Kilmartin Glen
I got there six thousand years after he’d gone. It took me that long to find where I needed to be
Have you ever had the feeling, when you stepped into an ancient landscape, that an ancient voice was trying to tell you something important – if only you could make it out? There’s a voice in Kilmartin Glen, amid six millennia of human history. It’s speaking to me. I think I may be able to understand it…
This one came as something of a surprise. I’d previously explored the notion of feeling that something ancient remained in a space when I did The Withy at the beginning of the Boozer Cruiser adventure. I didn’t expect to revisit it.
But one night on the boat, I was listening to a piece of music Laurie Glass had sent me some months earlier. I’d been struggling with it; I felt there was something old about it (a raw woodwind solo will do that!) but I was also struck with the idea that the piece had something of The Vaughan Williams’ The Last Ascending about it – if it had been a lark 5000 years ago.
Laurie called his piece The First Mirror, and I liked that, and that’s where I was trying to go with it. But on the boat, the storm that had been blowing for days (it seemed) just petered out, almost instantly, and a feeling of being cold and alone but still safe came over me.
My good old story engine referred me to the experience of visiting Kilmartin Glen for the first time in the 90s. It’s a remarkable place – a landscape with over 6000 individual examples of prehistoric stonework, from cup and ring marks to circles and cists. Back then the visitor centre had what was called a “multimedia display” to tell the story. It was three slide projectors programmed to fire with and against each other, presenting overlaid imagery on a screen. The story started with a helicopter flight going out of control, and somehow being sent five millennia back in time to when the people who worked the landscape were still there. I’d love to see it again for old times’ sake, but I’ve never been able to find a recording of it.
What could better that? Well, about 15 years later I returned in winter, with the aim of seeing Temple Wood stone cicle with a layer of frost upon it. For once the weather was with me, and I got a bright fire-toned dawn with frost flowers across the stones, and it was everything I’d hoped for.
With my story engine having made the connection, the words came out of me slightly faster than I could type them. I don’t think I did much to them; probably jiggled things a bit for pacing, but the main points remained in place. I took the opportunity of silence to record the vocal; and soon after I’d finished the storm returned – almost as if I’d been given intergalactic support to write the piece.
I’m glad to know from several sources that the feeling transfers to those who’ve been to Kilmartin Glen. I’d like to think it’s a sort-of tourist ad for the place.
Story / performance / video: Martin Kielty
Music / audio production: Laurie Glass
Sunset video: James Cheney
I got there six thousand years after he’d gone. It took me that long to find where I needed to be. The message was still warm, even under the frosted stones. I felt it at the moment the steep hills finally bent towards the glen.
Whoever he was, if it hadn’t been me, knew words would change. So he left the message in a feeling. In the cold that bit my fingers, in the frost-fingers that spread across the stones of Temple Wood, in the silent solitary standing-stone fingers that stretched up to the pinked midwinter sky.
The message didn’t reach my ears – it missed, or I missed it. And the poisoned modern part of my mind pretended to dismiss it. I almost felt like I should bend my knees to catch it.
Every stone on every mound begged to be stolen; promised an explanation. I resisted. They let me go. “You can’t have this,” he was saying, I think. “It’s lost. It’s not even here any more, just an echo. Where is it?”
Well… I know where it is. It’s behind a door in my mind. It’s not the time to find it.
I’ve waited six thousand years. So has he. But he’s asleep And I’m not.
