On a visit back to my parents house to grab some speaker cones for a DIY project, I found myself talking to my father about my daydreams on liminality. His immediate first reaction to hearing about it was to talk about water; about how for the ancients water was the supreme liminal substance, a barrier between this world and the next. The river Styx, throwing coins into wells, the lady of the lake passing on Excalibur to King Arthur. The first obvious connection is the Thames; the core of London, providing it with commerce and wealth for almost its’ entire history, but upon further investigation I remembered hearing something familiar….

A few streets away from my parents’ house on a wide, suburban corner in the middle of the road, is a manhole. When walking past this manhole, one can hear the fierce, rushing current of water below. I’ve heard it my entire life, and it always earns itself a small mental note whenever I pass by. This linked back to another point of interest that I have had over the years – the lost rivers/canals/tributaries of London. Waterways that were once our ancestors’ lifeline have slowly been build over, neglected to tunnels and passageways underneath our feet. Their frantic flow sounds on deaf ears. These flowing bodies of water are echoes from the past; the Fleet, the Effra, the Tyburn. All names that we no longer recognise, but to the past peoples of London they were as familiar as Oxford Street is to us.

My decision to link the topics of my two assignments to one another means that somewhere along the line I will have to decide which aspects fit into the academic side of things and which aspects will fit into the artistic side of things. Psycho-geography (coined by Guy Debord) seems to be a main linking factor within my essay-based musings, the idea being that exploring London through its’ links to the past can be another playful way to explore how it makes you feel. Trying to catch a glimpse of how the ancients saw our city by understanding that which brought them all together; water.

In terms of my audio assignment, I want to focus on my own experience with water. There is a water processing facility within sight from the back side of my parents house, and it’s always been interesting to me. The manhole cover, liminality, hearing things that we can’t see, listening to the past. These are all linked points in my thoughts about creating an audio piece from my research.