In Finite Water

spring, spa and sewerage

First walk with stick and recorder – Vatt-Anna, late 1800s, Södertälje – Maiden voyage with my new old yoke

On my first walk to the spring with a yoke – really a pine branch with an ergonomic wobble - I strapped my sound recorder to the branch, tied the buckets on the ends of the ropes and set off through the forest. Inspired by Vatt-Anna, I'd let my shoulders bare the load the few kilometers from spring to yurt, that I'd found too heavy for my hands. Something had started singing between us, since I came across her photo at Torekällberget / the Tore mountain spring museum. Some resonance was ringing through the 150 years between us.

She carried water for wealthy families as her job, in the neighbouring town of Södertälje. Now I carry just for mine in the forest, part of an art project honouring her, as my job. Though neither of us has a pension plan. The museum archivist informed me that once Vatt-Anna could no longer carry water, she ended up in the poorhouse. Carrying water, she said, was considered the lowest of low in terms of employment, perhaps just above tending chickens. In a formal photo the poorhouse, with folks dressed in their best, I spot a woman with noticeably hunched shoulders. Could this be her? Well, what we do have, Vatt-Anna and I, is water. Of the sweetest kind, freely offered from the forest.

Up and over the rocks, past the stream and the singing birch, I find a steady rhythm on the well trodden track. Puddles iced over, buckets swinging rhythmically, gonging at times against my legs. I'd be grateful to not meet any one, to not have to explain myself and interrupt this trance, this recording. My intention for the walk is to channel Vatt-Anna. My whole body is listening for her, stepping slowly onto iced puddles, creaking open with my weight. Though she would surely avoid the puddles, walking in leather shoes.

The ice gives way to a splash, a portal opens. Walking on, I feel a wave rising in me as if she is filling my form. A swell of sorrow rises, empty buckets, weight in the womb. Through my humming comes a cry. Now she is moving through my eyes, running down my cheeks. Are you Vatt-Anna or collective, inter-generational women's grief? Are you the grief of all water carriers or of all waters? I was looking for the Torekällberget spring, where she once collected water, and learned that it has long since dried up. Probably in connection with work on the nearby canal 100 years ago. Perhaps the water found another way, as water does, as we carry buckets of tears, from one body of water to another.

Arriving at the forest spring, surrounded by thawing moss and dark spruce, I lift the lid and scoop water to fill my buckets. I am collecting sounds too. It occurs to me that this is almost experiential archeology - minus the leather footwear, woollen skirt and petticoats. I am living into her form, feeling how her shoulders become hunched. A few days earlier my friend Katt Hernandez (here on bandcamp/soundcloud) had called, inviting me to collaborate on a piece with her, that will be part of the third "Meuf" compilation, by Barefoot Records, of women and non-cis/binary artists in collaboration (you can find the album here). I had no idea at first what I could contribute with, Katt's violin improvisation and sound making are nothing short of astonishing, in their fine tuned sensitivity and courageous upheaval of convention. Then Vatt-Anna flashed before my eyes, I could record a water carrying walk I suggested, Katt could work her magic with violin and all manner of sound tech. Something kindred connects the three of us - a cheeky glint in the eye, feet firmly planted on earth, fierce determination.

Lifting up the buckets full, harnessing the animal power in me. I think of the Tibetan yoga move 'wild yak rubbing its shoulder' - engaging a powerful earthy core energy. The shape of yoke-arm-rope with water ballast triangulates, making my body an architecture of tensegrity. Humming comes, little work song ditties make themselves in the effort and determination of it. It feels good, buckets swaying heavy. It feels good to be physically capable again. I'm thinking of the laments Katt and I have made and witnessed in each other in the old water tower as part of ANTENN sound art festival. In 2020, when we couldn't have an audience we gathered 11 artists in the tower (and 2 remotely) for a durational lament. I was extremely ill at the time, laying in a bed in the tower all night, but to lament together was healing. The following year we made a lament workshop with Tuomas Rounakari, with most of the the same group, each making our lament, opening and transforming of our grief through through poetry and song.

