THESE ARE THE FIRST WORDS

..in progress... Sounds of things passing, like birds, thunderstorms, cars, boats and notes, create soundscapes for words. Layered into these passing sounds are the first words from a collection of condolence cards I received. This is a walk to the water, while walking through words. I hope it helps you find a way to say the thing that needs to be said. Before you begin, find a pebble or stone that calls to you. Keep it in your hand or in your pocket as you walk. A word from your host: These are the First Words Introduction by Patte Loper In this audio walk, artist and composer Deb Todd Wheeler considers the inadequacies of language. Making use of her own considerable experience with grief, Wheeler has used nine-year old condolence letters - some opened only recently and some sent by writers who are now dead themselves – as source material for a meditative, dreamlike audio poem that wends us through the freighted and historic landscape of Nolan Park. She leads us from the WetLab to the site of an ancient saltmarsh along the edge of the island. In the context of Laboratory for Other Worlds, Wheeler’s personal experience becomes a lens for our collective grief for lost worlds, as well as potential openings for new ones. In her most recent book, Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway states "grief is a path to understanding entangled shared living and dying; human beings must grieve with, because we are in and of this fabric of undoing." In other words, we must grieve in order to think clearly. In his essay, “A Grief that Laughs,” Bayo Akomolafe describes grief as a potentially decolonizing force, allowing us to “become immersed in new feedback loops, ancient patterns of sensing, and new choreographies of possibility.” Here, mourning is tied to our "response-ability" - our ethical duty to recognize the significance of our bonds not just with other humans, but across multispecies communities. This line of thinking encourages us to face troubling realities directly, to reject both blind hope and total despair, as a way to move forward to informed action and perhaps new freedoms.