Bucolic & Broken

This piece is an ode to the fragile beauty of rural post-industrial England, rotting in this post-Brexit era (for much longer some would say) but still holding together as if by magic, or by force of habit. This is a sound commentary on my new home, the North, which is indeed in the center of the island that forms most of the country where I established my family almost twelve years ago, a divided Kingdom.

It is a kind of anxious love song, contemplating its bucolic beauty, where the protected moor, the ubiquitous stone walls divide tiny lands, the mills converted into fashion, refreshing replanting forests ; all this mingles with the memories of a more prosperous era : neglected gardens, soot-stained walls, numerous broken windows (when they are not simply bricked), vacant stalls within architectural atrocities ... On the one hand, the orange color of natural light gives the greenery a pictorial hue ; on the other hand, the frequent cloud ceiling mixes all in brown and gray soup.

The piece is also a hug to its inhabitants, with their tenacity, their coolness, and their stoicism, where a cup of tea seems to put everything in perspective. Everywhere else such a division would create chaos and agitation. Here, it seems that everyone takes a deep breath, a pause to observe the waters, before the dive.