Erin Taylor

I’ve got the outline of a circle tattooed on my forearm. It serves to remind me that what is inside the boundary is the same as what is outside of the boundary. The beautiful thing about working with sound is that it constantly enhances a sense of the borderlessness of self and other, you and the environment that you are in/of. A sounding is initiated well before it becomes audible, welling from deep within the sounding ‘object’ and to be heard the vibration must pass into another being, being received by the entirety of the being. ‘You’ extend all the way out, ‘It’ reaches all the way in. The environment here is very present, filled with very tangible and powerful presence; as well as soft delicate beauty ease and unfolding. Forming connection with this new land has been a very deep honour, in states of deep listening I’ve been treated to some deep moments of awe and connection with environment, being here and in it has allowed me to form new ways of being. Everything reflecting back on itself infinitely.

I’ve noticed here that everything melds together, everything is constantly becoming one again.

The trees merge together, not shying apart.
Caressing, supporting, filtering, under and over. Roots weave, cascade, mingle, hold.
No clear distinction as to who is who.
Separation dissolves to merged oneness of the greater, larger being.
Infinite variety and paths
Curves, returns
Growing together

I journey to Pari-whero on a day with never ending rain. I’ve been told I must visit.

Māori stories tell of Kupe (a great Polynesian explorer, who named the islands in Wellington Harbour after his daughters) leaving to explore further, away for so long that his people despaired. In grief, the daughters stood on the rocks and gashed themselves, in another version one of his daughters threw herself from the cliff tops to the rocks below. Gashed or dashed.  The place became known as Pari-whero. Red with the blood of Kupe’s daughters.

I stand on a red rock, sinking into the place
Through the rain a segment of rainbow appears
Struck by the beauty/awe/blessing of the moment – grief and deep old emotion wells up
I close my eyes, let out a sob, a tear falls from each eye.
I reopen my eyes and the rainbow has grown, reaching all the way to meet the ocean

It’s a very eternal woman’s place. I feels like I have been one in a line of many that have stood in that place and had the ocean and the rocks reach up, draw out and release grief. I feel connected to a line of women reaching back to the ancients feeling, holding, releasing.

Many times I have found myself moved (and at times overwhelmed) by how much spirit is infused into the landscape here. I’ve never had so much unseen ‘speak’ so loudly. Here I’ve experienced the tangible presence of larger and deeper intelligences. I’ve tuned in as it’s tuned me in, listening deeply we’ve met on a wavelength. Impressions passed, intuiting the inexpressible, communications had.

Euclidian geometry has no place here. A cold hard conceptual system so far removed from what manifests on this physical plane as to be redundant. Everything curves, bends and twists. An intelligence so great as to be unrecreatable by the human mind, yet if we flow we can move with it. To think that the monkeys that came out of, and were shaped by these forces/intelligence could ever be capable of mastery over the Mother is a dangerous fantasy, the adherence to which quickens our path to destruction every day.

Water is the vital source. Its the heart and everything that circulates. It moves endlessly yet it’s eddies and patterns remain constant. There is water everywhere here. Springing and welling up from deep within the hills and mountains. Oceans surround.

It is the quality of the water in the bay that I first experience and am struck by. It’s clarity and it’s softness. The beauty of light refracting and reflecting through water astounds me so nearly every day I head to the bay to watch the patterns on the water. I experience the quality of the water as a reflection of all that surrounds. I’m fascinated by the shapes of the ripples, waves and motion – so much movement, in so many directions, created by so many forces, all happening at once (it is all one). I remember that a drop of water in the ocean remains itself in the same position, it’s not carried away, but remains through this motion. Easily ceding motion on one plane. All that is, and all that works upon it simply passes over / through. There is deep beauty and magic in the reveal of ‘invisible’ workings.

