Yesterday was a big day as my first film commission got its public launch. Enter Ghost is a piece of chamber music for solo trumpet composed by Judith Bingham and performed by Jo Harris who commissioned me as part of The Trumpet Shall Sound, a series of performances, films and recordings of music by female composers. You can get more details and see the film at Enter Ghost.
In my first newsletter, which many did not see as it dropped into junk folders, I wrote about a project I am undertaking with my writer son, Eoin who is on a gap year before studying English and Creative Writing later this year. He has been riffing on some of my work to interesting effect. So much so that we are planning to publish it in some form this year. Solivagant, a new word to me, is Eoin’s working title for the project. See extract below. If you missed the first piece from the earlier newsletter, you can now see it at Solivagant.
The old town is still alive with quiet nightlife by the lamplight. Orange glows shimmer on the water in the spotless canal. The beauty of the arched buildings is cast into the night; it bounces off the water, and there is antiquity in every vast direction. The earth cannot move them, and we let our culture stay and reside in its centre of wonder forevermore.
In the midst of it all, a young man sits and gathers his thoughts.
He is the product of his forefathers’ traditions, but so far from its origins that he longs to escape. To reach a place where the buildings sacrifice beauty for opportunity. For money. And their architects disregard the medieval aesthetic for increased office space.
Others tell him he doesn’t know how good he has it, living here. They think each chime of the clocktower is yet another hour passed in a familiar wonderland, with its crumbling brickwork simply ‘part of the charm’. To him, there is something grotesque about the recognisable ageing all around him. The population, the infrastructure, the opinions.
He looks back down at his bicycle and ponders over his urge to ride away into the real world … though he’s terrified of disappointment.
Then, looking to the left and right: it’s a lonely wall to sit on, but an empty road out of here.
The bell tolls once more.
The shadows taunt his dilemma. The quietness that follows the chime is an incessant social uproar.
So for now, he’ll just stay sitting, and gaze out across the water for a while. Because it continues far away from here – calling him into the new world somewhere, in distant obscurity.
And a bike can only take him so far.
Text © Eoin Treacy
In order to pivot and best adapt to the difficult pandemic conditions facing the creative industries and so many others I am making my work available as beautiful signed archival prints prepared under my supervision by thepreintspace here in London. Each image on my website has, or will have, a buy print link. Those that don’t yet can be ordered by emailing me with the title and size preference, A3 at £150 or A2 at £300. Here are two examples of recent work from my Pandemic Constitutional project.
Speaking of handmade books - I have 3 copies left of Hinterland (previously called Southeast). £45 plus shipping.
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Paul Treacy is a street photographer based in southeast London seeking “mystery and menace in the everyday”. He sells archival prints and handmade photobooks to customers throughout the world.