Riverside audio trail

The trail starts at Hertford Museum. If you’re joining part-way through, or listening from home, start with track 1 for an introduction.

Track 8 Audio Transcript

Thank you for listening. Please visit therippleeffect.art to explore the digitised textile artwork and watch the documentary about the project. 

Audio has been produced by DCB Productions. The Ripple Effect Project is produced by Drawing Voices. The project was generously funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, The Barchester’s Charitable Foundation, and East Herts Council. And supported by The Canals and Rivers Trusts and Arts in East Herts 

Now, we invite you to stay listening to hear the 6 verses of the sound piece read through as one, as you rest by the river or walk back along the path you came. 

We used to walk together beside the river. You would be wearing a tucked in open neck shirt. I went through a variety of different styles, I was working myself out. The river was a safe space where sometimes our conversation flowed and others times we just breathed. I used to watch you watch the river, reading the surface. It was like a book that you had read many times before, you could tell what was going to happen next. A slight nod accompanied by a mumble to yourself ‘there’s a fish.’ I could only ever catch the ripples. 

As things changed it seemed like you where the one working yourself out. You looked different, your neatness was gone, buttons where misaligned and shirts where never tucked in. Our flowing conversations faded like ripples and where replaced with just breathing. I talked to you and you didn’t talk back so I thought that you couldn’t understand. But it was me who lacked understanding. Like last years leaf caught in water reeds your congregative channels that brought thoughts to tongue became misaligned. But you where listening and as watchful as ever. 

I hated talking at you, mindless hesitant prattling, pointless questions. Sometimes you opened your mouth like a fish rising up for a fly, like reaching for a book on a shelf thats too high but no words came, just breathing.  I brought you my sketchbook because I couldn’t stand the silence, I can admit that now. I wrote down self serving questions like ‘are you okay?’ And you read them. You where not okay, we both knew that, and it quickly became clear that written language was not how we could communicate so I changed my question. ‘Can you draw a river?’ 

Initial lines where like a bend in a brook and I did not know what shape they would take. My eye’s followed them like a leaf meandering along the murky surface. A few stokes on and your scene became as familiar as a bridge passed over every day to get to work. It was so simple just my sketchbook and a black pen but it opened up a door into your communication, your world. I kept that sketchbook, that conversation, our moment in time. I often looked at it and seen something new. I was comforted by it when the breath went out of you for the last time and your watchful eyes finally rested on something I could not see.

I brought that book to other people who still live in your world with an invisible thief who takes so much and together we drew rivers and visions of flowing water. Similar to yours but different, like a smudgy fingerprint. I took the shape of your river and built a structure that would support and channel these conversations, this community. I washed your shirts for the last time and then I ripped them into ribbons, physically processing this grief. I made bundles of Paul Smith and strips of checked Ben Sherman. I collected buttons from Marks and Spencers and found shiny corners of biscuit wrappers in the deepest seams of unpicked pockets. Wrapped onto a loom, shaped by our conversation, the strips of your shirts formed a riverbed. 

Over and under passed the cotton fabric between the many hands of your community, determined despite limitations of physical and emotional aches. Over and under went the collars and cuffs by those who showed up despite the effort it takes to get out the front door. Over and under flowed the arms and seams through those effected by the inner conflict that robbed you of your voice, they brought your river to life. It breathed and grew and burst like a trout breaking the wetland and gobbling the may fly. Conversation! Channels of chat, ripples of laughter, rivers of tea and biscuits in shiny paper like the late summer sun glittering on a smooth surface. A rhythm took hold and we worked as one defined by our difference and connected through our joint experience. We wove your river and you shaped our conversation.