CROWS — Contemplation
The melodic squawk of crows in the trees lured me into the cemetery while biking by. Gates open, crows perched on the fence, faces black as death; but they did not feel like death. In fact, there was a song in the wind which carried a silent melody once I stepped inside the grounds. Two old trees, branches stretching high and wide over the pathways. Crows cawing and jumping, branches moving, collecting rain droplets to send down to the firm earth below.
There I stood, searching for crows in the branches and listening for the broken stillness of songs coming from birds all around me. Camera, video and extreme zoom in order to play a game with the tree and the crows. Dancing and swaying with the lens I sought to capture their silhouettes in the grey sky above.
I became one eye searching in the mist above. The outside world faded as wind and birds became the only staple of the moment; time irrelevant, absent of any abstraction of thought except for the vividness of sound in the cemetery.
Death at every corner, yet so much life renewed and present. I have been here before.
More than ever, the crows were guides as I solemnly walked the trails and paths of the cementary. Sounds would lure me in directions opposite to my preconceptions; like the new melody of a bird, or wind chimes hanging over a grave on the willow. Rustling of trees, or fallen objects communicated a world of tender silence and song.
Nature persists, nature endures, nature belongs and embodies this space. Much dualism in death which need not be so, for the tombstones and trees were so awkwardly placed at times. As if the bodies below wished to spring new flowers, but couldn’t burst through such heavy stones.
I heard the song of the wind and the chorus of crows, with soft gentle high-notes of other birds on their toes.
Why is our relationship with death so strange? Why did such a holy space feel trapped underneath? There is such beauty above, yet below was an uncertain feeling… mysterious, unspoken. How may we design with nature and in death?
