"Stretched into Tales that Leave a Mark"

Two rather wonderful things have happened recently that has prompted this episode to take a reflective look back at this podcast and the journey we have taken together. Join us tonight on NB Erica as we celebrate sharing these night-times on still waters. 

Journal entry:

31st October, Thursday, Samhain – All Hallow’s Eve

“Still air.
 Wood smoke blends with night mist.
 A tawny’s call shivers
 Across the fields to the south.

I pass a couple of boats
 With pumpkin jack o’ lanterns
 Grinning candlelight
 Onto their bows.

The distant music of memories
 Swirl me loose from my moorings
 Casting me adrift into
 The night-times of my boyhood.”

Episode Information:

In this episode I read two poems
  ‘Slow Radio’ by Seán Street
 ‘The Narrowcaster’ by Archie.

I refer to a previous episode, ‘The sun that shone on Eden (Still shines upon us here)’ and I include recordings from ‘Duck calls in the night.’ 

With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.

Lois Raphael
Sami Walbury
 Tania Yorgey
 Andrea Hansen
 Chris Hinds
 David Dirom
 Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Donna Kelly
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

General Details

In the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org.

Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.

All other audio recorded on site. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:45 Journal entry
• 1:27 Welcome to NB Erica
• 2:48 News from the moorings
• 7:44 Cabin chat
• 10:04 "Stretched into tales that leave a mark"
• 15:26 'Slow Radio' by Sean Street
• 37:24 'The Narrowcaster' by Archie
• 39:28 Signing off
• 39:43 Weather Log

Transcript

JOURNAL ENTRY

31st October, Thursday Samhain – All Hallow’s Eve

“Still air.
 Wood smoke blends with night mist.
 A tawny’s call shivers
 Across the fields to the south.

I pass a couple of boats
 With pumpkin jack o’ lanterns
 Grinning candlelight
 Onto their bows.

The distant music of memories
 Swirl me loose from my moorings
 Casting me adrift into
 The night-times of my boyhood.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It’s a still, breathless, night tonight under a starless sky heavy with cloud. Earlier, a distant firework display reflected palely off the clouds. Summer lightning in November. Where we are tied up tonight it is not far from a fairly busy road. The still air carries the occasional sound of traffic across the fields and up the canal. A train rattles southward. Opposite us, the hunched bulk of a crack-willow, almost leafless, crouches beside the canal only just a little darker than the night around it.  

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a starless and moonless November night, to you wherever you are.

It is lovely to see you. I am so glad that you came. I put the kettle on ready and made sure the biscuit barrel is full. There is a comfy chair waiting for you, so come inside and welcome aboard

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

Along the towpath, crimson hawthorn berries smoulder warm among the mud and leaf fall. Rusty wires of sorrel stem, garnet-red, stand stark along the canal edge, where a few weeks ago, green clouds of water mint, mallow, and willowherb grew. Tall fists of burdock, stripped and withered to the bone, hold thistly burrs like old fashioned sea-mines to the coats of dogs and other passersby. Desiccated blackberries hang in clusters. They fall apart in my mouth and lie tasteless and gritty on my tongue. That’s what you get for eating fruit that the devil has weed on. Everywhere there are tiny red-fires among the dripping browns and time-worn greens: rosehip, bryony, cuckoo-pint (although these are all but over). And every now and then, pin-pricks of cerise herb Robert’s delicate petals remember the touch of spring and summer days the suffused the canal banks with birdsong and the dance of insect wing. Or perhaps they are just promising the summers yet to come.   

These days, even on the stillest of days, leaves fall. Ash, twist and spiral lazily, like yellowing green, mottled, salmon. Small eddies of air catch and play with them, before they settle on mud and water. The local kingfisher turns his coppery chest to me as he flies in long looping strides along the opposite bank. And well he might! His hennaed waistcoat matches exactly the autumn golds, and the auburns and russets, tawnies and chestnuts, of the turning world all around him. Even the flash of his blue looks dull in contrast to the autumn fire of his chest.

