TOWARDS LIGHT

The film can be viewed on on Vimeo
The script is below.

Harbinger  

I summoned her in my mind’s eye, and she came.
The Angle Shades, the harbinger.
First moth of the year.
Her scrolled wings like pencil shavings: khaki, straw, violet-pink. Like documents to be unravelled. She rests, an arrow of intent, giving a very strong sense of something waiting. 
The guidebooks say they are ubiquitous. But my records show she visits me only every other year. And when she does - the moth mother -  she lays eggs.
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Winter

December 29th.
The lowest part of the year. My lights are packed away.
A dun-coloured moth splays itself  against the black square of the window - it seems, unwillingly.

In lacquer cradles under the soil, soft bodies dissolved in molecular dreams swell, reimagining themselves utterly.
But in the cold, some things still fly - the Early moth, the Satellite - spinning in the dark to exploit the advantage they have found. 
On the fencepost, the female Winter moth crawls upwards, wafting her scent. Fat-bodied and wingless, she glitters with black and silver fur. This is her time.
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(seguée)

8 April
Nothing in the trap
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Phototaxis - Towards Light

18 June
The male Willow Beauty launches into the air.
Combing the sky with branched antennae, he sifts the air for traces of sex, for molecules of company - literally smelling with his head.

Keeping at a constant angle in relation to the moon above him to calibrate a straight trajectory, he practices phototaxis, movement towards light.

Street lamps, traffic, floodlights, and my lepidopterist’s trap intervene. Constantly correcting his course in relation to these lures, he spirals down, and into the source.

The dark adapted eye has become accustomed to scotopic or rod-vision - to viewing objects in dim light. It depends on the regeneration of rhodopsin, the light-sensitive glycoprotein in the rods of the eye. This mechanism takes time to recalibrate.

Is it true that the moth falls towards the light because the visual cortex becomes so overloaded, it shuts down?  Retina burns, white becomes dark, wings fold, body plummets, for a second, towards the light. Night inverts to day, causing sleep.
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Wasps

16 July
Around this time I became unsettled by the wasps. A huge Peppered moth was stung in the back of the neck as it slept. I think this was when the first headless specimen of Euplagia quadripunctaria, the Jersey Tiger, appeared. Eaten down through the torso, leaving two sharp shoulder points and a Vampire-like silhouette, black in the bottom of the box.

11 August

The third or fourth hot night in a row, 34 degrees, thunder on the way.
The Perseids meteor showers are at their height if the sky stays clear.
A warm breeze with lots of tiny flying things. I lie on the roof in the heat. The wasps are very active.

21.44
I switch on the light. Almost immediately, the first Jersey Tiger lands.
Slap on the perspex, as if magnetised. The movement seems involuntary -  too fast to be willing. Is there delight in it for them?

I lose count after twenty, also dazzled by the light.
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Disco aftermath
Morning. The disco and the aftermath.  The Jersey Tigers cling, worn in places to translucence from the frenzy.
Two bodies mash together in one corner, wriggling into themselves, agonisingly. Wing scales smudge the perspex with a copper sheen, like so much spilled eyeshadow. And the wasps - busy and intent.
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Microscope 

I take the bodies, and place them under my microscope.  Just a small shift in sensibility would make this seem a criminal act - prying into the crevices of a corpse. But curiosity prevails.
In a strange way, I am trying to make up for this death which I caused. 
I find thirteen eggs laid in a neat row on the cardboard. 

I give the trap a rest, for a while.
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Sunrise  

23 August, 5.50am. 
Today is full of yellow things 
Brimstone, Yellow Shell, Dusky Thorn …Oak Hook Tip, Light Emerald, Buff Tip, Willow Beauty, Tree-Lichen Beauty, Marbled Beauty, Maiden’s Blush, Heart and Dart, Flame Shoulder, Angle Shades, Mother of Pearl, Garden Carpet, Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing, Large Yellow Underwing, horse chestnut leaf miner...
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Footballer’s tears 

10 July
The Euro 2016 Final. Paris, Stade de France. Cristiano Ronaldo is on his knees.

Thousands of migrant moths, the Silver Y, drawn down from their long high altitude flight, from North Africa towards Scandinavia, hang in clusters from the walls, the seats, the lights.

A single moth, Autographa Gamma, alights on his face, and gently licks the tears from the injured footballer’s eyes.

Drink my tears, Kiss my eyes –  take my salt and let us comfort each other.
We are both exhausted - this distraction, this rhythm, this light.

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