In my research I came across a Celtic term, of a ‘thin place’. This refers to the thinness of the boundary between this world and the next. It is often used in religious context for places where people feel close to the spiritual world. An example would be the Isle of Iona. (Béres, 2012) Such thin places were thought to be a permeable delineation between worlds. Interestingly such physical spaces were often places where burial mounds or chambers or standing stones might be located or where votive offerings made in bodies of water. (Healy, 2016)

I note that Ciara Healy attempted to create a thin place in a gallery in 2015. She writes of the liminal space between destruction and repair which is an interesting parallel with Gennep’s idea of mourning and the end of mourning.

http://ciarahealymusson.ie/thin-place-at-oriel-myrddin/

The idea of a thin place reminds me very much of work have looked at before which features a collaboration between Writer Cristin Leach and Sound Engineer Diarmuid McIntyre commissioned by Sligo Neolithic Landscapes Group.

https://soundcloud.com/greyheronmedia/sligo-wedonotleavepyramids

I wrote to Christin Leach asking her about her work and telling her how much I enjoyed her words about secrets known then being lost and re-thought. I found myself wondering about the people for whom these rocks were so familiar. Were their hopes and fears any different from ours? Did they re-think their own ancestor’s memories? Did they tell stories around a fire in the cold winter to keep alive memory?

Ms Leach kindly replied saying, “It’s wonderful that We Do Not Leave Pyramids spoke to you in this way. It’s exactly what I was hoping for in terms of my own feelings about where the sounds come from and their ancient resonances.”

I have thought about sound in relation to my external facing work. My tutor mentioned Suspended Conversations: the Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums by Martha Langford. In this book Langford references Ulysses by James Joyce where one of main characters, Leopold Bloom, suggests placing a gramophone into the grave or maybe keeping this recording in the house. It’s job is to help us remember the dead.(Langford, 2021, pp. vii–viii) (Joyce, 2017, p. 86) In modern times in my society, the photograph rather than the sound recording is the common choice to help us remember the dead.

I started to think about individual words since I was already considering keywords at start of this unit.

This lead, almost by accident, to a small collaboration with a woman I found on Twitter, Angela Miller, a writer and librarian at Dumfries and Galloway Libraries. Together we constructed a small 2 verse haiku. She wrote the first verse and I used her words as inspiration to write a second verse.

Creeping time smothers
The past under grass and moss
Memento Mori

Do our memories
Vanish and fade to silence
Or do ghosts survive

Miller and Dalgleish, March 2023

I am uncertain at this stage where this idea of external facing work might lead but I am also aware that this project forms one of the learning outcomes for the unit so this work is a key part of my learning for this year.

 

References

Béres, L. (2012) ‘A Thin Place: Narratives of Space and Place, Celtic Spirituality and Meaning’, Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Social Work, 31(4), pp. 394–413. doi: 10.1080/15426432.2012.716297.

Healy, C. (2016) Thin Place: An Alternative Approach to Curatorial Practice. University of the West of England, Bristol.

Joyce, J. (2017) Ulysses. 3rd Editio. Richmond, Surrey: Alma Classics.

Langford, M. (2021) Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums. Quebec City: McGil-Queen’s University Press.