The polestar oak has now lost almost all of its leaves; clothed now in light and air. However, on the hill, the convocation of oaks are still thick with foliage throwing their familiar summer silhouettes against the autumnal sky.

The cormorant, oil slick and spear sharp, has been making a presence here recently. As lithe and agile in air as in water. At each dive, the water closes over the sleek black body with barely a ripple. The ducks appear clumsy and oafish in comparison. But then they too take to the air, almost vertical, trailing a chandelier of light behind them. There is more than one way to show mastery of an element.

The cygnet is becoming more and more independent and is, for all intents and purposes, self-sufficient. Most times I see it, it is on its own. Its parents still seem to accept its company. At least I haven’t seen any attempts to drive it away. From what I can tell, the parents usually only do that (if they need to) once they have learnt to fly. Donna says that she saw them together flapping their wings. Building and stretching the all-important flight muscles. I’ve not seen it yet. Sometimes it still swims and forages with mum. Dad too seems fine. But there is an undeniable slow parting of the ways. The adolescent stage. Locking themselves away in the bedroom and falling into an uncommunicative silence at the dinner table. Such is the way of growing up among human and, it seems, also in swan families. And it is well. Soon, this little territory will only be big enough for the parents again as they look to the next round of nest building, laying, and hatching, and rearing. And, besides, hopefully, all things being well, there are new worlds that await this remaining cygnet.  

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

‘STRETCHED INTO TALES THAT LEAVE A MARK’

[Clip from episode 1 ‘Duck calls in the night’]

It now seems so long ago, that first episode of Nighttime on Still Waters. 4th October 2020. The turmoil of the pandemic raged about us and, socially – within the media if not in the local reality – things had begun to spiral. At times it did feel as if we were on a little island surrounded by a deepening night – and the need to find new ways to reach out to say ‘I am here’ and ‘I see you too. We are not alone.’ But also, to celebrate and somehow acknowledge by making a record of all those other – more than human – lives whose company were becoming more and more important to me.  

I can remember my finger hovering overing and drawing back many times from the big green button that published the uploaded file and sent it out beyond my control into a different kind of darkness. For, unintentionally in those days, I realised that, within that file, there was a piece of me that I was releasing with it unprotected into an unknown world. It is a feeling that I have grown more used to, but it is still always there. That final, ‘dare I?’

In some ways, things have not really progressed far from those first episodes. Those beautiful passages from Charlie Connelly’s The Last Train to Hilversum recalling the magic of radio still resonate deeply within me. Duck calls in the night still play an important part of my daily life – as demonstrated just a few episodes back (‘The consolation of ducks’). I still have just one listener, you. Though your shape tends to fluctuate and morph with time, and you have become much richer and deeper and wiser, and you’ve taught me so much.

However, in other ways, as we both grow and develop and let our curiosities choose the paths we are to walk, it seems as we have covered some miles and the night doesn’t seem quite so dark or lonely.

As I sit here, in this small circle of light that shines down upon the desk, all that you bring to this meeting - the small details of your life, the flora and fauna, the climate, the place names that I have only known from a map, all the things commonplace and unremarkable to you, but so exotic to me -    flow around me, naturally merging, like the swirl of night-time mist, with this strip of canal glinting under a sky full of stars and owl call. Along with the brush and rustle of reeds, there is dry desert heat too, and big skies over prairies, and mountain forests, and the crash of surf and the cascade of streams.

I am not sure how accurate it is, but the statistics according to the platform host of this podcast (so it only has a fairly restricted reach) shows that this podcast has been listened to in over 6,184 cities across the globe covering 134 different countries and territories.   

Yes, we have covered some miles together and the journey is the richer for it. Me here. You there. Sharing this pool of light in the darkness of our night under one moon. The magic of radio. It is so perfectly captured by Seán Street in his poem ‘Slow Radio.’

