gone to stone

"I came out of Wall. Perhaps off it. I don't know. It may have been any wall." Andrew Garton

......

I turn slowly to face my new world, to accept my new world and find I'm surrounded by the faces... They all see me now. I press my back into the Wall. I feel it give way to me. I press myself to it. It makes to break so I raise my arms to take its weight. The Wall drops to my shoulders. My muscles strain. I will not be crushed.

I look out from under my burden at the faces to find they've been replaced by another party of faces, then another, and another and so it goes...

I take the weight knowing now we have all gone back to stone!

( Entire text at Gone to Stone )
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Composed in Prague, 1994, performed by Fierce Throat screaming choir, Melbourne.

Photo: Sunday 27 Feb 2006, Bayside, Melbourne.

Notes: This piece has returned to me in recent days... fragments from it weave through my thoughts and my earnest correspondence... Dug it out and had to make something of it again. It was such a strong piece to perform, text and voices crass-thatched, parts in German and harmonies backwards against the forward spoken word score.

It was first performed in late 1994 at "Where Are The Silences", an evening of spoken word held at a sculpture gallery in Melbourne and organised by a Persian Poet, who requests to remain nameless, and myself.