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Is this just one day?

by Taylor Nuttall

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Commissioned by Aerial Festival 2020: Sounds & Words in the Lake District.
www.aerialfestival.com

Sounds of Silence Commission

Is This Just One Day? is an evolving ambient and multi-layered soundscape experience of a journey through the Lake District. The piece picks out locations around the Lake District, which have particular value to the authors. From these areas, field recordings from the landscape were taken and put to music to form a collection of sonic verses and words totaling 30 minutes.

This piece is a meditation on the passing of time across in the Lake District, of the repetitions of our experience and of our overall lack of agency with how this space can change.

Short video here: youtu.be/HlVhA0FxxWg

lyrics

Close your eyes, we stand atop Seat Sandal.
Proud in it's own outline.
Silences surrounds this barren place.
A treeless space.
Grisedale tarn rippled as if beaten pewter.
Sharpen your senses.
Find the motion in this hush;
...the running of the water, the whistle of wind
And as you begin to notice,
Time stops

The Langdale land cracked open:
Mines on the southern slopes of Wetherlam.
Vein into the mountains.
Trickling copper.
Leaving a breakneck of slate and boulders.
A legacy echoes in cathedral quarries.

The air is damp and chill today.
Smudged dark clouds,
obscure the peaks of Great Gable.
Cloak the grey slabs of Scafell Pike

Can you imagine the rain running down your cheek?
Does it soak your coat?
Does it weigh?
Does it shiver?
Does it wash everything away?
Can you imagine the rain running down your cheek?
Does it wash everything away?

Did you ever learn to test the wind?
Stand on the ledge of the dam at Kentmere Reservoir,
then lean out,
right out,
over the dam,
into nothingness?

The wind roars but if it stops you fall.
I can teach you how
to dice with the elements,
to stand in a place of origins.
Deep in the valley, at the source.

Across Skiddaw, you can hear the bleat of Herdwick sheep.
They trace lines,
& chains,
& formations.
Constantly moving along their paths scored across the common.

Hornfell grit lusters from the bracken as the last light catches,
The flock moves on.
Evensong breaks.
A simple change in light and Skiddaw is new.

Is this just one day, or a collection of months and years?
Tell me, how many sides are there to this mountain?

credits

released October 9, 2020
Music & composition - Taylor Nuttall
Words & video editing - Emma Nuttall
Images except below - Taylor Nuttall
Images courtesy of Andrew Locking (Skiddaw) & Tony West (Langdale Pikes)
Audio recordings except below - Taylor Nuttall
Skylark recording - Creative Commons - freesound.org/people/Benboncan/
Sheep recording - Creative Commons - freesound.org/people/felix.blume/

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Taylor Nuttall Scotland, UK

Taylor trained as a visual artist with an early career featuring paint, print, sculpture, photography and installation. In the 80’s and 90’s he began to explore the potential of creativity using computer technologies.Now working with sound, drawing upon musical skills he learned from playing piano and classical guitar, re-learning more robustly about sound design, composition and theory. ... more

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