Writing with Water

The birth of hydroglyphs

During Living Waters, I’ve been drawing.
River is quick. Doesn’t stay still for a second.
Ripples rise and disappear almost before the eye can register.
And not just a few ripples, but thousands, in infinite complexity, roaring, scattering, blooming, bubbling, galloping, surging, sighing.

It made sense to draw quickly.
Minimal kit. Even dipping a brush in an inkpot is too slow.
A brushpen already filled with black ink is perfect, and white paper.
Sitting, allowing the eyes to tune in, sensing the musicality of movement, being drawn to particular patterns - a vortex, a cross-current, a bloom. And then hand and eye and River working together, making marks that reflect those momentary movements, but without fixating on accuracy. Eyes focused on Water, then to the paper, and back again. A fine line between order and chaos. Each drawing small, rapid, taking as little as a second - no more than ten or fifteen. And then moving on to the next.

Working quickly circumvents the thinking mind, or obsessing about end results. To my enormous excitement, I felt Water’s energy getting into the process, co-creating the drawings, a collaboration.

The marks had a graphic, runic quality. I could feel the possibility - this perhaps is a way of Water speaking. Verity was researching Ancient Egypt for work with her students, and misspoke the word ‘hieroglyphs’ as ‘hydroglyphs’, and suddenly there was a word for what I was doing. Symbols for Water. Early on, I brought the drawings home and tried to simplify and stylise them into letterforms and characters, but they felt clunky, brittle; the energy seized. I felt the only way to make the marks is in the presence of Water. I’ve taken photos with my phone, cropped them and adjusted the brightness and contrast so it’s just the marks that are visible, preserving the aliveness of the moment.

These marks belong to River, a way into witnessing the intimacy and endless storytelling of Water.

On June 22nd, the day after the Summer Solstice, I visit River in the morning to immerse myself. For the first time this year, I notice through the clarity of Water that there are fish around my feet, swimming effortlessly against the tide, darting, twisting. Damselfly skimming the surface.

In the afternoon, our European subgroup of the Living Waters inquiry meet online, excited to see each other after two months, although our conversations have continued often on social media. The group encompasses an Italian spring, a Swiss river, a French alpine glacial meltwater, a Portuguese coastal creek, and three rivers in the UK, one on the edge of the Chilterns, one deep in Northumberland, and my River companion, the Frome. In meeting it feels like we not only meet each other, but each other’s River, tapping into the global body of Water that keeps the world alive.

Mado, whose Alpine river L’Arveyron is snow-fed and raucous, asks me about the hydroglyphs and I realise that I’ve actually not drawn for some time. The word hydroglyph feels like it encompasses a myriad of ways of Water speaking, not only drawing. Much of my time with River in recent days has resulted in writing rather than markmaking.

But the next day, the energy of our conversations fresh in my thoughts and lungs and bloodstream, I go to draw.