Episode 95 - Finding the Words

In a time of the unsayable not only being said, but being enacted, I have withdrawn into speaking less. I haven’t been calling people, (my generation still phone each other), only leaving occasional short voice messages, like my younger friends. I love to talk with people, but I feel a time of silence is needed, so by the time you read this, I will have had three days quiet time with the sea and the horizon. There is something about opening my heart up to that impossible line which slows down the jumpiness, the teetering verticality, of head-first thinking. There are many other ways of working with words.One of the ways of working I love best is to be asked to find words for music, for art, for a moment, as in improvisation, or for something more long lasting. Collaboration is a discipline I missed hugely after pausing my music life. For a while I poured that desire for connection into my books and teaching, finding a great editor and colleagues. But still…Last month, it was good to be asked to spend some time finding the words to respond to contemporary artist Nicky Hirst’s sculptures in the current show PLAYTIME also featuring Giulia Ricci and Ian Dawson, at Ubicua Gallery, 85 Charlotte Street, London W1T 4PS.Ubiqua says, ‘This exhibition of three artists blurs the boundary between image and instruction within a performative language, working with sculptures and drawings that have the possibility of being visually ‘played’. The works can all be viewed as musical scores and will be interpreted by various musicians. A space for collaboration, translation, and play.’ It is on until 22nd August and I will be performing these spoken word pieces live on the 17th from 6pm. You are welcome to join us if you are in London. Musicians have improvised live in the space but sadly I was not able to attend, as I was in the woods.You will hear my two audio pieces for the show which include sound settings for spoken word. The text of the pieces is also below. The process of finding these words was more like drawing than writing an essay. I made sketches of phrases, scribbled on paper, while staring intently at photographs of the art in progress. Speaking out the syllables, skirting meaning, allowing words1 to tumble, feeling for the spaces between things, the rhythm of the pauses, until something coalesced that had the right relation to the artworks; a sort of oblique symmetry. Drawing from a moving life model and improvising lyrics for music or art have some fundamental similarities. There’s a line you are stalking. You must finish before it’s over-worked. If you try to pin everything down and ‘make it make sense’2, it will almost certainly fail.There needs to be gaps for the reader / listener / observer to leap across. Given the chance, wouldn’t you rather risk hopping the rocks than clomping over the wide bridge, with the crowd? The salmon spotted from atop slippery granite is a gift not seen from behind railings. So close to the water, one is still kin. This podcast was first published here on Substack on July 14th 2025 with full transcript, footnotes and images. Uncivil Savant is available to all with no financial barrier to access thanks to my paid subscribers. Please join them for a month or a year if you enjoy my work here. Thanks! Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe