Timber

For this track in The Powdered Earth's lockdown project I took my reference from a finger print (obvious similarities with tree rings). The gold of the fingerprint comes from the same gold gel press print that I've used in the other tracks. I rubbed through the sombre purple to reveal the gold of the fingerprint beneath.

To help me prepare for this piece I asked Shane to share his thinking behind the lyrics. He explained,

“This thing we’re living through has cut a slice through us and shown what we are inside. How we presume things will progress in the usual way, as if history is the only reference, and how that presumption has been exposed for the arrogance it is.”

The finger print in my image has been cut in half and shifted across so that it no longer matches up (the physical distance between us). But even though the fingerprint has shifted from what we are used to, it has forged new connections reaching across the divide, and it now looks somewhat like a crooked heart.

The tree rings and fingerprints remind me of labyrinths I've walked and how you can't always see the way ahead clearly or the destination but you carry on walking round the curves in hope. It reminds me too of something a nurse said to me following surgery for breast cancer. I was concerned because they had had to remove all of the lymph nodes from one side but she said, “your body will find a way, it’s as if the motorway was closed, you’d just find an A road.”

As an aside, a bit like word association, Timber made me think of Timbre (appropriate for the musicians!) and also, randomly, Timshel which means "you may" in Hebrew. Made famous through East of Eden (which I haven't read!). But reading extracts from the novel it becomes clear that the translation is important. Apparently, some biblical translations have used 'you shall' and 'you will', but using 'you may' makes all the difference. It gives us a choice. We have a choice here in this time.