Written during Ben See's Where Words meet Music workshops, 1 October 2019. This fabulous course explores the spaces where music, lyrics, poetry and writing come together to create each other.
In a session with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, we were asked to write ‘a conversation’ with a much-loved song. I chose Kate Bush’s “How to be invisible” from Aerial (2005). This song had become a kind of anthem for me in my early moth research, and led to a break-through moment when, having laboriously timed hundreds of slides to click through in time to its beat as a montage of a year of field recording, I realised I was actually trying to make film ... in Powerpoint!
This led me towards using moving image and voice-over as a way to expand my creative process, and address things that I found textiles couldn’t do (or at least not in my hands.)
I think it is a lyric - I often write things which I think are songs, but I lack the musical ability to make them so. It would be great to find the person/people to do that with...
Invisible
I fold myself up
But do not go away
Hiding in plain sight
on the edge of day
My world is as big as yours
My world is as big as yours
Bigger on the inside
Bigger on the inside
Yours to discover
A treasure, a treasure
I fold myself up
Turn myself inside out
Cloak myself in dust
In the everyday
The best way to survive
The best way to survive
Is to fade into the background
Fade into the background
My cryptic cloak
Is your indifference
Yes, your indifference
Is my fate and my lifeline
Let me be