To download this Transcript please visit: tinyurl.com/fieldguides21 TRANSCRIPT: FIELD GUIDE #4 “FOR A RIVER” Project Direction + Text: Hannah Simmons Sound Design + Vocal Performance: Leah Crosby (INTRODUCTION) LEAH’S VOICE Hi and welcome to Field Guides for Arts Alive. We’re so happy you’re here. This audio guide is meant to transport you from reality and offer you a new perspective on body and place. For the best experience and sound quality, we highly recommend listening with headphones. This guide is designed with the Willamette River in mind. The Willamette runs through the traditional homelands of the Mary's River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians. You are welcome to listen to this guide on location or you can just close your eyes and imagine. You can pause the track now and take your time to find a spot, then press play whenever you’re ready to begin. (MAIN TRACK) LEAH’S VOICE [ violin melody, a chorus of humming voices ] Look into the water. Let it look back at you. Let it watch you smile. [ violin fades out, nature sounds in the background ] Notice which way the water is being carried. If you’re at the Willamette, the current is travelling South to North. Go ahead, walk alongside the current, South to North. Count your steps. [ whispered, slowly: “one, two, three, four, five” ] [ an auto-tuned chorus of voices enters, getting fuller and louder ] Now, turn around and walk back the other way. Make sure you take the exact same number of steps. [ whispered, slowly: “five, four, three, two, one” ] [ auto-tuned chorus softens, nature sounds return ] Time will move differently depending on which direction you’re walking. If you walk in step with the river, then time will move like you are used to. If you walk in opposition, then time will wander backwards. [ a layered melody is sung inviting you to come into the water ] [ a tender and haunting hum in the background ] If you walk with the river, you can watch the future unfold itself in front of you. You can run into what happens next and you can come back for now later on. If you walk against the river, you can revisit what happened before now. You can carry the future with you into the past. It will feel like a kind of slow erosion, an unusual sort of undoing. [ the layered melody returns ] Let yourself alternate directions. Walk ten steps into the future, alongside the current. Then walk twenty into the past. Fifteen into the future, then ten back. Keep going. Keep alternating between past and future. [ auto-tuned chorus comes back in, sounds of breathing ] What does this perpetual doing and undoing of time feel like in your body? Have you moved from where you started? Which direction? [ chorus gets louder, sounds of footfalls crunching on leaves ] [ the text from the last section is repeated, quieter this time, layered over a gentle hum ] [ the violin melody from the opening section returns ] (SOUND FADES) (CREDITS) LEAH’S VOICE Field Guides is a project directed and written by Hannah Simmons with sound design and vocal performance by Leah Crosby. If you’d like to know more about the project and support our work, visit www.fieldguides.space This project is produced in part with support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.