My reflections on water expand after it first rains while I’m here. I walk after the rains in Wellington, following a path I’ve followed before, the streams enlivened and multiplied. I note:

Everywhere is bleeding water
It springs from under the earth
Rises, bubbling through the
bitumen and asphalt

An abundance pushes through
moves down stream
Collecting, amassing, gaining
momentum and gravity
Slowing, spreading
languishing in holding pools,
it’s path destroyed

Too much to be contained
rises like a fountain
and recreates its way

I’ve been lucky enough to spend a little time outside of the city, dwelling on a beautiful farm and it’s wild places/powerful reserves. Here, for the first time in my life I sat by a hill and listened to the sound of water emerging drop by drop from a hillside. It is one of the most precious and delicate things I have ever heard. I don’t try to record it. We are in the transition to spring, and true to it’s name life springs into being, blossoms from hard exteriors everywhere around. I open with it, propelled along in my journey by the natural forces, so very vital and present on this land. In these streams I see the patterns of life, double helix’s and spirals abound in its flow. Weaving its way down. Tumbling and turning in on itself, reviving as it goes.

As I move through my time here it’s the abundance of vital water that resonants through my being and fills my cup. I wrote a little last time about the harshness of Australia and my internal landscape. The contrast has become even starker now; between the drought at home, people killing their live.stock (itself holding new spring life on the cusp of blooming) for compassion, unable to keep the struggle going without the arrival of this precious (re)source and the feeling I get here – of life constantly unfolding, unfurling out over the top of itself in beautiful curved messes. Here I watch lambs being born, flowers blooming and ferns eternally emanating outwards.

Watching Australian politics, I despair for our humanity (Nauru, continuing genocide of the profound culture of Aboriginal ‘Australia’, fostered racism, etc etc) Is it the lack of water that leads to this aggressive, loveless, fearful, defensive mode of being? What happens to the world as access to this (re)source dries up, or is increasingly polluted by large heartless companies? What kind of a world will we live to see? (I’ve had dreams of the ‘start’ of the ‘end’)

I begin with the forest. To sound in a place one must first listen to it, see it’s movement, the way it bends in the breeze. See and feel what touched who. The forest moves, vibrating through its whole. It’s here that I can begin to remember who I am.

New beginnings are freeing, and total free choice can become daunting, when the weight of one’s mind and expectations (cultural, capitalist, hereditary) creeps in to limit it.

In the softness of New Zealand (the light is softer here, the edges are less hard, everything is dissolving back into itself) the harshness of the internal voice, and the place that I have come from has felt more pronounced, easier to identify and work with. Here there is more space between, more green. The green emerges as a pure, almost fractally multiplied green, the green of water and of life. The air caresses, softly, and at other times buffets like a body. Softness is inherent here.

I take the memories and reflections of the elements back into myself. I read of the ether:

“The sound of the ether is self-contained, and it holds all forms and colours. It is the basis of all sounds, and is the undertone which is continuous. Its instrument is the human body, because it can be audible through it; although it is all-pervading, yet it is unheard. It manifests to [wo]man as [s]he purifies h(is)[er] body from material properties. The body can become its proper instrument when the space within is opened, when all the tubes and veins in it are free. Then the sound which exists in space becomes manifest inwardly also. Ecstasy, illumination, restfulness, fearlessness, rapture, joy and revelation are the effects of this sound.”

To free my tubes has become intention of my residency here. I have some held emotions and grief to release, echoes and shadows of that which I have already let go. I spend a long while in Te Papa sitting tucked away in a dark corners listening. I immerse myself in the fertile darkness, drawing up inspiration, dredging it into the world of light through creative expression.

I get the opportunity to perform at the Pyramid Club. Performing for me is always a chance to discover and uncover what has been simmering below. This time everything is slower, wider, vaster. Lost in overtones, shimmering in vibration, cyclic movement, immanating momentum. Distorting time, Dissolving time into the timeless. I leave lighter, many syncronicities follow.

Lost notes came back in that performance. The next day I find myself in the studio releasing them with a lament for the pain being experienced by the women in my family at present, built on long histories.

The rain comes, and water springs from everywhere. More on that and the cycling rhythm of things to come.