Around Here, The Birds Plant The Trees

Free event

Tóla Custy fiddle
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh viola
Eimear Reidy cello
Willie Stewart percussion
Natalia Beylis live sound collage and objects

Natalia Beylis
Around Here, The Birds Plant The Trees (2023) 45′ World Premiere

We stand in our field.

To the north, east and south are hedgerows located within our domain. These have been replanted to feed and provide shelter for wrens, robins, blackbirds, crows, shrews, bats, beetles and butterflies. Foxes, field mice, a pine marten and our cat make commuter gaps through the hedgerows for routes of travel. The hedgerows provide a safe freedom of passage to connect various elements of the landscape.

To the west of our field, are The Borders of Uncertainty. Here the land is owned by a Commercial Forestry Company and has gone through cycles of ecological destruction. As far as the eye can see, is the aftermath of a clearfell. As long as our own field remains on our deeds, its use is governed by a consideration of stewardship for the populations that live there and for their harmonious future. The Industrial Forestry land is governed by absent decision makers and policies written solely with profit in mind. We call them The Borders of Uncertainty because at any moment and without warning, the Industrial Forestry Company can choose what happens to the trees, the inhabitants and the earth beneath.

The first patch along The Borders of Uncertainty is a strip planted in uniform lines of sessile oaks. They have lived here for 30 years and beneath their canopy, the floor prospers with mushrooms and mosses. Over the last three years (since the clearfell) all sorts of trees have grown up beside the uniform oaks: hawthorns, ash, birch, beech, hazel, willow, wild roses, more oaks etc. It was not the Commercial Forestry landowners who planted these trees. It was the birds who dropped the seeds, the squirrels who forgot buried nuts and the wind carrying the possibilities for new life. If left for another couple years, a full native woodland will bloom here.

In the next patch that borders our field, there is a small grove of commercial sitka spruce trees that never got felled. Now, with all of the other trees cleared from around them, they lean and fall gradually. The Sitka squeaks against each other as it teeters. It is often the Sitka Spruce itself that gets the blame for the wrongs of commercial forestry. But what happened to this land is not the Sitka’s fault. The Sitka did not choose the policies that govern where it lives nor does it have a say in the destructive practices used within these policies. Nor is it the choice or the fault of the neighbouring uniform oaks nor the soil beneath them nor the creatures that make their homes in these lands. But that is often the way with land along borders. It is rarely the inhabitants who control the governance policies of what is considered right and what is considered wrong. Capitalism continually reminds us that it requires sacrifice to grow.

This piece, Around Here, The Birds Plant The Trees, began with the musicians gathered together within this field to listen: to the creatures rustling in the undergrowth, to the wind making the oak leaves dance, to the lone distant curlew and to themselves, their breathing, their heartbeats and their place within it all. We invite the audience to join us at this starting point and to explore the past, present and possible futures of a single field.

Produced and co-commissioned by hcmf// and New Music Dublin as part of The Current Climate and Kirklees Year of Music 2023, supported by Kirklees Council; also supported by Culture Ireland

Photo: © Natalia Beylis