[READING]

What struck me from my most recent reading of it was that sense of place that Seán evokes. It is true that radio (let’s be indulgent and include narrowcasted podcasts here as well as broadcasted radio), it is true that radio can transport us to the most wonderful and vivid places in our imaginations. I can still remember listening in our front room at home to Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood on our old valve radio that smelt of burnt dust when you first turned it on. And how, it took me to the surreal, dream-like, little Welsh fishing village, with its slow-black, crow-black cobbled streets and fishing boat bobbing waves that slapped against the harbour walls. But it ALSO rooted me into my own world, the four of us, and two dogs, sitting in a semi-circle around the fire, the night falling outside the bay windows. The tall cypress by the garden gate. The occasional vehicle passing on the A41 and the rattle of a freight train clattering along the other side of the valley.   

Or sitting on the beach wall, while eating chips out of a paper packet soggy with vinegar, at Sheringham while listening to Friday Night is Music Night being played on the loud speakers of the Lifeboat house. 

Radio can transport us away to wonderful places, but it can also magically root us more firmly in our own particular landscapes.

I was reminded of this by something wonderful that happened a week or so ago. Well actually there were a couple of things, but I will get on to the other one later.

A few weeks ago, one of our lock-wheelers, Andrea Hansen, got in touch with me about her brother, Gregory Hansen, to say that he is a professor at Arkansas State University where he teaches Heritage studies and has a special interest in myth and folklore, and that he had listened to the podcast and had really enjoyed the episode on The Children of the children of Lir. Well, last week, Andrea contacted me again to say that Gregory had used the episode The sun that shone on Eden as part of a course he runs and attached some excerpts from reflective essays that his students had written.

First of all, I was delighted and flabbergasted (in equal measure) that an episode could be useful in this way and secondly, that it was one that I had entirely forgotten about it. When Andrea wrote about ‘the sun that shone on Eden still shines on us now’ I immediately thought ‘what a great phrase! I must look up where it has come from’!

However, my delight was nothing compared to that when I read them. I was genuinely moved that the podcast could not just evoke such a response, but that it was treated so insightfully.

First, hello Gregory, and thank you again. It was great to correspond with you and thank you for all the information you emailed to me about the work you do over there. As I wrote, I particularly appreciated the reading list and can see my ‘books to read list’ is going to get considerably longer in the near future. It is a good job the nights are drawing in and plenty of reading time lie ahead!

If by any chance any of your students are listening, hello and thank you too. I hope you don’t mind that I am taking the liberty to read out a couple of extracts as they seem to go right to the heart of this podcast and its primary ethos – finding connections with the soil and each other.

I love the connection made by Emad and Abigail between that episode and Keith Basso’s wonderful book Wisdom sits in places. I’m glad that you could see such a connection there, and it was an idea I was playing with (as well as the work by the two Welsh poets – which Will mentions). I think one of the assumptions I was trying to push back against is that I can sometimes feel my lack of heritage and my rootlessness or at least the shallowness of those roots when it comes to my relationship with my local landscape. Historically in large swathes of Britain, culturally, our roots with the landscape are loosened and we lack the rich heritage of both indigenous American and Welsh cultures which no matter how persecuted and threatened still exist with their lands. In other words, can I still find those anchors or ‘places’ that not just root me, but talk and teach me (as Basso notes), in 21st century Britain within a local landscape that I have no actual historical connection with.

Abigail’s words struck me particularly powerfully, as in seeking those connections and finding a sense of place within the landscape seemed to work not just locally here, but also with the landscapes (unknown and alien – in the most positive sense of the word) to me. “Look how easily the land accepts your footfall,” says Richard Goode as he describes a place many listeners have never been to, yet we feel as though we have due to his rich description. We are physically transported through words.” This is echoed by Conster’s comment that, the podcast resulted in, “making one want to take a walk around the countryside to connect with nature and the land.” I am so glad that it did.

