performance — Clare Palmier

Salt, Sand and Water. September 2023 © Clare Palmier 2023

This text was spoken and performed by Clare Palmier with assistance from artists Ellie Rodwell and Emily Cannell on Lowestoft beach looking across to the Netherlands where the island that is the UK was once connected to the European continent 8500 years ago.

A semi-circle of large sandcastles covers the beach.

The performance is divided into three – Salt, Sand, Water. The beating of the triangle – ting! – an instrument of three sections starts the work and the sound divides each section.

The audience was invited to mark each section by joining in actions: throwing salt over their left shoulder, forming “sand babies’ using their hands and sand to form rounded shapes, having their hands washed in clean water by the performers.

The text forms a basis for the words spoken – and improvisation took place around the text.

Ting! Ting! Ting!

SALT

Salt is about friendship, its silver, it’s gold. Take this offering of salt. Salt your meat, your fish and carry it across the desert. Spilling the salt is a betrayal – it’s a bad thing. We’ve all spilled the salt. Done the bad thing. Some sort of devilish behaviour! We’ve all done it. Some have done it more than others. No regrets. Some regrets.

Throwing salt over your left shoulder becomes a recompense for all the spilling of the salt.

Throwing salt over your left shoulder throws salt in the face of all that. In the face of the devil on your left shoulder. It makes up for all that spilling that’s gone on. So together on a count of three we will throw salt over our left shoulders.

Everyone together throws salt over their left shoulders.

Come. From a pillar of salt, a rock of ages, a pillar of the community. I put on my Viking helmet, my jelabiya, my shalwar kameez. I took off my fez and put on my bowler hat, my basketball cap. I lit the candle.

I flew, I swam all day, I walked and walked. I ran away. I crawled my way up.

Hills and down green valleys where the frogs glistened in their pond. I lay down in the road. I was buried in shifting sands here where I grew my tomatoes, potatoes. Where I made my rhubarb crumble.

The apples fell each year not far from the oak tree, not far from the asparagus fields and the ripe blackcurrant bushes; Not far from the place where I had first set foot, first dreamed, dared to imagine.

Love.

And looked out to sea; my sisters, brothers, grandchildren, ancestors, descendants; who were already here, who were missing, absent, forgotten under the sea, who rose up to become lollipop ladies and data analysts sitting in judgement on things that happened, didn’t happen, barely remembered, recorded in photo albums and now rearranged in invisible ways.

Tick Tock.

Chat Bot.

Ting!

SAND

So we’ve all had sand, sand between the toes. The audience is invited to make “Sand babies, sand patties.” Squeeeeze out those babies! The sand babies are placed carefully on the sandcastles covering the beach, though many break, crumble and fall before they reach the sandcastle.

I reached out, I held hands. I fought my way through the spitting playground, the cat’s cradle, I stood up, I let things slip on the mud at the bottom of the rivers running through my mind. I pretended not to be afraid. Of course, I was afraid. Often. Climbing across rooftops, scrambling over dunes in the desert, skirting round the magma of the erupting volcano.

I broke my ankle on the ice rink, I broke my ribs under a car, travelling, without, an M.O.T

I went to the doctor who felt my growing belly and the child that had come out of the green fields of home, the big blue sea, the endless horizon. This would be a strong child. They said. Like the mother, father, the beautiful grandmothers, the inevitability of the DNA. The simplicity of it all. Forgetting the complications of blood, sweat, tears. Cum. The practicalities of projectile vomiting and diarrhoea.

D & V.

D of E. Bronze, medals, certificates, accreditations, rubber stamps, tick boxes. The hotness of that night. The coldness of the new neighbours, the crowds on the train and the never-ending queue for bread and water and wine.

I said goodbye to four children who could have been mine. But they weren’t. I said hello to a daughter, a son. Beautiful. Babies. Beautiful. Babies. I said. Goodbye to a father, mother. They didn’t say goodbye back. Brave. Heart. Attack.

I ducked and dived.

Some word subsitutions for younger audience members. I pangolined. I got babooned over. I rhinoed all the wrong people. They said. Why oh why oh why. I flamingoed other people back. They said. Why oh why oh why.

I got myself a Brazilian, a Mohican, a Chinese burn, a gyppi belly. They took my blood and examined it for deficiencies forgetting that my grandfather had run from white feathers across trenches and got shot in the arse. He was a pain in the butt. Although he never complained, never said anything much. Again. Instead he changed his name and held it up at Heathrow airport and put buckets out to catch the rain coming in off the roof. Drip, drip, drip. My grandfather. The other one. Smoked, and wore a fez. He beat his children. Is that really relevant? He smoked. Drip, drip, drip of the candle.

Drip, drip, drip of the rain leaking through the roof.

Ting!

Everyone has their hands washed slowly, carefully with clean water by the performers.

WATER

My beautiful grandmothers. Ottillia, Florence didn’t smoke. I don’t think. I didn’t know them. Instead I imagined what they would have said.

Come. A moon walk, bathe in the sunlit barley field, rejoice in the swifts diving through the sky. See the pears hanging from the tree at dusk; the candle drip drip dripping its way down.

Grandmothers. I talked about you. I talked for you. I talked for England. I dined off the full English. I arrived with no coat and found the only mango in the market. I didn’t want the things I never had. The 4 x 4, the six pack, two fat ladies, last orders; a walk in the park, a bowl of cherries. Just a nice garden with a pond.

Whatever happened, whatever next. I would stub my toe on the pebble shore of this small island; I would jump over the upturned desk and dance around the snowman my children had made. I had watched my mother hunch, my father lie down, my sister bend over and my brother shoulder his burden. It gave me the hump and a lump in my throat. I found a scintilla of truth, a pearl of tried and tested wisdom which I held in my palm, close to my heart.

I am here.

As safe a as a baby’s bottom, as dead as a pig, as sly as a rock, as slow as ice, as bold as honey, as old as water, as sweet as gold, as soft as night.

I have tasted salt, sand and water. Can I open my heart and be free?

You are here.

As deaf as a knife, as hard as a rabbit, as pretty as a ghost, as lovely as lead, as wise as a daisy, as welcome as toast,. You have tasted salt, sand and water. You’ve seen the drip, drip, drip of the candle. Can you open your heart and be free?

Ting!