Arriving home in the yurt, the weight of water lingers in body memory, as the memory of the spring lingers in water. The breaths and steps of the walk are now concentrated, expanded and drawn into a delicate and surprising piece that Katt finished last week. Since then I’ve upgraded my water carrying, traded in my pine branch for a 100 year old yoke. Water weight now forms round my shoulders without rubbing on the vertebra on my weekly walk.

*

Steam rises from my skin as I look up to the roof that was once the hull of our sailing boat. It’s my first bath of the year, now that the ice has released its grasp and hoses are functional again, we can connect the gas hot water heater for the occasional luxury of a spa day. Saunas and showers are lovely but a bath for me is truly transformative. Winter begins unravelling from my sinews, melting from tissues, loosening bones. I’m becoming liquid again. This boat house that Patrick and I made, we sometimes call our water church. Why don't we marry water? I wonder…

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in this humble bathtub, under this hull of African Mahogany, to join together this woman and water. Water is a sacred and joyous medium, which should be entered into reverently. Water and wife should give to each other companionship, comfort, and support in times of prosperity as well as in times of adversity. Water has been guarded and esteemed through the ages for the stability and happiness it brings to the individual, the family, and the community. Therefore, the uniting of water with an individual, of many cells and parts, and their whole bacterial community, is an important and memorable event. For us, attached as we are to our bodies by special bonds and affections, the uniting and dissolving into water in heart, body, mind and spirit, is an occasion of great significance, which we can all celebrate.

Filling the bathtub from an unseen reservoir of groundwater, pumped up from 70m deep, gushing from the hose - water seems infinite, though I know we are in finite water. I read once a relative scale - if all the earth's water was 100 L (26 gallons), accessible fresh water would be about one half of a teaspoon. One half of a teaspoon.

Living off-grid, water has regained its everyday preciousness. During the winter, every drop we use is a drop we carry - not all the way from the spring, that's just drinking water. About twice a week we fill all our containers, about 50 liters in buckets and water heater for the sauna and about 100 liters in plastic containers for cooking and washing dishes that we carry up the hill to the yurt. We’ve found that 10 liters is all one needs for a generous shower, under the bucket fitted with a shower head, that we winch up by hand. Like being on a boat, but the hull is the roof and the water is inside.

*

I’m attaching speakers to the high wire fence, in preparation for the sound installation ‘Shitopia’ with Tomas Björkdal. On the other side lays a sleeping beast. Passive by appearance but odour indicates otherwise, a vile potency is present. The beast is none other than the fekal conglomeration of our town (before we moved to the forest) in one foul pile, fondly known as the shit heap. We have made a sound piece for it, as part of The Shit Project. First digesting the paper of our researcher/collaborators into a poem, then turning it into a discordant chorus, a serenade for the shit heap on the other side of the fence, in the sewerage farm.

The municipality of Gnesta has made their rituals in attempt to pacify - adding chemicals, straining liquids, oxygenating solids. Now they’ve laid it on the concrete slab to rest awhile. When they are satisfied the beast has calmed enough, the’ll let this one out of the cage and spread it on nearby pastures. On this day, just before our art walk opens to the public, we witness a miracle, one I'd only heard rumour of. The beast speaks! A volcanic eruption, methane blowing a handfull of shit 3 or 4 meters in the air. I can’t remember accurately if it made a sound, or if I’ve added those effects in my memory.

All of this to say, I came to see the whole town as a body in this process. The sewerage farm as the digestive tract, water ways and pipes as arteries. Crossing the bridge between the sewerage farm and the river, you see the gut leaking into the blood. Heavy brown sediment, nose piercing chemicals and suspicious looking bubbles that seem to have their own syntax. Illness in the digestive tract can cause disfunction in the whole system. I wish we humans would take better care of our shit. In the forest now we are learning how, composting our own. Without chemicals, with time and sawdust till it turns to earth again.

Bucket shower on a pulley over the bath – Boat house from the outside – Sauna in the bow of the boat

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