Will made a particularly perceptive observation and one that has been giving me a lot to reflect upon: “While listening to the episode “The Sun that Shone on Eden” from the Nighttime on Still Waters podcast, I naturally drew comparisons to Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso. Both ultimately look at nature through a nostalgic lens of the past.” It was Will’s really interesting choice of wording ‘nostalgia.’ It is something that I am very aware that features heavily in this podcast, this nostalgic sense of the past. A personal and personalized sense of history. Such as it is, it is useful for creating connections (individually, but also socially). Most feedback that I get is generally about how something I said triggers a memory or shared experience. But there is also a danger with it. I am aware that nostalgia, by its nature, is highly subjective and because of it, can be, exclusionary. Exclusionary in the sense that it is limited by specificity; it is meaningful to me, but might fail to provide any useful ‘handholds’ for someone else. Will goes on to draw upon this contrast by noting that my use of nostalgia is individualistic in contrast to the example of the Welsh poets who drawn upon what he refers to as ‘collective nostalgia’. The line between recalling the past historically and nostalgia is slippery and elusive. What is the tipping point between remembering historical events and nostalgia. It would be interesting to hear how Elinor Gwynn, the poet who is recording the old nams of fields and sea areas, would respond to this question. Let me stress that Will is certainly not being critical or negative about this, simply observing how the two processes work. I think that he makes a very fair point and one that, although perhaps not expressed so clearly as Will does, has troubled me for a while.

If you have been listening to this podcast for any length of time you will be aware that I am very influenced by the writings of John Moriarty. Moriarty talks about ‘sheltering stories.’ Narratives (myths if you like) that direct our lives and preserve our sense of being. His main argument is that the great meta-sheltering stories of the West (namely the Greek myths and to a certain extent the biblical ones too) have now failed us, and much of his work was to find new ones – or actually rediscover older ones. The big question for me is, in the framing that Will presents it, are my nostalgic stories big enough, robust enough, to create a sheltering story that is of use beyond the individual? Can a culture survive on a fragmented collection of individual personal stories? This is a big question, and I am not likely to find an answer quite yet.   

But, in this regard, I did find a comment made by Jeannie Marie especially insightful (and helpful): “Both Basso and Goode share stories that focus on lessons from nature, especially as they align with preservation and moral teachings. Goode emphasizes learning through lived experiences while Basso illustrates how the Apaches pass down information through stories that they tie to specific areas. Both Goode and Basso reflect on how lessons are often learned from experiences that one gains from nature.” Yes, I think you’re right Jeannie Marie – the handing down of community tradition in Basso’s case, the remembering of lived experiences in mine is an important distinction between what I was doing and what Basso was recording, and one that I had not noticed before. Reading your comment reminded me vaguely of something I read, but I can’t quite pin it down. I think it might be from Sharon Blackie, but in cultures now impoverished of such rich tradition and heritage, perhaps this use of preserving and codifying (is that the right word?) lived experiences is the key to regaining some sort of connection and might be more important and powerful than I first thought. Perhaps, to answer my earlier question, our culture (and I am referring here to post-industrial West), without those older indigenous stories, we need to enter a time of story-telling again and form again the stories of our home to live by.  

It is good to see that this is actually happening – perhaps it is a normal part of life – we are just not aware of it. Brandi provided a lovely example of exactly this: “As I listened to this podcast, I was engulfed in memories. Memories of my aunt who taught me about wild plants that can be used for food and medicine. As we walked in the same places that she walked in her childhood, she taught me the old names of those plants and how they must be prepared. My mother passed when I was young, so it was her sister who shared this heritage with me. It brought back memories of old place names here in my hometown that are not used anymore. These are names I learned from my grandparents. For example, Gibson Switch came to mind. It is a place in Valley View, Arkansas where the trains switched tracks. The old switch station is no longer in use, but there is a rich history in places where few of this generation know the names.” I am also so glad that you, "enjoyed this calm journey into heritage. “

