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100 Circles
Lenzie Moss is a designated Local Nature Reserve in East Dunbartonshire, near the city of Glasgow, UK. It is a boggy and marshy area with a history of peat extraction. The Moss now serves as a vital habitat for diverse wildlife, including water vole and bog rosemary, and the green hairstreak butterfly, alongside areas of silver birch woodland. My name is David Overend. I moved to the edge of Lenzie Moss in the summer of 2023 and began to regularly take the 25 minute walk round its border, sometimes daily. I have walked with friends, my children, and once with an expert on water vole habitats. Mainly I have walked alone: as a break from work; to start the day with some fresh air; in search of kestrels and deer. Every time I complete the circle, I notice, learn or experience something new. The walk has become something of a ritual, a way of marking the change in the seasons. Since I started to follow this route, I have had the feeling that there is more to discover and that this repeated circular walk might lead me somewhere. So, I am walking it 100 more times, each time with a different person from the local community, or a visiting artist or researcher with some interest in peatlands. As I share these encounters on this blog, I hope that a co-authored text will emerge, bringing a series of walked dialogues to a wider readership, and perhaps finding a way for the Moss to tell its stories. If you would like to be part of this project and join me for a walk round Lenzie Moss, please get in touch.
Related
100 Circles
Lenzie Moss is a designated Local Nature Reserve in East Dunbartonshire, near the city of Glasgow, UK. It is a boggy and marshy area with a history of peat extraction. The Moss now serves as a vital habitat for diverse wildlife, including water vole and bog rosemary, and the green hairstreak butterfly, alongside areas of silver birch woodland. My name is David Overend. I moved to the edge of Lenzie Moss in the summer of 2023 and began to regularly take the 25 minute walk round its border, sometimes daily. I have walked with friends, my children, and once with an expert on water vole habitats. Mainly I have walked alone: as a break from work; to start the day with some fresh air; in search of kestrels and deer. Every time I complete the circle, I notice, learn or experience something new. The walk has become something of a ritual, a way of marking the change in the seasons. Since I started to follow this route, I have had the feeling that there is more to discover and that this repeated circular walk might lead me somewhere. So, I am walking it 100 more times, each time with a different person from the local community, or a visiting artist or researcher with some interest in peatlands. As I share these encounters on this blog, I hope that a co-authored text will emerge, bringing a series of walked dialogues to a wider readership, and perhaps finding a way for the Moss to tell its stories. If you would like to be part of this project and join me for a walk round Lenzie Moss, please get in touch.
Water Walk was composed in 1959 and premiered on “Lascia o Raddoppia,” a TV program televised in Milan, on Feb 5, 1959. Subsequently it was performed on “I’ve Got a Secret,” the popular American game show, on Feb 24, 1960.
The piece was constructed for a television performance involving a large number of properties and a special single-track tape. In one of his manuscripts, Cage indicated a subtitle for Water Walk as “Water Music No. 2″. It was composed for the Italian TV quiz “Lascia O Raddoppia”. In the piece, Cage used 34 materials. It ran for 3 minutes.
The materials required are mostly related to water, i.e. a bath tub, a toy fish, a pressure cooker, ice cubes (and an electric mixer to crush them), rubber duck, etc., but Cage also called for a grand piano and 5 radios. The score consists of a list of properties, a floor plan showing the placements of instruments and objects, three pages with a timeline (one minute each) with descriptions and pictographic notations of occurrence of events, and a list of notes “regarding some of the actions to be made in the order of occurrence.”
Timings are not accurate: “Start watch and then time actions as closely as possible to their appearance in the score”.
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