Amy Kakoura reflects on her Talking Birds residency

Keep it to yourself, but there is something in Hotel 104.  I don’t know how long it’s been following me.  

I felt it moving around, the moment I asked to be here. It makes this dreadful, almost-sound, like a cough before it happens.  I don’t look straight at it.  

I keep my eyes forward these days. 

For now, I’ll take my time downstairs. 

Make a ritual of the tea. 

A curated set of jars, an apothecary.  

I’ll share my alchemy with the others in the room,  

An old friend and a new one.  

It’s nothing ground-breaking, 

Mint, lemon, ginger.  

A habit of leaf, fruit, earth and water  

I’ve now talked far too much about.  

Nobody has asked me what’s going on up there.  

Nobody is going to, but I don’t know that yet. 

Surely they must know.  

Maybe there’s one in every room.  

When I come back,  

It’s up in the rafters, facing the wall.  

If I’m soft, I won’t wake it.  

I arrange my tiny library,  

Which I won’t disturb for the next ten days.  

I set up a workstation, piano, desk, borrowed lamp. 

Move it, move it again, move it back to where it was first.  I sit on the floor with my laptop.  

I go through the plan.  

Later, while learning the dishwasher protocol,  

I’ll be caught off guard  

“A lot of people find they don’t know what to do on the first day”.  I will say “it’s been fine, to be honest.” 

This isn’t a lie, I believe it 

There have been no disasters.  

There’s plenty of time.  

I tense.  

I plead with myself momentarily 

Please, let this be the time it works.  

I barely sleep.  

In the morning, the thing is slumped against the wall.  It’s making that pitiful noise again.  

If I could make something rich enough 

I wouldn’t have to hear it.  

The thought swallows me.  

I try to follow the plan.  

I write everything I know and pin it around the room.  I go hunting for resources.  

Everything is stiff, and foggy. 

I haven’t made a sound yet.  

I put my back against the radiator and fight the urge to sleep. Don’t waste it. Don’t.  

A door bangs in the corridor and I start. 

I can’t be seen resting. 

Not when I’ve been trusted with the day.  

But I’m worn out, and no use to anyone. 

I cross over and hide in the corner,  

Away from the windows, like a felon.  

On my screen,  

An artist lights a cigarette 

And stares into nothing for minutes at a time. 

A stereotype, but an honest one. 

I’d always thought of him as a battle ground. 

But here he is, plugged into the morning light,  

Existing with no permission. 

I wrap myself in blankets 

And lean into the corner of the room.  

I let go of the day, and dream that I am meeting a very old friend.  When I wake, the thing is curled up by my feet.  

Hunting for lunch in the corner shop,  

I play Russian Roulette with inscrutable tins 

I pick a tomato sauce, cannellini beans, bread rolls, feta cheese, something which calls itself ‘extra butter’. 

Let’s risk it.  

I don’t know it yet, but  

This is the only day such risks will pay off.  

I will be lucky that on day 3,  

(An acidic, experimental, tomato stew disaster) 

The birds will have significantly over-ordered samosas for an event

And I’ll be offered daily spice-and-pastry consolation.  

There’s something about how we all move together  How the solitude of our little sanctuaries upstairs  

Fuel the fellowship down here. 

I watch as new faces begin to relax,  

Drop pretences 

Hesitantly, believe in it all. 

That night, I call my friend. 

He asks how it’s going.  

I tell him about the thing.  

It’s wrecking me, I say.  

Nothing’s getting done.  

I can’t concentrate with it in the room. 

I can’t do what I went in to do.  

He asks what it wants 

I know what it wants, I snap.  

I know what it wants,  

I know how it’ll go.  

He thinks I’m afraid of it.  

Of course I am.  

Of course I am.  

On Friday,  

I decide to sleep longer.  

I eat breakfast. 

I look at the plan and scrap it.  

I walk in. 

It helps that it’s sunny. 

I pay my respects to the tea cabinet.  

I linger with a friend,  

We chat about destroying the work.  

Robbing it of permanence. 

Making time to be selfish, and in solitude.  

We say all this while picking at a box of Cadbury’s fingers.  Sugar and carbs are also transient, 

And thinking otherwise is a waste of artistic freedom. 

 

We walk up together, and branch off into our worlds.

Neighbours in art. 

 

The thing is sitting at the table when I come in. 

I put my bag down. Turn off my phone.  

I sit on the chair next to her.

  

That day is hard to explain.  

I am so angry with her.  

And I am so full of regret. 

And I don’t understand why she’s still here.  

She makes me unbearably, brutally sad.  

It used to be just us and the space.  

Then so much happened. 

 

Play burned into endgame 

Connection hinged on commission. 

Permission became dependent on priority 

Integrity became a ration 

Discipline was a privilege 

Art became anticipatory 

I tried too hard to be bullet-proof 

And to push through forest fire, after forest fire

Eyes forward.  

Bit by bit, twisting her into a voiceless creature

That I could live with.  

But she’s still there.  

That afternoon, we make noise.  

That’s all it is.  

The days run by in a blurry haze of moments. 

I stretch, and move.  

There is sound, mine, and borrowed.  

I write a byzantine chant – of course I do.  

I gather the research I’ve been craving. 

I make music. I try not to comment on it.  

My other half asks what made it happen.  

I suppose,  

I slept. I ate. I moved. I talked.  

Nobody asked me what I was doing.  

All I had to do was stay in the room. 

(Of course 

It’s a miracle that it exists. 

This kind of space  

Could never have happened  

Without the pay.)

 

The last day doesn’t feel like enough.  

I pull at a knot under my ribs.  

I try to let it be what it is.  

It’s important I came, and it’s important I go. 

I remember all the spaces I didn’t own 

Backstages, back yards, practice rooms, storage rooms, and stairways.

Vacated classrooms. Woodlands. Festival fields. 

The tarmac behind the house where I grew up.  

Hosting worlds that rose and fell in an afternoon.  

I’m glad I did this in wintertime.  

I didn’t realise that the light would be so important. 

This morning, it’s like the sky has blown in through the window, 

The room is vast and pearly, and I am tiny and blowing around too.

Then the clouds throw webs, hanging heavier on the shadows as midday arrives, 

Everything burnishes over lunch. 

We are many, today.  

Everyone’s trailing their work behind them 

Half a mind on what’s to be done 

But we share ourselves. 

By the time I’m back there are streaks of gold thrown across the walls, 

My little camp is glowing.  

I sing everything I can think of.

  

The sun beats into a familiar skyline and melts into orange.  

I remember my first office, also a nest, and an unexpected one. 

A bare room on the tenth floor, three instruments and a deadline, a cast in-waiting. 

One wall was a window, where I watched the light bend around the city each day. 

A Turner painting come to life – a living sundial. 

Around 4, the rays ebb away into blue ponds. 

The room holds onto its memory, and then relents in turn.  

There is an hour of deepest dark 

And that’s where we sit together.  

Listening to the sound the floor makes.  

Faint fragments of other bodies greeting in orbit. 

 

Nobody has asked us what we have done.  

Nobody is going to.  

This quiet space is so perfectly made  

To belong to ourselves 

And not have to explain.