Shandrea also provided a lovely insight that I found particularly heartening: “Funny enough, I listened to this episode as I was repotting a black shield alocasia that had outgrown the pot it came in. As I listened and dug through the dirt, I was transported back to my childhood, to my grandmother's backyard. Every summer, my grandmother would pick me up to “help” put new plants into her garden bed. In reality, she directed from the patio and let me have fun with the dirty work. The plant she favored the most was what we commonly call “elephant ears.” I hated those plants. They reminded me of those dinosaurs that flared out their necks in defense. Pulling myself back from that memory, I chuckled as I put the small black elephant ear into its new pot, covered its roots with dirt, and placed it near the window alongside a larger dinosaur-resembling plant that would’ve terrified me as a child. In my mind, these are the plants that I’ll be planting in my yard, if they survive that long. Calling them by the name she calls all flowers of that variety makes me feel like I’m imitating her, much like what Keith Basso points out about the importance of names in Wisdom Sits in Places. Although the name is of a plant and not a place, it takes me back to one. Tending to them makes me feel back at home in my grandmother’s garden.” I think that last line, Shandrea, “tending to them makes me feel back at home in my grandmother’s garden” is so important – especially to those of us, who like me, are trying to reconnect back to their rootedness within the landscapes that they find themselves in and yet feel culturally unrooted. I think, although possibly not realizing the depth of what I was saying, was perhaps what I was trying to articulate with my reference Mum teaching me about the nettle and the dock leaf. Many of us find ourselves through jobs or other circumstances in locations to which we have no sense of belonging. We might love the landscape, the flora and fauna, we might enjoy being out in nature, but that deep sense of feeling at home there can, at times, be difficult. I think your example is so rich in explaining how while our circumstances and even attitudes might change, there is also something within those memories – or to use Jeannie Marie’s phrase ‘lived experience’ – that can help to heal the rupture and restore us back to our sense of being ‘home.’      

I especially love the way that for so many, listening to me talking about the small world in which I inhabit - the land, the soil and water, the small communities that live within it - through this aural medium in some way made it possible for you to feel more embedded, rooted, part, of your own lived spaces. It is that magic of radio that Sean describes in his poem ‘Slow Radio’, my own experiences of being transported and yet rooted - and so too here, with you and I am so grateful that you have been open and generous enough to let me know.

So, thank you everyone for such thoughtful and perceptive reflections and thank you to Gregory for creating this opportunity.

Perhaps that epitomizes why I love doing these podcasts, and the heart that beats throughout them, sending words into our darkness to find connections with each other (no matter how geographically or socially different) and the often fractured and bruised landscape in which we find ourselves – and to realise that the sun that shone on Eden does still shine on us today.    

And that brings me on to the second really wonderful thing to happen recently was that I received a poem by Archie from Tacoma, Washington. I did mention it in the last episode, but wanted to be able to give it the proper space.

Archie wrote to say: “I have been trying to carry your magic into my own world by looking for the poetry in the simple things around me. Thank you for teaching me.”

The Narrowcaster
 
A Man Speaks Softly Into The Microphone,
His Voice Low, Steady,
Carrying Stories Like Wind Carries Whispers.
No Pen, No Page—
Just Sound Weaving Itself
Into Something Timeless.
 
He Doesn’t Just Tell Stories,
He Spins Them,
Each Word Wrapped In Meaning,
Floating Through The Air,
Finding You Wherever You Are.
 
You Listen,
Drawn In,
As If His Voice Could Pull You From Your World
And Drop You Into Another.
But It's Not Fantasy He Offers—
It's Life,
Seen Through A Different Lens,
Stretched Into Tales
That Leave A Mark.
 
A Lesson In Every Twist,
Truth In Every Pause.
His Words Settle Like Quiet Rain,
Soaking Into The Soil Of Your Thoughts,
Rooting Deeper Than You Expect.
 
He Is The Storyteller
Who Doesn’t Just Want You To Listen—
He Wants You To Learn,
To Feel,
To Walk Away Changed,
Carrying A Piece Of His Magic
Into Your Own World.

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG