Only one dolphin
can fill an entire ocean,
but it can take a lifetime
for the tide to bring her in
At White Strand, when a strong wind is coming in from the bay, the air is blown up along a steep front. Crows like to fly there. They go for each other, but mostly they enjoy the power of the upsurge, going head over heels, helter-skelter and roller coaster.
Flat in the wind they hover, tilting up they shoot to the sky and down they go at a breakneck speed only to dodge the ground by inches. They behave much like kids after school, engrossed in their play, defying peril, challenging their peers and celebrating freedom.
But you can't have it all. That same stiff wind is blowing all the muck into the bay and makes the water beat itself into a dirty brown froth. This is no water for a dolphin swim. However much the weatherman tries to cheer us up with 'it's supposed to brighten up', it looks like it’s all in vain and it ain’t never gonna change no more.
I remember last year, when I was in the Miltown Malbay video rental, in a discussion about the drizzards that plagued the summer, the man saying, 'We pray for this weather'. I thought this a sinister view, but then again, the shop bulges with macabre videos. Still, the guy struck a point.
I have a vested interest in the best of all weather. It usually comes with clear water and lots of good light.
Alas, such rarities are not high on the Irish menu. That's why it may be a windfall on a rainy day to pay a free visit to my exhibition in the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon. Because there you can at least enjoy the photos and videos of a sun-dappled Dusty in the clear Clare water.
Rather than give a dry run-down of all the delicacies I am preparing for the eye, by way of a sneaky preview let me give free reign to my hobby, watching waves. Photos can be very impressive, elegant or intriguing. But it is real-time watching that smiles upon their final click.
Take the rocket waves. These are ultimate manifestations of natural force. The interaction of wind, water and waves on the Fanore Rockyèra is not hard to figure out. The water washes out the fissures between the terrace layers, which eventually break off by their own weight, generally assisted by a pounding storm. Some of the resulting slabs are beaten to smithereens on the coastal stronghold by the breakers and rolled to rotund on undulating rock beds by the patience of time. Others are usually stacked slopingly upon the edge of their forerunner and shelter the coast against the same forces that put them there. In a tempestuous fury one can see the water shooting up at the protrusion of Arkeen, rising to an arch in slow motion and dropping its lost energy into a gale-scattered nebula. If you look at a photo of a rocket wave long enough you can see the water moving.
'Face waves' refers to the manifold phenomena of waves in the individuality of their appearance. Instead of seeking similarity and order, a photogenic bouquet of singular apparitions roars by. They articulate the plastic and elusive qualities of water. Unlike a landscape the sea is an ever-changing vista, reflecting celestial colours and only fenced by the horizon. The basic criterion for selection is the shape of the wave, but colour and lucidity can form an enchanting bonus.
The first time I saw a Jackson Pollock painting my irony was eclipsed by the keen sense of space that it yielded. By a seemingly random formation of streaks and splatters, a universe created itself in the mind of the beholder. The sloshes I caught on camera are a palette of natural coincidence, only real for a thousandth of a second. At first glance they seem bizarre, but the shapes rapidly become familiar as the spectator begins to appreciate their anomaly in a personal conceptualisation. Orchestrated by one's own imagination, discovery of familiar shapes emerges and seeks joint harmonies. By becoming acquainted with a photo one eases the self into a lap of unhindered interpretation and may subconsciously integrate the appearances of water in one's cognition. Water will not look the same evermore. These dynamics I like to coin into an oxymoron, 'poetic reality', in contrast with the harshness generally ascribed to it.