Public Responses I loved the walk, Amy – it made a real layering of the city for me – gaps to slip into and view different perspectives both in time and space – a real visionary sense of where we journeyed through and a shift of viewpoints that will stay with me not only with intently studying names for clues of heritage but another awareness of parallel existences. – Anne Bean Some of our drivers were in Islington on the 10th July and saw Amy Sharrocks’ work. They were really taken aback. They’d not seen anything like it before so I read up on the event in the Independent. I wanted to let you know how impressed our drivers were. I’m not putting the fellas down when I say that modern art is not normally the focus of their conversation. Thought I’d let you know I’ve written a blog article about the piece on our website. I hope you don’t mind but we try to keep it updated with what different drivers are doing around London. If you’re interested the blog article is Man and Van Islington art work. – Man and Van Islington Oh my god I had the most unquenchable thirst! I literally drank about 4 litres of water and wasn’t satisfied. My body was crying out for lost water! It was a spectacular evening, which seems more floatily dreamlike and surreal and I think back on it now. Thanks so much. Truly memorable, and what a lovely bunch of people. – Laura McDermott Thank you for organizing amazing walk yesterday. It was one of the most memorable experiences I had in London. I still can’t imagine we walked through London by following the underground river. It was very inspirational walk and I enjoyed talking with other walkers as well. I also remember some of the street, especially around Farringdon-City area, shapes exactly like wandering river. So some of the road must be built exactly on top of the old river right? I don’t know how accurately you can draw the river map, but it would be interesting if we can see the overlap btw past and present. Thank you again for the great evening and good luck with your work. – Take Iseki Thank you so much for a thrilling and unusual experience. – Agnieszka Gratza I wanted to thank you for the Walbrook experience as I wasn’t able to chat to you afterwards . Time passed, I couldn’t work out how to write to you, and it seemed an opportunity missed. Then I had this strange dream last night. You were standing in an urban market with an African feel to it (although I think it was in London), very bright light and ochre earth. Your were making amazing things out of cloth for individual people. The strongest image I have is of you holding up a brightly coloured long frock and cutting it to fit a random passer by (who was thrilled); this process changed both the dress (it lost that representational element and became ‘cloth’) and the person. It was like alchemy; the ‘dress’ in being reshaped transformed the wearer. It was a very positive moment. Strange and maybe a metaphor for how I felt about Walbrook. It was magic in a way. I loved the experience especially the silent half but more than anything I was struck by your extraordinary courage and generosity. You give life to an idea, nurture it, and then hand it over to a random group in a collaborative gesture that is life-enhancing in its trust. You let us flow like the river without any exhortations and (there’s the alchemy again) that random bunch become something else,something better. The sum of the whole was more important that the parts, a rare thing in today’s egocentric world especially that of the City we passed through. Thank you for the experience and good luck with future projects. – Clarissa Palmer Thank you for the walk yesterday: it was most interesting and enjoyable. I didn’t know what to expect nor what I made of it afterwards, so consequently the experience is still very much with me, meandering river-like around my head. I’m glad that the walk resists categorization: neither a historical tour nor a curated piece of art to look at. You made it a very human occasion by welcoming us all so warmly which in turn encouraged us to talk to others and share the experience, enriching it. And it becomes something special by the act of people giving up a Friday afternoon, perhaps having to arrange time off work, to participate and agree to be tied together. Using the Walbrook as a premise leaves me wanting to know more about the River itself but also to connect, by re-tracing a well-worn path, to the earth, my city, and the past where humans have been for hundreds of years just getting on with life. I know searching for ‘facts’ can be an attempt to fill the void of not-knowing, but snippets of information also offer up new possibilities and trigger one’s interest in new paths to follow. I often wander around places, in London especially, not really knowing what I’m looking for, sometimes able to appreciate the moment just as it is but more often vaguely hoping to get closer to some kind of ‘meaning’ to life: not a literal ‘meaning’ but something less tangible, some sort of fulfilment or connection or wholeness or perhaps a sense of just not wasting life. Meandering with others is quite different from wandering alone and even though we followed a set path, unexpected links and limitations talking to others were created by the varying pace and pulls of the blue elastic – several times I found myself ‘towed along’ by the tide of elastically-joined people! RISING DAMP ‘A river can sometimes be diverted but is a very hard thing to lose altogether.’ At our feet they lie low, Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy, Whose names are disfigured, There are the Magogs that chewed the clay They have gone under. They return spectrally after heavy rain, Being of our world, they will return Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy, It is the other rivers that lie Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx. From Standing To (Peterloo Poets, 1982) and in her Collected Poems (Peterloo, 2005) |
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