I grew up in a rural part of quebec city, not quite farmland today, but still sloping and grassy. My parent’s house was a combined home with a fisher’s dorm built by a father and his sons in the mid 19th century. This area was mostly developed as logging lands due to its proximity to the jacques cartier river. With time, modern developments began to surge around this 18 person county, turning it into a blended suburb, part bungalow, part country home. I spent a lot of time thinking about history while living here, imprints and renovation fitting one into the other as a strange form of preservation. I often wondered which steps i was repeating, what practices preceded mine, what language, what songs. I felt the same way about the Kvennaskólinn. This made me curious about the effects of history on a body living in an “old” place. I wanted to explore that in the sound work I did for my project. The collected audio is from moments of warm conversation, but I wanted to process it, a little like I did with my texts, through different software in order to create dialogue between memory and haunting. I was curious about the effects of sound on the interior space, what might already be retained in the walls of this school, and the traces we created while there.
My body loves the truth of summer the tethered axis of cold rain like a clock perturbing the heat. I’m quiet for once the heavy sheets flocking our window.A feathered light along my eye a suture once the wind comes in. I don’t look up. but still notice this horizon dipping out of practice “it forgot to take the light down with it.” the salt of evenings brushed from my hair and I don’t know yet what’s familiar in this place I hold my hand out to the rain How skin when wet sticks to history. How I can be an open window. How I can breathe into new shapes.I’m left to wonder once the days and life are spent once it’s all nebula and dry grass how the wreck of time might soothe these blisters.How all my friends might hold a love inside that heals in molecular ways. It makes me want to say “look at this place. where the sun kisses you like it kisses me right now.” so i say it.
