March 2007: Sunday with Me Performance Lecture

On 4.3.07 I gave a performance lecture to nine people in Hayfield Derbyshire, North West England.

Here are some extracts describing things that happened on the original 12 Sundays:

Lecture on Bridges:
30.4.06 I’m walking briskly in the very general direction of Castlefields, Manchester, after a year in the city I’m not sure where I’m going. At the Newsagents near Spar on Oxford Road I buy a birthday card for Robin (it has pictures of bears on), and I turn off at the Temple of Convenience, Towards Peveril of the Peak, past Briton’s Protection, remembering (…) I’m following scribbled directions, despite myself, despite my inherent mistrust in academic trends, because I want to say that walking is not a textual practice but here, come over here, my way feels quite legible.
I turn down the steps the narrow way by the old canal. As I walk by, not through, not on, the water I see a boy of about sixteen hanging off a wall, a sheer drop of ten or fifteen feet. There is a football floating below him, which he is trying to rescue. I shout at him to climb back up, because I can see back the way I came a point where the ball could be rescued. The boy ignores me, so I wait ten minutes or so whilst he eventually climbs back, feeling that I could not have left him. By the lock I see the Newsreader Jon Snow, who is out for the day with, presumably, his family. I imagined they were going somewhere very nice for lunch, and afterwards, with full bellies, maybe to the theatre (to sleep it off). I am very early. I write in the card Happy 46th Birthday, Robin, and wonder where we will go, what we will see, what we will hear, what we will say.

Lecture on Music:
15.10.06: You will take one of her loose hairs and wrap it around her finger. You will take the other end and wrap it around yours and you will both pluck it, exploring the sounds, making attempts toward rhythm and melody. You will while a few minutes before the hair breaks too short to be played. And she will say, that she is going to get ready. You will shower and wait on the landing standing at the window watching a flag snap in the wind. A few minutes will pass you will ask where she wants to go.

Lecture on Forgetting:
Yosuke shares his sandwich with me and we talk about our work, and after an hour we go for a walk. We are at a loss for what do, until we arrive at a set of stone steps leading up to the city walls. And our tourism is (inevitably) accomplished quite by accident as we walk around in a circle sharing the narrow walkways with families. We take each other’s picture on his camera phone by a turret. And by fortune we arrive at a little bookshop where he inquires about the English Poet Wordsworth, whom he read as a schoolboy in Japan. He tells me that he loves nature and that when he read Wordsworth he was very moved. He recites the poem by heart.
Weeks later we meet up at the Emergency platform in Manchester, where Mariella is performing. I ask him about the poem again, he recites it. I have an idea (which I keep to myself) to find the poem and recite it, making a recording to send to him when he is back in Japan. I ask him what the title is, but he cannot recall.

4.3.07top-to-bottom:
Wading through the River Sett,
Sign for Public Safety, Nr. Bowden Bridge Campsite, foot of Kinder
Sign for Public footpath to Twenty Trees
Up Twenty Trees (5 of 9 attendees pictured)

Photographs by writings and accompanying photographs by Paul Stapleton over at www.livearchives.org/sunday-with-me/