dominique cameron RSW

The scent of stars on the prairie wind no longer an option –

toy horse found on the pavement by the no.73 bus.

 

A man on a space hopper was stopped by police on a dual carriageway in Dundee at Hogmanay.

Nee naw nee naw.

Wet tea bags thrown out of the window hoping to land on someones head.

Ha ha.

Not to mention…

overflowing beer in the toilet,

Eric Sykesian story about buying a plank,

losing the nozzle on the WD40

and

aliens on the Dighty.

A very  happy new year to everyone at Dighty and for all those stories yet to come…….

 

Bob tells me of

kingfishers in the burn                      

and

kites in the glen.

He looks at his hands and says golf.

The bird man.

 

I am starting a series of portraits, of hands. The way our hands tell our stories, of us, of our histories. It is another way of storytelling, and of expressing who we are. I am asking people to show me how they think their hands best say something about them.

Huge thanks to Lynne and Barbara for letting me draw them despite their reservations !

 

 

 

A view from the composition ‘Lull’  about the long hot days of summer.

Now it is winter.

I came back to watch the rise of the hill, the curve of the track.

 

A composition from our Christmas dinner at Sainsburys. A great lunch after a mornings work along the burn. I was asked to write something that contained the jokes from the crackers…….!!

 

Where do cows go on Saturday?

The works Christmas dinner

Sherlock Bones, she laughs.

You drop them a line,

a tour round the scheme,

open toad.

Turkey and all the trimmings,

he’s always stuffed.

Woodpeckers,

bin bags,

paper hats too small for our heads.

The shoppers eye us,

a mumble bee of trolleys.

Doyouthinkhesawus ?

Nah,

Cheers !

As we clink Irn Bru.

Put some bread under the gorilla

and a chipolata too.

An unexploded bomb, a present left over from the war,

pull the cracker,

Boom….. Boom….

Merry Christmas !

 

       

 

This is a piece I wrote about my adventures this week with the Dighty group. I am recording peoples stories and memories about the burn and the following is a result of recent conversations. The comment about community service is a joke Stuart and I shared whilst litter picking along from Sainsburys, and all the other references came from stories I have been told including the one about a young squaddie in Hong Kong meeting a film star.

 

True Grit.

 

Chill

dank

dead fingers wi’ cold.

Picking litter on the roadside

wi’ oor wee grabby sticks.

Community service we chuckle.

“Ah weel”, he says

“That’ll teach yous fae locking the bobby in his tardis,

an’ fae tying the doorknobs the ‘gether

cross the landing in the tenement

so they cannae get oot.

Ha ha yer dunderheid.”

Anyways,

I’m awa’

ta’ the post office an’ ma giro,

an’ on ta the Hilton fae a beer

wi’ John Wayne.

 

Cheeri,

compadre.

 

 

I walk and the world unfolds. I think its as simple as that. Writing is stretching me and I am returning to painting. This painting is from the Dighty walk, a view to the Sidlaw hills from the railway track. Out one day I met a man who walked the hills every day. He said he did to escape himself.

 

 

Here is a recording of ‘The Hunting Ground’, the composition which was part of my MFA degree show. It is a fictional walk along a fictional street in Dundee, and yet all the words and images have come from my observations and conversations from my walking of two lines through the city repeatedly this year.

 

I am walking a new line, the line of the Dighty burn which runs to the north of Dundee. The burn starts its journey at Lundie loch in the hills to the north of the city and finds its way through agricultural, industrial and residential landscapes before it finally meets the sea at Monifieth, some 15 miles in length. I shall be walking, writing, drawing and painting my way along this line. I am being funded by Dighty Connect without whom this project would not happen.

Here is a start to my journey, a piece I wrote whilst walking in Lundie –

   

 

Lull.

 

Slumbering limbs fidget in the breeze,

heavy with heat.

Violet vetch thread the curve of the track,

upward,

to the nape of the hill.

Nettles,

corbels,

lums,

clegs,

lintels,

hogweed,

hollow.

Drowsy, ruffled, whiskered corn,

lain this way and that,

flattened,

by the dreams of horses.

He carries a cowboy gun and eats cherries.

‘What’s it like living here ?’

‘Silent’,

says the boy.