Mulch

Autumn Leaves got me thinking. As these things tend to do. Current observations are casting new light on old work. Here, some thoughts, on physical archives and tangible interpretations. 

What's the life expectancy of an idea, in an age of ephemeral media, the democratisation of knowledge and it’s proliferation through the internet.

All entities, digital or otherwise, are ultimately dependent on the longevity of their hosting or their capacity to proliferate as a meme.

It may be taken for granted that digital copies backup hard copies, but with digital natives, there is room yet for hard copies to back up the digital originals.

I speculate that we may yet see hard copy websites made available, in some form like the desktop rolodex animated gifs, but a bit more comprehensive. 

When the compulsion to back up is felt perhaps more keenly by us all, and in light of recent fires at the internet archive, I find myself asking: How long do things last? What makes something worth keeping?, Worth sharing? It’s capacity to remain pertinent?, To sustain new interpretations?, How can you measure interpretive potential? Is it like potential energy- like a spring- the more you invest in it the more it will yield?, Is there an SI unit for ambiguity or simplicity?

How pressing is the desire for tangible things in a digital age, the desire to look, to touch, to draw.

Looking recently at leaves lining the forest floor, each fragile coloured curl, stood for me as a web page, in a fleeting technicolor mulch of information, capable, we trust, of sustaining new growth.

a bit of digging

You bear, you rider and ruler of many, and guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the bear. We are being introduced to Cynlas Goch, 6th Century King of Rhos, who’s dark age fortress, over foundations of an iron age settlement, once crowned this bryn. 

Bryn Euryn commands a strategic position at a pass on what has become the pan-european route E22, overlooking Nant Sempyr, literally, the valley of forever, which takes its name, more prosaically, from the legion of romans slaughtered there under the command of one Semperonius.

While we’re on toponymy, Bryn is the masculine form of the welsh for hill, Rhiw being the curvier, sort. Euryn is probably eponymous, as I am unable to effect a direct translation. possibly relating to Einion Yrth, (Einion the impetuous), King of Gwynedd and grandfather to our Cynlas Goch. (Blue-Hound the bloody). John Northall suggests that Bryn Euryn means Golden Hill. Much is made of the fact that the surrounding area, Dinerth, means fort (den / home / receptacle) of the bear, with reference to the above passage from Gildas’ On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, in which Cynlas is compared to the rib-toothed second beast of the apocalypse (Dan. 7.5). 

Which is all very well. But no mention is made, anywhere I am able to find, of the spot chosen by me to represent this bryn. Observation, imagination and conjecture have free reign here. 

At the top of this hidden hanging valley, the dense, yearning vegetation opens out at the foot of an overhanging limestone cliff, sheltered from the prevailing wind and rain, a series of scarcely perceptible rectangular enclosures, terraced into the nape of this nant, like the plateau of some derelict, verdant baroque double staircase, peppered with weary moss clad limestone sentinels that might once have crashed through walls or roofs, continue their slow march towards the sea.

Evidence of recent occupation, the remains of a fire, empty deodorant bottles, a vestigial rope swing, and a broken bakelite cigarette case, betray the continued appeal of such places, and indicate that the topography may have been similarly utilised by people in the remote past, differing less than we are apt to imagine, from ourselves.

Pragmatism and preconceptions

Resembling the stubbly rump of some ancient beast having crawled from the sea and into the marshes to die, spared from the swelling suburban tide only by its SSSI status, Bryn Euryn was not always thus. 

The brief was simple enough. Here’s a trig point, go, make work. Negotiating between pragmatism and preconceptions, on site, between the charms of the location and my latent intent for the work, Is proving, here at least, to be quite another matter.

Tempting were the domes, waves and arches of a peculiar valley near the summit, swathed, Dr Seuss-like, in traveller’s joy, storm light and, to my surprise, raspberries. Tempting too, the precipitous battered crags immediately over dark and brisling yews with the A55 snaking through the valley, and on towards the mountains, against the evening sun.

Nope. No footing here, too low there, too distant, too familiar, in the wind, in the way, where’s the sweep? How does it fit? What’s the point? Where’s the spot? 

With soliloquy approaching cacophony I stopped, at a crossroads, in the rain. A curious confluence of five paths intersecting at improbable angles. My interest is piqued. I can’t remember how long I stood there for, turning over compositions, aspects, and approaches to this scene before me. One path in particular appealed to me. The middle path, which, by some trick of the light appeared to be the focus of concentric circles, formed by the tangle of branches criss crossing this forgotten path, this hidden, hanging, valley. How could I resist.