Words About Women

They are about women, hidden and revealed. They are also about The Disturbance Of Air and little moments captured through experience.

Each mood is illustrated by a sound piece.

1.A woman walks through automatic doors, her hair shrouds the rest of her existence. She walks for miles, composed, nothing audible except the reassuring click of heels on pavement slabs. Certainty -clic - drawing closer- clic- departing into the distance -click.

The air is peppered with pinheads of rain; the breeze hides behind her light shawl of rain.

2.A woman wrestles with the heavy concertina door of a phone box. Her hair bends in an arc under her thick winter coat. Nothing is audible, apart from the rustling of shards of papers, papers that contain lives. Outside there are inaudible papers lost; in a moment of uncaring wind outside the phone box. Her shoes make no sound they are flat rubber converse.

3.A woman walks through a circular door, behind her walks another woman and another - three women in a capsule, a cylindrical glass case. One woman?s hair bounces on her tattooed nape. Her shoes are night black. A brush continues the jet-black line of her shoes into backwards tear tracks up her calves. Another woman?s scholls comfortably peel of the vinyl imitation stone as she steps the only three steeps inside the capsule. Her hair is in a net - relaxed hair cradled by the net of bedtime. The last woman hides beneath a woollen hat, her hair cannot be seen, her shoes are brown, robust and untelling. The three sounds clic, peel and plod in the glass capsule.

The air is still then disturbed thrice by the three faces of the cylindrical door.

4.A woman is in a shop in Barcelona, she picks up an old fan, she smells the parchment, she weeps a tear. The smell took her to a room in Hunan, before the fan was burnt on a mountain of unseeing cackling flames. Before her mother?s heels were replaced with prescription shoes, before the hair was chopped form her adolescant head. The sound is of of a quiet bookshop.

The air is laced with the smells of leaves of paper unopened for decades, it is so so still.

5.A woman looks in the mirror naked, the sounds are misty- distant in the changing room of a busy London ladieswear shop. She stands and scrutinises herself, a line here, a stretch mark there, a scar here a cigarette burn there. She replaces her shoes first, slips on her skirt, then her bra, then her top, her hair is of no consequence. She could not do this at home. She draws back the changing room curtain, it folds into rippled concertinas.

The air is uncomfortably hot in the strip basement lighting, and ruffled by the removal and adding of clothes.

6.A woman sits at a table for one, she places a bowl for one, a spoon for one and a box of viennetta -for one- on the table. She slides her finger underneath the tab and removes the whole vienetta. It sits in the bowl diagonally, pointing downwards, stomachwards. She breaks the surface with her spoon, right in the middle. The sound is of shattering chocolate panes.

The air allows vapours of cool into its midst.

7.A woman looks out on the field that she has worked all morning, all afternoon, all week, all year- for 9 years. Her hair is short, without joy. The sound is of bubbling steel in a home made melting pot, one more wok, another years work. Her shoes are made from straw and burlap to couch her tired toes. There are characters on the soles long worn a way with the labour of ladies legs.

The wind brushes a kind breeze on her weathered cheek.

8. A woman lies on an operating table, her waist down hidden to her. Her vagina and belly swollen and revealed to the theatre. A life awaits in her core. It is beautifully and blissfully unaware that it shall be plucked from her womb into the world. The sound is of latex gloves spanking the back of a hand. She wears no shoes.

The air welcomes a new born being to the disinfected room.

9. A girl looks out at her toes- a mile away when you are 4 years old, millimetres away the same night. She thinks of her patent party shoes that reflect her image, an image that has not yet become familiar. A body not lived in long enough to notice the moles, holes and trolls that hide beneath its surface. The sound is of breath through her tummy, not yet forced to be swallowed through the lung. Her hair is worn on the top of her head a small fountain of growing unity. The hair fans out into a tiny frayed circlular disc from above.

The air is warm, pleasant and only faintly moved by her little fountain when her head looks down.

10. A girl looks at the moon, a million red lanterns lining the hutong. A million red blurs a million miles away. One yellow dot a billion miles away. Yet she knows she will touch both one day.

The air is so still and crisp and cold. It is moved by her breath causing steam to ride visibly in the black.

11. A girl swings her legs from the familiar fabric of a blue patterned bus seat. The ground is grey with sparkles. Her shoes are white trainers with a velcrow strap. The sounds are of the ticket lady shouting "pyo pyo pyo". The vegitables- amongst them, judas ear mushrooms, gourds, tomatoes, long legs larger than her own legs. Her hair is one long black plait with one red ribbon.

The air is rushes throught the window, scatters around gesticulating hands in conversation. Is sucked through the door in an uncanny path. The air is warmed by a busload of voices. Beijing is heavy with humans in human air and machine air.

12. A girl looks at herself naked in her grandmothers hand held mirror, it is large enough to inspect a piece at a time. One budding breast. One wrist whose bumpy knuckle has just suddenly appeared after one rotation. One solitary hair goes unnoticed down there.