#remote performances

I was privileged to be able to perform ‘High-Lands’ in Outlandia yesterday, and against two stunning backdrops: one provided by the sublime and sunlit vastness of the south face of ‘the Ben’ — Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland and the UK — the other a soundscape by Johny Brown of the legendary Band of Holy Joy. I find the process of collaborating with a musician fascinating and productive, it can allow you to see your work through another’s eyes, to glimpse a different structure, to feel gravitational eddies in the text that they have sensed and are using to propel their own sound, to create their own story. Johny found a way to use elements of my text to create a big emotional punch at the end of the broadcast, which, if you missed it, I won’t spoil for you by describing here. You’ll just have to listen to it yourself when the file goes online. The title of my story is of course a nod not just to my current Scottish location overlooking the isles of Rhum and Eigg across the Sound of Arisaig from the coast of Lochaber, but also to Thomas Pynchon’s 1960 short story ‘Low-Lands’. In writing ‘High-Lands’ I used the remoteness of this location, and a corresponding temporal distance, to carve out a space where I might be able to explore thoughts about village life, class, and access to arts education, and to try and anatomise a republican impulse connected to punk and the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, but always bearing in mind the late Donald Barthelme’s dictum that you must ‘break their hearts’ — and it was this impulse that Johny identified in the text and amplified with his soundscape. Elements of the story are drawn from my current research using fiction to explore a particular republican strand in the work of the UK artist Stuart Brisley.