Six Things, Volume 72

This is the second in the series ‘I just didn’t have the necessary combination of health, time and inclination to put together a proper post of my own but luckily I had the foresight to invite someone else to do a guest post’. The first was by Sarah Crowder a few weeks ago, and I’m immensely grateful to the superb and very lovely Chloe Hope for taking the time to source the Six Things that follow below. Chloe’s Substack Death & Birds is one of the best around – she writes beautifully and with great perception. Plus, obviously, you know: birds. So get over there and subscribe before you do anything else.

Enough of my guff. Here are Chloe’s Six Things.

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Thing 1 – My Dudus

There is an epic battle of wills which has been playing out in our garden, of late. My beloved, David, and a local squirrel have pitted themselves against one another and entered into a strange dance whereby David tries to prevent the squirrel from eating all the birdseed and the squirrel finds ever more complex and ingenious ways of getting to it. I can’t help but think that there is some sort of karmic, past life, unfinished business between them. Anyway, this gorgeous short film is basically the opposite of that. During lockdown a woman finds a Squirrel, recently fallen from a nest, and when none of his squirrel kin come for him, she steps in. I can attest to there being a depth of sweetness and complication that interspecies friendships often reach, and the relationship between Dudus, the squirrel, and his human foster mother is no exception. I often wonder whether the birds from the rescue centre remember us once they’ve returned to the wild. If Dudus is anything to go by then, yes, they probably do—then again, Dudus may well be one of a kind.

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Thing 2 – Bird portraits

Luke Stephenson’s bird portraits make me swoon. I don’t have a favourite bird as I love them all equally (it’s the long-tailed tit), so these images are a delight, each and every one. Stephenson was inspired by the professional portraits taken of prize winning pigeons (which I didn’t know was a thing) and had planned on taking portraits of budgies exclusively, but he branched out, and I’m so glad he did—look at the bullfinch! All birds are works of art. Sure, it might be easier to appreciate it in some over others, but when our true and full attention is directed their way, none are anything less than magnificent. And I think Luke understands that. I love how simply he approaches his task, using only a plain, coloured background of just the right shade to highlight whatever glorious combinations of hue the individual bird is bringing. I don’t have a favourite image in the series (it’s number 25, the Heuglin’s white-eye) as each are so perfect in their own way. I have a copy of the book of the project on my desk, and it brings me endless enjoyment and distraction.

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Thing 3 – Crannog

I saw this short film five years ago and I still think about it, often. It follows Alexis, a young woman who is, for all intents and purposes, an end of life doula for animals. She dedicates each of her waking hours to tending fiercely to various characters, none of whom would be exposed to the kind of care and attention that she offers, otherwise (as, tragically, so few beings are). The director, Isa Rao, wanted the viewer to ask themselves questions about the dying process, and whether it’s something that animals experience with any fundamental difference to humans. I think these are interesting and important enquiries—ones that are typically shied away from, because the potential answers raise a world of complex issues, especially if we wish to believe that we live in a moral society (spoiler alert, we don’t). Either way, I find the raw love that Alexis offers to the beings which she takes into her care extremely moving, and I often wonder what it would take (and what impact it would have) were a greater percentage of people to operate from such a deep place of compassion.

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Thing 4 – Fusion of Helios

This image, a composite of 90,000 (!) images of the sun, blows my mind. I’m a big fan of the sun—even though as someone living in the United Kingdom, it can sometimes feel like a mythical thing—so seeing the “usually invisible solar corona, the outermost layer that tends to be hidden by the sun’s powerful glare” was very exciting. I also didn’t know, before seeing this image, that the sun is actually furry. I kid, of course. The muppet-like texture is actually made up of fiery ‘spicules’ (dynamic jets of plasma which are each about 300km wide) and, even knowing this, I still want to bury my face in it. Whenever I look at this image, especially the close up parts, I can’t help but wonder what it must sound like, up there. I appreciate that anything with ears is going to be burnt to a crisp from a long way off, but still, if one could hypothetically hear the type of noise which that much raging plasma must make, I’d be very interested to hear it. I bet it’s awesome (in the Biblical sense).

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Thing 5 – Make Ink / The Colour of Ink

I’m hesitant to share that our attempts at ink making haven’t ‘gone to plan’ just yet (colossal disasters) because that is far from the point. The point is the potential. And the ways in which the eye changes when one begins colour hunting. 

The film ‘The Colour of Ink’ follows artist Jason Logan as he moves about the world, gathering ingredients (walnuts, blood, gun metal, marble, crushed flowers) from which to make a variety of coloured inks. For the documentary, he then gifts these inks to artists he admires (from painters to writers, Margaret Atwood makes an appearance when she is gifted a ‘Handmaid Red’ ink, made using brick dust from Toronto’s Wycliff College) and as the viewer we see the new relationships between artist and medium bloom. The people in the film speak about the inks as having distinct personalities which, given all their different sources, makes a lot of sense. The process is slow. The ink is alive. 

The book, Make Ink, is a budding ink makers guide to how you might follow Jason’s lead, teaching what nature has to offer for ingredient and inspiration alike. I want to swim in the blue of the copper oxide ink, and sleep in the black of the lamp black ink. Setting your sights on a particular colour before going out into the world in search of it really brings home the extraordinary spectrum which the natural world is offering, bursting with subtlety, nuance and character.

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Thing 6 – Swim dance

AMA is a silent film that speaks volumes. Director and dancer Julie Gautier generously says that AMA “tells a story everyone can interpret in their own way, based on their own experience. There is no imposition, only suggestions.” It seems, then, that whatever response you may have to AMA is the correct one and, for me, it ignites something which I’m yet to find adequate words for. I sense ecstasy in her ethereal spirals, and divinity in her weightless surrender. Each time I’ve watched AMA my heart rate and breathing have slowed, significantly. I wish to move, forever, at such a languid pace and a part of me fiercely longs for a world in which that might be acceptable. There’s also something about the sound of a cello combined with the visual of a woman whose body seems entirely at ease that makes me want to abandon all my world possessions and find some kind of temple at which I might spend my life worshipping the feminine. 

I don’t know Julie, but I am eternally grateful to her for offering a glimpse at a way of being which I can momentarily live vicariously through her. Raised by a spearfishing, freediving father and a dancer mother, Julie was made to create art with this level of depth. Speaking to her art and inspiration she says, “Art is very good way to transmit emotions. Use it to protect the values you believe in, to spread words of kindness, to open the eyes to the beauty of our world. And try to think about what you can do daily to protect it.” That certainly gets an Amen, from me.

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