Ebro Delta (Trabucador)
29 July 2021
What is life? Signe Lidén asked a biologist
They said the motor of life was charged molecules crossing cell membranes, creating ATP
Things of the inter tidal zone live through fluxes: they alternate all the time
V: .. between wet and dry land.
M: Yes, like coastal waters
Their own materials flow in–and–out of them, at different scales
The delta where you are, exists through exchanges between sediments deposited by the Ebro river, flocculation as fresh particle–laden waters mix with the sea, erosion, subsidence and the washing of the Mediterranean at it warms and rises
Bodies resonate, Annea Lockwood said, with hollow barrels in the Danube and the Hudson — all forms of drums, barrels resonate with us all — because we are drums, barrels, fermenting vats, membranous tubes — you float and you are floated in — you are a–float
Why else do we go to the sea?
— hollering — taking off almost all our clothes — throwing ourselves in —
The sea rises and falls — the land falls and rises, you think, like dough beside it — soothed and enlivened by its refrain..
Organisms of the inter tidal zone are synchronised with the tides
Of all vibratory things the sea is the most constant
[
earth is the work
]
NOTES
Signe Lidén: The Tidal Sense, with biologist and writer Arjen Mulder, et al, BBC Radio 3, 7 March 2021, 18:54.
Camila Marambio & Cecilia Vicuña: Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, Errant Bodies Press, Berlin 2019, p123.
Cp in deeper time the simultaneous concrescence / dissolving of shells/corals/sandstones on the shores of the West Indian Ocean, where the formation of materials once thought of as happening over geological time is happening 'before your very eyes' — the object s boundaries are breaking down — objects are seen falling apart and (re)composing themselves in real-time..
<) Notebooks
Cp Walney Island — a thing in constant process of translation from West to South via tidal scouring and sedimentary transport. Terns there make nests on the resulting spits. The flight and perch of terns sometimes seems to extend the instability of the places they inhabit: the way they remain aloft, dip, or lightly rest on precarious gravel patches..
See Flat Out (Soundcamp 2019) soundtent.org/flatout/.
Deltas are formed by active chemical processes (flocculation); not just mechanical deposition. Thanks to Sasha Baraitser Smith for describing that.
The Ebro Delta comes 'at the end' of one of the great river systems of Southern Europe. The Ebro rises not far from the North coast of Spain and flows all the way over and down to its mouth near Amposta. Combinations of upstream damming and irrigation, reducing sediments reaching the delta, and sea level rise, produce a net subsidence on the delta, against which inhabitants of the delta organise. See the huge writing on the river embankment at Tortosa, calling for the life of the river to be acknowledged and maintained.
Speaking with Annea Lockwood following the panel with Alan Licht, Galen Joseph-Hunter, Zach Poff, on the occasion of the launch of Alan Licht's book: Sound Art Revisited. Remembering Annea's presentation for Balance Unbalance in Phoenix, when she played excerpts from the long river documents / compositions, including a recording of barrels in the Danube. Hosted by TSL in Hudson, NY. Wave Farm residency 10/2019.
Why (else) do we go to the sea? The sense of (environmental, sung, other) objects / things as vibratory (at different scales) runs through Slow Down Fast (see below). See also 'shimmer' >2
Suspense. See also the 'efficacious observer' of 'Steps in the Goethean Observation Method': 3. .. We "suspend' active perception and as much as possible only receive. At this point we begin to "see movement". Slow Down Fast p111. Cp 'shimmer' and 'vibrate' above. In the sea (mer / mère), we are unweighted, held. See: float http://self-noise.net/unfinished/plus/float/float.html
Suspension links to lift. CV and CM propose this illuminating reading of paraíso (paradise) — hearing 'para' as 'stop' and iso as from [h]isar — to lift or especially to hoist:
-iso
izo
(h)izar to raise, to hoist
This stop—raise can be imagined at the level of individual perception — maybe a technik to elicit the shift in perceived reality that Giorgio Agamben characterizes as a 'halo' and references through the chain of quotes about paradise which is the same as our current life 'just a little different' (> Notes on Ecological Radio). Tuning to shimmer / vibratory life is another way to characterize that opening >2
To add:
1) The idea of hisar to hoist points to a remote mechanics: 'it is a question of raising *at a distance* ie the definition involves the use of a cord to elevate the thing — maybe directly or maybe with a pulley — always some kind of assemblage is involved when bodies start to be active with things - they are using equipment and operating sliders and potentiometers as daily activities — transcribing, transducing, crossing creeks with packets on woven bridges for somebody called — doing unstopping work of a Museum of Wind..' The museu del vent is in l'Aldea. Its founding curator, Edmond Castell is in Bogotá now, working on projects with the Artivist Caravan around 'El Paro' - the (General) Strike / Stoppage anticipated by CV and CA — they call (for) it in Chile — it is realized / activated by young people across Colombia. http://artes.bogota.unal.edu.co/assets/postmaster/docs/caravana-artivista.pdf accessed 26/08/2021. 'Stop—Raise' can happen at big scales too / as well — it is a trans scalar phenomenon at base, perhaps
2) Another (supporting / enabling) etymology is from Klein. Para-dise in this account is derived like this:
para - Avistic pairi, 'around'
-dise fr. da ēza - wall - cogn. with OIr. digen, 'firm, solid' (orig. 'kneaded into a compact mass'),.. Goth. deigan, 'to smear', OE. d ēg, etc., 'dough'
[Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Elsevier 1971]
This alternative form of raising as in dough, gives us the froth of leaven and the sense of interspecies agencies associated with ferments and brines (kvass, kimchi, pickles, pombe). All these things seem to mix together in the sea of the delta, given time. The delta itself is a vibratory milieu in the most vivid sense, alive with surprisingsounds of herons, amphibians, rice cultivations > rice field at night
The refrain (envoi / ritournelle / tralala) — is the repeated self-sung line that brings solace, an obsessive, soothing loop:
When do I do Tralala ? When do I hum? I hum in three various occasions. I hum when I go around my territory…and that I clean up my furniture with a radiophonic background…meaning when I am at home. I also hum when I am not at home and that I am trying to reach back my home…when the night is falling, anxiety time…I look for my way and I give myself some courage by singing tralala. I go toward home. And, I hum when I say “Farewell, I am leaving and in my heart I will bring…”. That’s popular music “Farewell, I am leaving and in my heart I will bring…”. That’s when I leave my place to go somewhere else.
In other words, the ritournelle (refrain), for me, is absolutely linked to the problem of territory, and of processes of entrance or exit of the territory, meaning to the problem of deterritorialization. I enter in my territory, I try, or I deterritorialize myself, meaning I leave my territory.
Gilles Deleuze: Abécédaire in # DELEUZE /// Episode 4: The Ritournelle (refrain) as a Territorial Song invoking the Power of the Cosmos, The Funambulist June 23, 2011, https://thefunambulist.net/editorials/deleuze-the-ritournelle-refrain-as-a-territorial-song accessed 26/08/2021.
In Villon, the envoi signals at once the end of the stanza / ballad, and a re–opening into the poem's longer trajectory / flow. In the MS of the Testament, where the crystalline forms of the ballads are written out continuously with the longer, more discursive body of the poem, the refrain is recognized in / as an accumulation of sounds / syllables / patterning. Voices of the text become available for environmental re–activation, together with stridulating, shimmering exoskeletons, machines et al
You are not really immersed when you float in the sea. The water supports you, washing around your ears and bones. You hear now under the surface now in air
EITW