Mutable earth: the craft, inner circle, art

But the film is also about the daily grind of showing up. Showing up to your job when you want to work on your art. Showing up for your art when you’re exhausted from your job.

Mutable earth: tiny cauldron, communal rituals, the unexpected

Water in three vessels – a cauldron, a glass, and a jug, hit at regular intervals with water poured between them to change the pitch of the notes and traffic as a background carpet of sound.

In the first episode of season two, I have the pleasure of speaking with writer, editor, and playwright May Ngo. I talked to May about the process of writing her first novel, the whiteness of crime fiction, the traumas of academia, and how pregnancy is a Tower moment.

Fixed fire: blades forged in fire, revenge, steadfastness

For the proper adherence to ritual we had shaved our hair ultra-close, and smeared on a square of silver zinc.

Fixed fire: unearthly glow, blood red, full moon

Into the kidney dish she drops two eerily ice-preserved blossoms, bruised and tender, beside the ring which gleams lilac.

Fixed fire: tending the hearth, creativity, life source.

Fire can go out if it isn’t tended, but if it grows too fast, it can be destructive. The work of art, or of creativity, is to keep something as wild and unpredictable as fire contained.

Cardinal water: oceanic feelings, water, psychoanalysis, intimacy.

I was an adult when I learned to swim, and I think that is why water is troubling and desirable to me, and why it appears in so many of my dreams and visions.

Cardinal water: strange tides, lovers, deep waters

This is a story written as a liminal space, but this intensifies, rather than diminishes the terror.

Mutable air: the inner sky, imagination, psychosis

The water came in waves and washed gold summer through her bones. He was above her again, his hair deep silk on her face.

Mutable air: internal contradictions, tenderness, creative solutions.

The relief of facing something is so much greater than the temporary balm of running away.

Mutable air: research, reflection, voice

You unearth your work like an archaeologist discovers treasures, or a farmer pulls up crops.

Mutable air: circulation of ideas, intrusive thoughts, risk-taking

There is something so compelling abut the poison apple; it is sweeter, juicier, shinier, and a deeper colour than any other fruit. But its seductive appeal means that it is easy to ignore the fatal aspects.

Fixed earth: wild animals, practical witchcraft, poetry

Rathore’s poem ‘Alison Device (1594-1612), named for a Pendle witch, is a beautiful meditation on mortality and desire.

Fixed earth: ancient Norfolk flint, deep time, sacred herbs, soporific lettuces, and chilly beaches.

The landscape is dry in its lunar whiteness, with heaps of cracked inky flint in the pale wash of sky.

Fixed earth: surrender, cocooning, deep rest

There are ways to move into a different plane of time - meditation, music, psychedelics, movement, reading, having a crush, eating a whole bowl of cherries very slowly.

Fixed Earth: containers, support, grounding

Some people see the container as a capacious space to experiment in, and some people feel it is a barrier that needs to be broken down.

Fixed earth: salt crystals, haunted forests, deep rest

The cocoon is not about shame and fear and perfection but it does allow those elements to be held; it contains multitudes. It allows those things to decay and to be renewed. It is miraculous.

Fixed earth: sensitivity, grounding, sensuality

It was Kali Malone’s core artistic principle, ‘cherish sensitivity’, that helped me to think about sensitivity as one of my most precious resources.

Cardinal Fire: deity, divination, world-yielding

The bridge between deity and humanity isn’t so special, we call it dying

Cardinal fire: prismatic storytelling, intensity, wholeness

The film is formally beautiful. Long, slow takes. The drama of light through a circular window. The harrowing beauty of autumn leaves against a whitewashed exterior. Mortality is conjured in the changes of seasons, and the gradations of light.