Freya Waley-Cohen / Talisman
“…of strange mystery and contradiction…”
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Supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund
Writing Talisman I was thinking about objects that hold special power, magic and meaning to people. I was thinking about how this meaning is imbued by an event or a story - like the object is a distilled moment in time. And how the meaning is often conveyed or extracted through ritual, another ‘event’ that somehow becomes part of the object. These moments and objects that hold magical or occult powers, exist in a sort of liminal space in our minds - we can believe them and not believe them at the same time. That place of strange mystery and contradiction is where this piece sits.
At the time when I was starting to write this piece, I was thinking about and re-reading some articles by two of my favourite writers. In Rebecca Tamás article in the White Review she writes about the type of mystery I’m talking about. Looking back at my notebook from where I started writing Talisman, I’ve copied down fragments of Tamás’ writing as well as a quote from an Elena Ferrante article on plants.
“They are prisoners and yet they extend, twist, and creep their way in, break the stone. Their roots grow deeper and deeper… Maybe it’s that contrast that disorients me: they have in themselves a blind force that doesn’t fit with their cheerful colours, their pleasing scents. At the first opportunity they manage to get back everything that was taken from them, dissolving the shapes that we have imposed by domesticating them.”
“I don’t know what happens in, between and around the glinting membrane of the world, the spaces of snow, of glass, of roses, but my body and my mind tell me that there inhuman voices, light leaking through in shards, the smell of sun and plant matter.”
Writing Talisman I had these images in mind: the ritual or event that bestows magic on an object, and the object that bestows magic on the ritual, the liminal space, the roots of a great tree cracking open concrete and paving stones, the score itself as a talisman for the ritual of performance.