work by Laura Burns
tiin
sple-nah
crauw
lim-se
dimph
sah-me
guh
tinke
aure
til-seh
trepha
taum
mes-he
dou
pih
trou-(p)h
sluo
waum
galum
lome
kepha
stra-phe
re-tah
spore(h)
stor
sti-hp
torm
hume
sli-he
gli
dil
kaleh
Abbeystead
Slaidburn
Dolphinholme
Pendle
1612 - 2016
Dawn is a scratch at the edge of things. Up and striding with a yellow rumble from all that thinking packed in the earth and rising soaking the cells skin tongue; a conductor between soil and sky, the sound comes out with precision, a wave pushing her throat open and moving the feet forward. There is an exact tone for each furrow, each leaf. When she voices it their atoms fling more clearly together. Stars cracking away at their stone ceiling. Losing the battle. So light now and coming in swells.
flat sleek grey gone black blue gone black indigo almost gone-
the route of the women: Pendle — Slaidburn — Trough of Bowland Langden Brook — Abbesystead — Dolphinholme — Lancaster
standing in the field eyes closed seeing a circle of stones and eleven shapes lending the horizon
hag noun peat hag Scottish / Northern English overhang of peat a soft place on a moor or a hard place on a bog Middle English (denoting a gap in a cliff): from Old Norse hogg ‘gap’, from haggva ‘hack, hew’
a hack a crack a gap a hole a hew a break a slip a silence a well a puddle a dash an ink blot a guess a dip an assumption a leap of faith a jump a hunch a supposition an intuition second sight premonition a glitch being taken over trance clairvoyance a chink guesswork divination
bringing back the stones two people, many stones, both hands touching, two stones between them a pineapple a blue porcelain plate a mirror two broken metal chairs a flute a purple crystal [and the one who felt the stones were pulsating] a tablecloth a small leather pouch a tin kettle a tree you can fit inside a candlestick turning into algae a silver dish a backbone a sheep’s skull a tambourine a record player
orality or a lit tea aura litany aural n’ tiny or all anthony or a lantern sea or a land turn see aural ancient sea aura latency aural eight end sea or a late ends meet oral ancient meat
amber diagonal at the breastbone
reddish lines leading out from a centre point towards the diagonal corners of the room; shift the space around the liver, paying attention to two s t o n e s
trace root thread weave tapestry mesh spiderweb grapevine brook river-way braid fibres grasses weft rumour gossip hearsay chinese whisper guess tall tale tattle scandal slander babble blather discover dig uncover decipher unravel untangle give voice to
they say that anger sits in the liver but surely it rises in the heart like a black moon, panning the body for gold
looming in the corner, struck like a bag full of marbles, clay stoppings, ball rollings, penfilled ink let loose along the garbage tracks of anger. Sitting up and being reminded, the white sharp focussing of direction. Laugh as ripples tumble in, as the gashes in the granite strike up their orchestra of remembrance, as the elderly women catapult back in time, we should be listening yet, and yet a bone in the eardrum lodged to dry, set out with the autumn damp and abandoning its duty. The tongue tied until morning
a force between two large stones, standing them up against each other with sound, the garden furniture propped upwards at an angle
a flipped palm, the pages turned; light change and the flattened stone. a horse without tusks standing to attention, enough to draw us round, ropes and tethers all called in for the night, the leaves nowhere running
three stones wanting to be looked at, a fire and paintings laid out, gather your homecomings
sounding from the crux of the chest, an orange back diagonally setting its intention
three modes of strength, going to and fro with the small white stone between the teeth, a need to be underwater, two jars for holding
a spell for his relative hearth, canvas, molecule
two blue pebbles held at the hips, cracking the stones together until one of them breaks, a white leftward longing slips out the skylight
half pebble circle and the nerves linking up, drawing in; her large amalgamating stone, ready
multiple strings blue drawing in from the sideways peripheral; a lifting from the throat, two stages of his voice slotted in the nook of the thumb