James Murray-White introduces his role in the Waterlight project, filming the local environment and activities. He reflects on his connection to this river and to water as he begins his work filming the river Mel and those who hold it close.
I was immediately attracted to this project when Clare mentioned her ideas, because it focuses on exploring this little 13 mile stretch of river, meandering through two beautiful villages. And it touches deeply into our human connection with rivers — a deep dive into a watery anthropological journey.
Growing up not far away, in the village of Girton — which has a small stream at its woody edge, where I spent many a happy day splashing in the water and building dens nearby — I know these flatlands and fens well. They are engrained into my very soul, and I resonate with the Benjamin Britten lines from ‘Peter Grimes (1962)’ :
“I am native here, rooted here.
By familiar fields, marsh and sand, ordinary streets, prevailing wind”
Clare’s words dive deep into the history and human connection to the Mel, from a tragic drowning, through to a very close examination of the “dragonflies, cool places”. It’s been a wonderful honour to walk much of the Mel with her and get to know some of it, pause where she was inspired to write, and to point my camera and capture some moments in time.
My interest has been to take time and capture the ripples and eddies in the water, the wind through the leaves, bushes, and rushes, and to hear and listen to what the wending waterway tells. I thought I saw the back of a vole scurrying off behind me one cold January morning, after I had been filming at the [AREA around back of playing fields – Stockbridge Meadows?] in the early blue hour of a snowy day, though it might have been the cold causing me to hallucinate!
I met several dog walkers that morning, and we discussed wildlife, though it has been noticeable that I’ve not seen much while walking, sitting, and filming. This makes me want to return often, without cameras and kit, and just sit. Here’s my appeal to be simple riverside wildlife watchers — much in the way fisherfolk are, sitting meditatively, rod poised above the water; for us all to bring a little stillness inside, and sit, for just a few moments or longer by water and in fields, listening and watching, connecting to the call of the wild, within and without.
It’s also been a real treat to meet with Bruce, either walking by the river, hearing about the work of the River Conservation Group and his sightings of various birds and fowl over the years, previously high in numbers and now down. And to be with him hearing stories from the elders in the villages of their engagement with the river over the years, and see him enthusing youth at the school. And then, in his inimitable style, as he weaves it all up from this tiny stream out to his journeys across the far Himalayas, the waters of the Ganges and in and out of Tibet, with the water spirits showing their power too!
So it’s been a deep dive, through and along this waterway, meeting at the confluence and seeing the ripples go off and reverberate in different ways. Filming the river has been a slow, ponderous process, working with the light and weather conditions: it’s involved standing in fields trying to get a shot of the river through swaying cow parsley, watching happy dogs wading in the water through these very changeable seasons this year, getting to know a swan, and dealing with the variables of recording interviews and ambient sound out in the open air. We’ve got Clare’s wonderful rich word ways and Bruce’s active meanderings, and I’m throwing now my footage from various days, times of day, and situations, into the pot, and this website. Soon a film or some short films will emerge, dripping from the Mel!