A (un)heard voice reads into public air

‘Performances’ at Rocher de la Vierge, Biarritz

Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Glorious), Rocher de la Vierge, Biarritz| July 2024

A ‘return’,

An invitation on the path to Lourdes

These photos were taken during the ‘Public’ Air performances at Rocher de la Vierge, July 2024

Each ‘performance’ sits in the durational time spent on the cusp of the Virgin Mary and the ocean, moving from the writing of scripts to the voicing into ‘public’ air. Each iteration moves as its desires through the space, bodily tracings through the atmospheres it breathes.

My breath from the ‘Public’ Performances is felt in the filmic bodies, layered over the ‘Private’ Performances.

Gestures,

Voice,

Breath,

Air,

Ear,

Temporal Rituals.

Fragments of the script from the ‘performance’ follow.

‘My grandmother is no longer to my side, on the church pew. Always in the front row.

At your Requiem Mass, your funeral, 

a memory returns me to you. 

The same church pew, you by my side. 

Your face is contorted in horror. 

I follow your gaze to the young priest entering for Mass across the red carpet. 

I can see his muddy boots under his cassock. 

Traces of mud cling to the red carpet.

I smile. 

My grandmother glares with the same look I have seen my mother make at me across the dining room table. 

My father to my side, 

years before, 

he switched positions at our table. 

Words held in our bodies.

Bodies locked in position.

Words unspoken.

My body remembers as I write these words.

I move my shoulders back towards the ground.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I smile now at the thought of your mirrored glares.

Time out of kilter.

Our durations change.

Do my eyes know this repeated glare?

My eyes catch on a journal in the archives in the National Library of Ireland, in Dublin. I turn, the page of The Kilkenny Magazine, in the warm air of the reading room, the cold December air whirling outside. Seagulls puncture the air from their distant movement through the grey Dublin skies.

The spray of the ocean here in France, touches my face.

My finger tips move to brush the touches of the ocean away.

Your ring solid to touch.

The Dublin seagulls dance with French gulls, as the greys of both skies collide.

My fingers pause on page forty-seven, my eyes caught on the time and title, Spring, 1965, Mother and Daughter, by Michael Laverty.

The story of a mother in hospital.

My body remembers hospital time.

‘The old lady in the private ward had expected her married daughter since two o’clock and as it was now near four her scrap of patience had begun to shrink.’

‘But what on earth was keeping her so late today after promising she’d be here at two. Oh, the same girl never hurried except when it suited her! Selfish, selfish – that summed her up.’ 

‘She’s in one of her tantrums, the daughter said to herself, and called on God to give her patience during the visit.’ 

‘The daughter clasped her hands on her lap and yearned to be out once more in the wide airy spaces of the street. No matter what she said she failed to make contact or break down the tension that divided them. Everything was going wrong : the snow, the long wait for the bus, and then the failure of the visit. She sighed, and as the daylight shrank from the room she switched on the light and drew the curtains.’ 

‘The mother stooped and pressed the burst bags of fruit into the press, and red in the face from exertion and anxiety she sat down and breathed audibly.’ 

“That’s right, stand up for them against your poor tortured old mother.” 

Fragmented moments between mother and daughter. Archive time.

So many failed visits between mother and daughter. Between you, and me.

Breath catches in my throat. Held.

Reaching for my tongue.

Held in my throat.’

Fragments are held here from the scripts, that are felt in full in filmic breath and voiced into the air at embodied circular readings. Theresa’s words (my aunt) and my mother’s are held only in the temporal care of the embodied circular readings alongside the polyphony of voices that join the chorus of the reorientations of the Irish Catholic maternal.