Fissure

The language of the song leans into the natural world because Ruth is a woman of nature. She walks the slopes and valleys of the Dublin mountains with her camera capturing early morning deer in the rising sun. Her garden is her all, planted and sculpted to attract a myriad of birds.

The song occupies three spaces. The fictional here and now. People gathered in a room. Ruth loves people. We don’t know why they’re there. Perhaps it’s a celebration. The natural world outside. Ruth’s garden. The sky above. The unfolding landscape outside her walls. The animals she loves to see in their natural habitat acting as portents. And Ruth’s internal world.

People often say that things seem to slow when we experience a traumatic life event. Our hearts seem to beat louder, there is an awareness of everyone looking, sound is distorted, and suddenly we are changed.

In times of trauma, we dig deep. And Ruth, at the time of her stroke, was no stranger to traumatic events. An exercise towards the end of the project asked participants to consider the major changes in their lives.

Human beings have the remarkable capacity to dig deep and find the resilience and the strength to reconfigure their very selves. Find new ways to be in the world. Ruth talked about her stroke in the context of feeling safe.