Lucy Gayler x Gemma Garwood
To begin with, perhaps, we were unsure of where to go. So we followed our feet, we walked and talked and then sketched and played, made shrines and wrote.
We watched them come for our grandmothers
And then they came for our mothers
We watched them come for our mothers
And then they came for us
We watched them come for us
And then they came for our daughters
We watched them come for our daughters
And then they came for our granddaughters
And so it always
Endlessly seems to go
But it is not how it started
Nor how we will let it finish
For a long time the cunning has run through the people of this place
It takes no note of age or looks or gender
It runs like a river through its chosen channels
But for a long old time the cunning women fell by the wayside
They never got spoken about
They got written out
Instead of being raised up on the pulpit for their
Inimitable conversations in the language of all things
They were dragged to assizes and necks snapped
Drying out in the wind like birds strung up
Hanging in preparation for roasting in a pie
Their colours fading with each passing moment after the vital spark had gone on
But it is not how it started
Nor how we will let it finish
They still talk of Cunning Murrel around these parts
But what of his mother
What of his grandmother
All the daughters of the line leading up to him
There is a place that they could all see
Just out of the corner of their eye
A place with a long lost name
That they could only tell with the curl at the very edge of a smile
And a tongue that slips between the gaps in the other words and letters…
Sometimes the path to get there got trapped in the corners of peoples houses and they had to take them off, else there would be no getting back to normal. Or put bottles under the thatch to trick the things that wended in through the tiny spaces between the reeds…
It seems to me a good place to hide away
This Otherland
Time works different there
All at once and not at all
You have to be careful
We watched them come for our grandmothers
And then they came for our mothers
We watched them come for our mothers
And then they came for us
We watched them come for us
And then they came for our daughters
We watched them come for our daughters
And then they came for our granddaughters
And so it always
Endlessly seems to go
But it is not how it started . Nor how we will let it finish.
Then we got to making in earnest. Writing spells, making hagstones and ritual garments, weaving magickal structures to capture the cunning, to pick up all of the things that might otherwise get lost but for the warp and the weft…All the time thinking back down our lines of Essex Women.
We recorded everything. We found our way into and around the OTHERLAND. We conversed with our past selves and out ancestors. We made these films to share our journey and offer some insight into this special place that lies between things, trapped safely here in the warp and weft of the world…Here also we have a repository for all of the recipes, stories, instructions, spells and experiences we collected and continue to collect in the OTHERLAND.
