Musings about wanderings

Month: April 2020

A little bit of nature close to home 11APR20

The Back Garden

When I moved into my current house, it came with a small garden. The previous occupant had done a fair bit of work to it but had let it go in the time leading up to the sale and it was a bit wild when I inherited it.

I’m not much of a gardener and really don’t have green fingers. And to be honest I was not looking forward to having to care for the garden. Plans were made to turn it into a Zen garden or even just put paving slabs down.

But the lockdown that we’re all on has made me appreciate the garden greatly. It is my own little slice of nature next to the house. The garden is a suntrap between the equinoxes (and even outside of these) and all day long, when the weather is good, the sun shines in the garden making it a lovely place to sit and read. And perhaps even work, I’ve discovered the Wifi stretches out to the garden bench.

I’ve come to the realization over recent time that I am fairly much an outdoors person. Being cooped up in an office all day makes me long for hills and trees and places where nature reigns. The hills and the bigger parks are largely off limits at the moment, but a few steps outside my door is an oasis in the city.

Being in amongst the greenery (my garden is very green, the flowers don’t seem to take), reminds us of how unhurried nature is. Everything happens at its proper time and in the proper order without it being forced. It tells us to slow down and live to the age old rhythms of the planet.

And of course, all my neighbors have gardens too and the decent weather is bringing them out as well. Chats over the fence to see how each other is doing combats the isolation that can overtake us in the current situation.

So the garden is a blessing and when we’re done with the Coronavirus and the diy stores are open again, I’m going to put a bit of effort in here to make it an even nicer place to be. 

NOW at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art Jan2020

Early in the year it was time to do something cultural and so it was off to the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art to see the latest in the series of exhibitions entitled “NOW”. These are an exploration of the subject of time and its relationship to the humankind.

The exhibition started with selection of photographs by Darren Almond. These were very long exposure shots that tried to capture the sense of movement and change in the world. Looking at them gives a sense of time compressed into a static shot. The photos are taken by moonlight and this, with the long exposure, gives them something of a faintly unreal quality, like a dream captured.

Next up was some artifacts associated with a piece of performance art by Shona Macnaughton performed when she was 9months pregnant. This explores the changing nature of the body when pregnant and places this within a changing landscape as the area of Glasgow that she is from is regenerated.

The main part of the exhibition was work by Katie Paterson. It started with a work called “Lightbulb to Simulate Moonlight (2008)”. As its name suggests, this is a room with a low hanging lightbulb that has been specially designed to simulate the wavelengths of light that are reflected by the Moon. The room was empty bar the light and it was calming to rest and contemplate while bathed in the light of the (simulated) Moon.

Lightbulb to Simulate Moonlight (2008)
Lightbulb to Simulate Moonlight (2008)

The next room contained her work “Totality (2016)”. This was a large mirror ball onto which all known images of solar eclipses are projected. The room is filled with points of light made by images of a point in time where the sunlight is blocked out. A number of visitors including myself sat here for a while to watch the spinning images.

Totality (2016)
Totality (2016)
Totality (2016)
Totality (2016)

The last section of Paterson’s exhibition was “Earth – Moon – Earth (2007)”. This was a midi piano playing the Moonlight Sonata. However, the file containing the music had been transmitted at the moon and the reflection recorded. This means there were errors and gaps in the performance.

I was glad that I got to see this before the lockdown. The exhibition was an affecting one and provoked a contemplation of time and my relationship to it. 

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