Through narrating the activity of running my regular 5K during lockdown, Green Moss is an endeavour to capture, sotto voce, my experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was made in response to an invitation to contribute to Clouds and Tracks: 'an audio project that seeks to collate sound works to reflect the strange and unsettling times we’re living through' collated and curated by Volker Eichelmann and John Hughes, from Kingston School of Art.

The words and ideas in Green Moss formed as I was running. Initially recorded on Zoom, later processed in Logic Pro, I recount the struggle of running 5K inside my house, and the anxieties of running out in the streets again, while evading proximity to 'others'. This enforced 'distancing', is antipathetic to most of us, and is a behaviour that has had to be painfully learned.

The green moss attached to my backyard wall is my touch point during my 'home' running, but also offers a symbolic anchor to counter the turmoil and sadness brought about by the pandemic. I feel and inhale its softness when I finally return to my mid-terrace house at the end of the piece. The capacity of moss to purify the air, accentuates its significance for me during the months of lockdown, throughout which the air itself sometimes seemed to be the malefactor.

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Green Moss was broadcast as part of Clouds and Tracks
collation of sound works,
by Radiophrenia on 14th Nov. 2020.


CLOUDS AND TRACKS

cloudsandtracks.net

Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations.


'A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.'
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons