During a year of flux in the Scottish Borders, Claire Todd found constancy in the River Tweed.
Visual response painted by artist, Jonathan Freemantle — ‘The river is whispering and the trees are listening (River Tweed)’.
Last year felt like being set adrift on a coracle. There were spans of time where I felt aimless. Meandering and twisting on gentle eddies that simmered and knotted the skin of the river. The horizon shifted in and out of sight as my thoughts wandered in slow circles. Sometimes catching in the reed beds, or in the low slung boughs on the banks. Cagged amongst the twigs and downy white swan feathers. Sometimes I would be caught in the ebb tide, and dribbled onto gravelled shores and sandy banks. Marooned and motionless until I was set bobbing at the flood, and suspended for a stretch in the slack water. Captured in liminal space with a sensation of moving neither forwards or back, and only the sky’s changing hues to indicate the movement of time. During dark and rainy spells, there came a rush and torrent, that gushed and spewed from the many tributaries that feed the Tweed. Cast effortlessly like a dead leaf, I struggled to remain buoyed up against the raging flow and incoming seawater that surged upstream with the might of a tidal bore. Breaching banks and submerging yellow marsh marigolds like Millais’s Ophelia.
My sense of self, that has been a defined part of me for twenty-seven years, became so bent out of shape, that my frame no longer fit the space that it was supposed to occupy. And another part of me came back like a Kelpie. A charming wisp that rose, sleekit, out of the river fog. But this time I recognised its shapes, and I was wary of its guiles. For I had already been to the depths. My heart tossed to the bank. I scratched a line in the sand and its true form was revealed. Transformed once again into a hermit crab. Only I did not know this shell. Once again my love went skittering off on the wind like husks, and when I opened my mouth my words skimmed off like pebbles on the water, forming three figure eights that multiplied, rippling outwards in concentric circles.
The Tweed’s name originates from an old Celtic word meaning border, and for the last seventeen miles of its ninety-seven mile stretch, it forms a historic border between Scotland and England. An imagined line marking the edge or limit of something. This body of water marking my own edges and limits. There were periods of calming okays, when the water flowed as slowly as cartoon molasses. And there were fleeting pockets of glimmers in the white water-crowfoot that grows in the burn, and in the rivulets that flow like gathered satin around the rocks and folds of the ford. But on other days, after heavy rainfall in the upper course, it conjured a tumult that had me ravaged, flailing and entirely rudderless. Nonetheless the river is constant in its passage. Always moving and changing. Sometimes it appears as a mirror, sharply reflecting life back at me, and at other times the waters are soupy and muddied. It is wide and clouded in haar, and views are obscured to the lengths and its depths.
Yet unfailingly this river and its tributaries carry me with their solace. These waters have a power that match and juxtapose emotion. It can salve a mood through its continuous ebb and flow, where a multitude of water molecules and atoms collide wildly, becoming positively charged. And as they interact with the air they release negative ions, which are absorbed into the body, increasing oxygen, drawing it into the blood, bringing clarity and focus. Serotonin levels are stimulated, reducing stress and boosting energy. And I find that little by little, my own jetsam is being jettisoned. The weight of ballast swashed downstream along with the flotsam, where it might find distant shores to wither and desiccate. And as an old year is wrung out, I set my face eastwards. I feel more adept at navigating the meanders and boulders. A salty breeze meets my nostrils, and I breathe in a sea of new possibilities.
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Claire Todd is a writer and artist living in the Scottish Borders. Claire creates intimate works that explore themes of love and loss through words, imagery, sound and field recordings; incorporating her life-long love of nature. Visit her website / follow her on Instagram.
Jonathan Freemantle is a South African artist, currently based in Edinburgh. Freemantle has been exhibiting internationally since 2007, with group and solo exhibitions in London, Cape Town, Amsterdam, Johannesburg and Edinburgh. During this last year he has been spending a part of almost every day outside, painting, responding to a strong urge to connect directly with nature via a series of daily studies. Visit his website / follow his main Instagram account here and his daily studies account here.